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

Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book

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Charles Alston arrested At 5:00 AM on March 20, around two hours after police reported the neighborhood streets were quiet, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper, and Ernest Johnson for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a five-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper; Johnson was twenty-two years of age, and Yerber twenty years of age. Alston lived northwest of the alleged shooting, on the edge of Harlem at 512 West 153rd Street. The other men also lived west of where they were arrested, within Harlem, Johnson at 206 West 140th Street, Loper at 298 West 138th Street, and Yerber at 106 Edgecombe Avenue. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street. The apparent quiet may have made the men willing to travel some distance from where they lived to investigate conditions in the neighborhood. Their arrests starkly illustrated that the reimposition of order did not make Harlem's streets safe for Black residents in the way it did for the reporters who ventured uptown from 125th Street to document their arrest. Discrimination and violence at the hands of police were an everyday feature of the neighborhood's racial order, not the result of its breakdown.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language — for example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the five-story building at 101 West 138th Street. Soon after, police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.

On March 20, the other three men appeared in court charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person was guilty if they acted "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punished disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge of annoying better fit the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted the three men. Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests. It was not until three weeks later that Alston appeared in court, on April 9. On that date he was discharged, an outcome recorded in the transcription of the 32nd Precinct blotter made by the MCCH's researchers. In releasing Alston without trial the Magistrate was following the decision made in the other men's acquittals.

Alston’s fall attracted more attention than the shooting. Again the Home News offers the most detail, noting that the leap that Alston had attempted was a distance of seven feet (the New York Post said six feet), and that after he landed on the ledge he managed to crawl through the window into an apartment and hide under a bed. His escape bid failed as the occupants of the apartment called police. The Home News report also made clear that Alston did not appear seriously injured at the time of his arrest. It was at the 135th Street police station that he collapsed and was found to have a fractured skull, the serious injury noted in less detailed stories and in lists of the injured. (The New York Evening Journal was the only other newspaper to report these details, although it mistakenly reported that the group arrested numbered three, not four. The New York Post did report that Alston hid under a bed.)

The Daily News published a photograph of Alston's arrest in which he is holding his head, suggesting he did appear injured at that time. The caption published with the photo drew attention to the “clubbed gun” held by the uniformed officer leading Alston to a patrol wagon (seeming to suggest that the officer had used the gun butt to hit Alston). It concludes starkly, “He’s dying.” The photo published in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and New York World-Telegram credited to the International Photo agency and likely taken with the camera visible in the foreground of the Daily News photo a few seconds earlier, also clearly shows Alston clutching his head, with marks on his trousers and jacket that may be evidence of his fall. The officer’s clubbed gun is also again visible, together with the night stick of his partner. The full photograph from which the published image is cropped, part of the Bettman Collection digitized by Getty Images, provides a clearer view of those gathered around the building.
Embed from Getty Images

Visible to the right of this group are three black men obscured in the Daily News photo, which shows only white men. Given the location of this arrest in the heart of Harlem, at 5:00 AM, the only white men likely to be present would be reporters and police detectives in plainclothes. The photographs are some of the few taken beyond the area around 125th Street. By the time of Alston’s arrest, the disorder was over, allowing white reporters to travel more freely in Harlem than they had earlier, when crowds had attacked them. The captions accompanying the published cropped versions of the photo in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and New York World Telegram misidentified Alston as a suspected looter.

