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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

Viola Woods arrested

Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the window of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue with an umbrella sometime during the disorder. There was no information on when during the disorder the arrest took place. The most likely time would be around 10:00 PM, when the disorder intensified and many of those at the nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and 125th Street began to move up and down the avenue. Only a New York Amsterdam News story identified the store as vacant; a list in the New York American and stories in the Home News and New York Times provided only the address. The vacant store was in the block between 125th and 124th Streets, where four other stores had windows broken, including two other empty stores at 2320 8th Avenue and 2324 8th Avenue, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street. Those other damaged stores were all included in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked west along 125th Street and and up and down 8th Avenue a block north and south of the intersection on the day after the disorder. It was possible the store whose window Woods allegedly broke was not on that list because it suffered only minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded their list by noting they had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").



Woods name was misrecorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter as Viola Williams, a mistake repeated in the list of those arrested during the disorder published in in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal. The New York American misreported Woods' name as Loyola Williams. Another woman named Loyola Williams was arrested during the disorder and charged with burglary. Both women were recorded as being twenty-eight-years of age and living at 301 West 130th Street. While these overlapping details might indicate the reports refer to a single woman, both Loyola Williams and Viola Williams [Woods] appear in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, with Viola Williams [Woods] charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in the prosecution of those alleged to have broken windows during the disorder. That is the charge recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter, with a note reading "Broke window with umbrella." However, when that woman appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, the docket book and stories about her two appearances in court in the New York Amsterdam News, Home News, and New York Times recorded her name as Viola Woods.

When Woods appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against her was disorderly conduct. The change from malicious mischief indicated police did not have evidence that she had broken the window, but only that she had been in the crowds in the area of the attack. Disorderly conduct was a charge that the magistrate could adjudicate, unlike misdemeanor and felony charges that required referral to other courts. Magistrate Renaud ordered Woods held on bail of $100, a court appearance reported in the Home News. Unusually, she was represented by a lawyer, future alderman Eustace Dench of 207 West 125th Street. Dench was one of several prominent members of the Harlem Lawyers Association who represented those arrested during the disorder. When Woods returned to the court on March 28, Magistrate Ford discharged her. The New York Amsterdam News reported that she "was freed for lack of evidence." The New York Times story simply reported that she had been discharged, the outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter. That outcome suggests Woods was not part of a crowd that clashed with police but likely simply a bystander.

The woman arrested may be the woman named Viola Woods a census enumerator found at 123 West 133rd Street on April 16, 1940. She was the same age and had been in Harlem in 1935. Born in South Carolina, in Hilton Head, she gave birth to a son, William, in 1923, and a second son, Samuel, in 1925, according to their draft registrations. At that time her last name was Bligen. She arrived in Harlem sometime between 1925 and 1930, when she was recorded in the census living at 255 West 143rd Street, with a cousin, working as a domestic servant (both her sons are recorded as living with their father, William Bligen and his wife in Hilton Head until at least 1940). In 1931, she married Chester Woods, a West Indian longshoreman. At the time of the 1940 census, they had four children, aged between ten and two years. When her sons William and Samuel registered for the draft in 1942, Viola Woods was living at 49 West 133rd Street.

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