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Violence against white men and women in Harlem in 1935
The circumstances of the assaults on white men were a mix, some quite distinct from the more random attacks of the disorder. One white man was serving a summons, another was a union organizer. Two others were targeted, like some in the disorder, as a result of operating businesses in Harlem, one as part of a protection racket, the second in what might have been a robbery. For the remaining two men, potentially white based on their residences, the reason for the assault was not clear. All of those assaults were clustered around and south of 125th Street, in the same areas as the violence of the disorder.
Most of the violence against white men and women in the case files appeared not in assaults but in robberies, two-thirds (61 of 151) of which involved white victims. Many of those who robbed whites, like those committing assaults in the disorder, did not uses knives or guns (32 of 61). They did frequently work in groups, attacking individuals on the streets, the form of violence most common in the disorder. Around one-third of their targets (21 of 61) traveled throughout the neighborhood, beyond the major avenues and cross streets on which the disorder focused, as collectors, salesmen, and delivery men. A smaller group (12 of 61) came looking for prostitutes. Those robberies clustered around 125th Street, in the heart of the area of the disorder. Both groups were regular targets of violence throughout the 1920s. Only one of those robbed was a woman. That four white women were targets of violence in the disorder thus appears particularly out of the ordinary.