The New York American, New York Evening Journal, and New York Post included Alston in their lists of the injured, as did the New York Herald Tribune on March 21, and the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide several days later, all describing the nature of his injuries with no reference to the circumstances in which he suffered them. He was not listed among those arrested. A photograph published in the Daily News of four patrolmen carrying a stretcher containing an injured Black "victim of the rioting" out of the West 135th Street station may be an image of Alston being taken to the hospital. The photograph was not published until March 21, and the caption identified it as having been taken "early yesterday." As the location was the 135th Street station, the "victim" would have been injured above 130th Street, the southern boundary of that precinct. Most seriously injured individuals would have been taken directly to hospital.
William Feinstein's liquor store looted Around 11:00 PM, David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store, saw a crowd of about thirty people gather near Lenox Avenue and West 132nd Street, according to Justice Shalleck's summary of the testimony he gave in the Municipal Court. Located at 452 Lenox Avenue, the store was in the middle of the block between West 132nd St and West 133rd Street. On the other side of West 132nd Street, Herbert Canter, who owned the pharmacy at 419 Lenox Avenue, testified in another Municipal Court trial that he also saw the crowd, which he described as a "mob" carrying bricks, stones, and bottles, as well as canned goods, march down the street shouting, "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can," and hurling missiles through the windows, according to the New York Herald Tribune. For the next hour, Schmoockler watched as the crowd "created disturbances, hurled various missiles, broke store windows, set fire to some stores, pillaged others, and in general damaged property of various merchants in the locality," Shalleck wrote. Canter also saw a fire at Anna Rosenberg's notion shop at 429 Lenox Avenue, which extended to the neighboring hardware store. At some point police arrived but could not control the crowd. Officers "discharged their revolvers in an attempt to disperse the crowd," according to Shalleck's summary, and sometimes "succeeded in driving the participants from one side of the street, but they would then rush to the other side and back again, all the while continuing their destructive acts." The New York Times story on the Municipal Court trial reported this testimony simply as Schmoockler having “seen rioting in the neighborhood” that scared him and a "Negro helper" not mentioned in Shalleck's summary, omitting details about the crowd and its struggles with police.

By around midnight, the disorder and gunfire had become frightening enough to Schmoockler and the Black staff member that they "locked the doors, closed the [iron] gates" and left the store, according to Shalleck's summary. A later story in the New York Times that mentioned Shalleck's decision reported that the men left “when police began shooting about midnight” and omitted details of the lead-up to that decision. The Magistrate’s Court affidavit began with the store being closed without any mention of the context, and mistakenly had him leaving at 9:30 PM rather than midnight. What the manager should instead have done when faced with this disorder, lawyers defending the city implied in cross-examination reported by the New York Times, was move stock out of the windows and put it beyond the reach of looters, as Max Greenwald and Jack Sherloff did, and notify the mayor, sheriff or county of the attack on his property, an argument reported and dismissed by Justice Shalleck.

A crowd remained in the area after Schmoockler and his helper left. Around 1:15 AM, "a group of from thirty to forty persons smashed the windows" of Feinstein's store, pilfered bottles of whiskey and demolished the store front," according to the New York Herald Tribune report of testimony by "witnesses for Mr Feinstein" in the Municipal Court. Justice Shalleck and the New York Times mentioned the time of the attack, and the same details, although the newspaper story misattributed the testimony to Feinstein. It is not clear who the witnesses were; the store manager had left over an hour earlier, and police officers were unlikely to be testifying against the city. Both newspaper stories and Judge Shalleck's summary noted that police still had not controlled the crowd. Given that the store's iron gate had to be broken before the windows could be smashed, the attack would have taken more time and sustained, noisy violence than most, despite the number of people involved. Even with that opportunity to respond, police did not arrive until the crowd had largely finished looting the store, and made only one arrest. Around 1:20 AM, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit, Officer Nathaniel Carter allegedly saw several men leaving the store carrying bottles. He arrested one of those men, Louis Cobb, a thirty-eight-year-old Black laborer, with one bottle of gin and two bottles of whiskey in his possession. Cobb lived on the next block, at 473 Lenox Avenue. His arrest was not mentioned in either the justice's decision or any of the newspaper stories about the attack on Feinstein's store. The damaged liquor store in a photograph published in the New York World-Telegram is almost certainly Feinstein's store. The caption mentions an iron grill that was torn down as well as smashed windows, and the storefront matched the Tax Department photograph.

Schmoockler put the total losses at around $1,000 in the Magistrates Court affidavit. Feinstein later filed a claim for $627.40 in damages from the city, according to the Home News and New York American. He was not among the twenty business owners identified as the first to file claims identified by the New York Sun. Nonetheless, after the city opted to deny all the claims, Feinstein was the first of the 106 plaintiffs who filed claims after the disorder to go to trial, effectively making him the test case. As a result, much of the newspaper stories on the trial focused on the legal basis for damages. No details of what happened to Feinstein’s store were included in stories in the Home News, New York American, New York Herald Tribune, and New York World-Telegram. The jury awarded him $450. Two months later, Justice Shalleck upheld that award in a decision reported in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune. The award of damages likely helped Feinstein stay in business. A white-owned liquor store was found at 452 Lenox Avenue both by the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935 and in the Tax Department photograph taken in 1939–1941.

