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

Violence against police in Harlem in 1935

Eleven attacks on police officers at times other than the disorder appear in the District Attorney's case files and Harlem's Black newspapers collected for Digital Harlem. Eight incidents resulted in prosecutions for assault, with two additional cases reported in the press as resulting in arrests and arraignments in the Magistrates Court, and another officer reported as having been shot but not injured. Most of those assaults (9 of 11) occurred in the context of arrests, as did two of those in the disorder. One of the other cases occurred in similar circumstances to the other assaults on police during the disorder, when an officer attempted to disperse a crowd on Lenox Avenue and 131st Street. In addition, one officer assaulted during an arrest was attacked by a bystander after the officer's attempt to serve a peddler a summons for selling in a restricted area had drawn a crowd.

None of those assaults on police in the rest of 1935 involved officers hit by objects, as most of the assaults (6 of 9) during the disorder did, but almost half involved knives or razors (5 of 11), which did not feature in the disorder.

Just over half the assaults on police in 1935 occurred on the streets (6 of 11), as the violence in the disorder did. The incidents were scattered throughout Harlem, including several on Lenox Avenue around and south of 125th Street, where much of the disorder clustered.

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