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• 1 2022-02-08T20:35:15+00:00 Battle's Pharmacy windows broken 29 plain 2024-05-29T15:29:42+00:00 Sometime during the disorder, windows were broken in Battle's Pharmacy at 2156 7th Avenue, on the northwest corner of 128th Street. The only mention of that damage is in a story in the New York Evening Journal focused on Communist activities in Harlem. In arguing that "the riot [was] conducted on the best Communist lines," the reporter pointed to how "the Negro merchant's property was destroyed as well as that of the white." Three Black-owned businesses close together on 7th Avenue that had windows broken were identified in the story. Battle's Pharmacy was mentioned together with the Williams drug store, across 7th Avenue on the southeast corner of 128th Street. "Both of these stores were damaged by the rioters although virtually everyone in Harlem knows who operates them." Signs were painted on the Williams drug store identifying it as a "colored store," a set of windows that were not broken. The third store was the Burmand Realty office at 2164 7th Avenue, two buildings north of the pharmacy. Not mentioned in the New York Evening Journal story was the Cozy Shoppe restaurant at 2154 7th Avenue across the street from Williams drug store which also had a sign on its window identifying it as Black-owned, and had no windows broken.
  
  
  
  Residents of nearby buildings stood on the corner from around 10:00 PM, "looking after people and cops shooting[, and] talking about the riot," as Samuel Pitts put it. The pharmacy windows likely were broken before that time, by the groups who came from 125th Street around 8:30 PM, 9:00 PM, and 9:30 PM. It was unlikely that the windows would have been broken once there was a crowd of residents who knew it was a Black-owned business standing nearby.
  
  No one arrested during the disorder was identified as charged with breaking windows in the pharmacy. The MCCH business survey misidentified Battle's Pharmacy as a white-owned business. Walter Battle's obituary in the New York Amsterdam News identified him as a Black man born in North Carolina, educated at Biddle University and Columbia University, who opened the drug store in 1932. He was named as the pharmacist at the store in a New York Amsterdam News advertisement in 1936. The store was still visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.
  
  Patrolman John McInerney shot and killed Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black boy, as he ran across West 128th Street toward the pharmacy around 12:45 AM. Four men who testified about the shooting witnessed it from the corner in front of the pharmacy, as part of a crowd watching the disorder on 7th Avenue.