Louis Cobb appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court on March 20 charged with burglary. However, the affidavit making the complaint against him was not taken until March 25. In the interim, Magistrate Ford held Cobb without bail. An annotation in the docket book dated March 21 recorded "no bail in absence of record" suggesting police had not been able to produce his criminal record. Magistrates reaffirmed the denial of bail when Cobb's criminal record was eventually produced. He had been charged six times since 1920, for burglary, robbery, drug possession, homicide, procuring, and possession of a firearm, resulting in two sentences to the state prison at Sing Sing, two terms in the penitentiary and a sentence in the Workhouse, and two sentences for violating parole. The grand jury did not indict Cobb, instead transferring him to the Court of Special Sessions to be tried for petit larceny. That decision likely reflected the lack of evidence of him breaking into the store, and the value of the three bottles of liquor Officer Carter allegedly found on him; $7, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit, well short of the $100 threshold for a prosecution for the felony of grand larceny. There was no evidence of the outcome of the case.
Hashi Mohammed arrested Officer Brown of the 40th Precinct arrested Hashi Mohammed, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, for inciting a riot and possession of a knife. Mohammed had allegedly smashed windows "along Lenox Avenue," according to a story in the Home News, the source of details of the charges made against him. Born in Abyssinia, according to the New York American and New York Evening Journal and Washington Heights Magistrate's Court docket book, he lived at 4 West 128th Street, a block east of an area of Lenox Avenue that saw extensive disorder from late on March 19 and into the early hours of March 20, and may have been drawn to join the crowds on that street at some point. The combination of charges suggest that after Mohammed's arrest, the police officer searched him and found the knife, "a large bread knife" according to Home News. Mohammed also appeared in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American as having "internal injuries." While he was listed among those "Less Seriously Injured" in the New York American and New York Evening Journal, he was also identified as in Harlem Hospital (however, he does not appear in any of the records the MCCH obtained from the hospital). It is possible that Brown or other police officers involved in his arrest may have been responsible for those injuries.

Mohammed was included in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide as charged with inciting a riot and "also charged with, violation of Sullivan law (possession of firearms)." When Mohammed appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court, he faced both charges, but the weapon he was recorded in the docket book as possessing was a knife not a gun.

Mohammed did not appear in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court until March 22, whereas most of those arrested in the disorder had been in court on March 20. That delay may have been the result of his injury. On the charge of carrying a dangerous weapon, Magistrate Ford held him on bail of $2,500 to appear in the Court of Special Sessions, significantly more than the typical bail of $500. Mohammed pled guilty, according to the docket book, but that must have been to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct, as the Magistrate could not adjudicate a charge of riot. Ford sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse. The only reports of Mohammed's court appearance were in the New York Times and Daily Worker, which mentioned only the sentence and misreported the charge against him as burglary, and the Home News, which reported he had been convicted, not pled guilty. (The New York Times story mentioned Mohammed in the context of hearings in the Harlem court not the Washington Heights court.) Three weeks later, on April 17, the Magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions acquitted Mohammed of possessing a weapon, an outcome that appears only in the records of the 32nd Precinct.

The sources differ in how they record Mohammed's name. In the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide he appears as Sashi Mohammed, as Hashi Mohammed in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American, as Hashi Mohamed in the Home News, and as Hashi Mohamid in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court docket book.The records of the 32nd Precinct record his name as "Koko Mohammed."
Louis Cobb arrested Around 1:20 AM, Officer Nathaniel Carter allegedly saw several men leaving William Feinstein's liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue carrying bottles, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit. He arrested one of those men, Louis Cobb, a thirty-eight-year-old Black laborer, with one bottle of gin and two bottles of whiskey in his possession. A crowd of thirty to forty people had attacked the closed store a few minutes earlier, according to witness testimony in the Municipal Court reported in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, breaking down the iron gate protecting it, then smashing the windows, taking bottles of liquor and damaging the storefront. Feinstein put his losses at $627.40 when he sued the city for failing to protect his business. The three bottles allegedly taken by Cobb amounted to just over one percent of that total, $7. Cobb lived only a block north of the store at 473 Lenox Avenue.

Louis Cobb appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court on March 20. However, the affidavit making the complaint against him was not taken until March 25. In the interim, Magistrate Ford held Cobb without bail. An annotation in the docket book dated March 21 records "no bail in absence of record," suggesting police had not been able to produce his criminal record. Magistrates reaffirmed the denial of bail when Cobb appeared repeatedly in court, on March 25, 26 and April 2, when he was finally sent to the grand jury. Those decisions reflected the criminal record eventually produced for him: six charges in New York City since 1920, for burglary, robbery, drug possession, homicide, procuring and possession of a firearm, resulting in two sentences to the state prison at Sing Sing, two terms in the penitentiary, and a sentence in the Workhouse, and two sentences for violating parole. Cobb appeared in the list of those arrested and charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal. There were no newspaper reports of his prosecution.

The grand jury did not indict Cobb; on April 10 they instead transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions to be tried for petit larceny. That decision likely reflected the lack of evidence of him breaking into the store required for a charge of burglary, and the value of the three bottles of liquor Officer Carter allegedly found on him, $7, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit, well below the $100 threshold for a felony charge for larceny. Less than a week later, on April 15, the Magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions convicted Cobb and sentenced him to the Penitentary, an outcome recorded only in the records of the 32nd Precinct.

Born in Georgia in 1897, Louis Cobb had made his way to New York City sometime before January 10, 1920, when a census enumerator found him boarding at 334 53rd Street, in San Juan Hill, the city's major Black neighborhood before the rise of Harlem, and working as a porter. A series of criminal convictions though the 1920s and 1930s offer fragmentary glimpses of Cobb's life in Harlem. Just over two months after the census, his criminal record indicates that police charged Cobb with attempted burglary; he was convicted and sentenced to an indefinite term in the Blackwell Island Penitentiary. He was on parole by February 1921, when police arrested him again for violating the terms of that parole and returned him to the penitentiary. Released again later that year, within a few months Cobb was in court, charged with robbery. Convicted of second-degree assault, the judge sentenced him to five years in Sing Sing, the state prison. The prison admissions register recorded that Cobb was unemployed at the time of the alleged crime, now living in Harlem at 30 West 135th Street; in a subsequent admission register entry he would attribute his "first crime" to being out of work. According to the admissions register, Cobb was eligible for parole in May 1925. He likely was released around this time, as in November 1925 police arrested him again, this time for a drug offense, according to his criminal record. The judge sentenced him to another indefinite term in the Penitentiary, but the conviction violated his parole, so Cobb was returned to Sing Sing Prison to serve out his previous sentence.

Likely released in early 1926, Cobb later that year began living with Martha Nelson, who was about ten years his junior. The couple made their home at 8 West 137th Street, in the heart of Harlem. In 1930, Cobb gave his occupation as longshoreman in the 1930 census, but indicated he had not been employed in 1929. He may have been supporting himself in other ways. In May 1929, his criminal record indicates that a magistrate convicted Cobb as a procurer, supplying prostitutes, and sentenced him to sixty days in the Workhouse. About five months after his release, in December 1929, police again arrested Cobb, for the murder of Bert Moore, a Black store manger, during a robbery of the candy store at 23 West 138th Street that he managed. The New York Amsterdam News and New York Age published very different accounts of the crime, neither of which explain why Cobb's criminal record indicated he was discharged in 1931 and charged instead with gun possession. The robbery of the store was the third in as many weeks. According to the New York Age, in a story accompanied by a photograph of Moore, Cobb was involved in all those robberies; on the first two occasions, he had an accomplice, John Boyle, who was arrested after the second robbery when Moore managed to subdue him with a baseball bat until police arrived. Cobb then returned on his own to rob the store again and shot Moore as he left. A customer in the store at the time identified Cobb. The New York Amsterdam News reported Boyle (whose name they misspelled as Doyle) as acting alone and captured by Moore and three customers, and did not link Cobb to either previous robbery. After the third robbery, the New York Amsterdam News reported less evidence linking Cobb to the murder: Moore gave police a description before he died, based on which officers arrested Cobb on West 138th Street close by the candy store. The story also reported that police found a gun when they searched Cobb's home, but that his wife claimed it belonged to her, leading to her arrest for gun possession. The New York Amsterdam News a week later reported Cobb's arraignment and his wife's arraignment in separate stories. Neither paper published anything further about the case.

In April 1930, the census recorded that Cobb was in the Tombs Prison; a magistrate had ordered him held without bail on the murder charge. However, at some point before early 1931 he was released; beginning in February, he worked as a laborer for a coal company, according to the Sing Sing Prison admission register. In April, police arrested him for possession of a revolver; the prison admission register recorded the date of that crime as December 13, 1929, when Cobb was arrested for Moore's murder. Police must have found a way to link Cobb to the gun found in his home that day, but not to Moore's murder; it did not seem that Martha had changed her story, as Cobb still listed her as his wife in the prison admission register. Convicted of gun possession, Cobb was sentenced to seven years in Sing Sing Prison.

Paroled in 1939, rather than returning to Harlem, Cobb settled in Albany, New York, and found work as a presser. He identified himself as single, and his mother, rather than Martha Nelson, as his next of kin, in the Clinton Prison admission ledger in 1939. In July that year police arrested Cobb for burglary, charging him with stealing a $15 radio, a coat, and a vest. The admission ledger recorded that he asserted his innocence, saying he took the property from a friend not knowing it was stolen. Nonetheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to a term of ten to twenty years. The 1940 census recorded him as an inmate of Clinton Prison. He was not eligible for parole until 1948.
Richard Jackson arrested Officer Connelly of the 32nd Precinct arrested Richard Jackson, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man who lived at 102 West 119th Street, on March 20, perhaps for assaulting Vito Capozzio, a man of unknown race and age. Jackson appeared in the list of those arrested for assault published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, with no information on the events that led to his arrest. However, the information in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book suggests Jackson may have been involved in a fight, not in the disorder. When he appeared in court on March 20, the charge against him was the lesser offense of disorderly conduct, not assault, and was annotated "fight." That violence cannot have resulted in significant injury if the charge was disorderly conduct: the applicable section of the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior." The complainant was Vito Capozzio, whose address was recorded as "3764 Boulevard," perhaps in the Bronx. He was also the complainant against the man recorded after Jackson in the docket book, Salathel Smith, a forty-seven-year-old Black man also charged with disorderly conduct. Both Jackson and Smith were arrested by the same police officer. Given that evidence, Jackson and Smith may have got into a fight in a business which Capozzio either owned or worked in rather than assaulting him. Their appearance in the Washington Heights Court, and arrest by an officer from the 32nd Precinct, indicate that they were arrested north of 130th Street, an area that saw fewer incidents and arrests during the disorder. Jackson and Smith would not have been the only men who appeared in court that day not arrested as part of the disorder; eleven of the forty-four recorded in the docket book on March 20 faced charges unrelated to the disorder, such as offenses against the Sabbath Law.

Disorderly conduct was a charge that could be adjudicated in the Magistrates Court. Magistrate Ford convicted Jackson, and Smith. He sentenced both to just two days in the Workhouse or a $5 fine; neither paid the fine, so would have served the time. The New York Age and Home News reported Jackson's conviction, while the New York Herald Tribune also reported the charge and sentence in stories on legal proceedings related to the disorder. The New York Age also reported Smith's conviction, the only mention of his name in a newspaper story. The inconsistent appearance of Jackson in newspaper lists and reports of court proceedings likely reflects confusion of reporters about whether his arrest related to the disorder.
Chain grocery store looted Some time during the disorder, a "chain store at 135th St. and Lenox Ave" was looted, according to a story in the Home News. The store was likely the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue, the only chain grocery store near that intersection in the MCCH Business survey. That store was in the six-story building on the northeast corner of the intersection, about four stores north of the corner. The white-owned A & P chain had nine grocery stores in Harlem, and James Butler, the other white-owned grocery chain with stores in Harlem, had seven stores in the MCCH Business survey. The only reference to the looting is a Home News report of the appearance in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court of three Black men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor, forty-two-year-old Preston White, and fifty-year-old Joseph Payne. White and Payne allegedly smashed the store window and took food. Taylor was arrested "stealing a quantity of groceries." All three men were arrested "in the store." Officer Archbold of the 30th Precinct is recorded as having arrested White and Payne, and Officer D. Conn of the 24th Precinct as having arrested Taylor, in the Magistrates Court docket book. There is no mention of the value of the merchandise the men allegedly stole. Only one other reported event occurred on Lenox Avenue north of West 135th Street, the arrests of Charles Alston, Edward Loper, Albert Yergen, and Ernest Johnston for allegedly shooting at police at 138th Street at the very end of the disorder. As on the blocks of Lenox Avenue south of 135th Street, more than three-quarters of the businesses on the block containing the grocery store were white-owned.

Taylor, White, and Payne appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with burglary. No complainant was listed. When the three men returned to the Magistrates Court on March 26, the charge against them was reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. Magistrate Ford convicted all three men and sentenced White and Payne each to five months and twenty-nine days in the Workhouse and suspended Taylor's sentence. There is no information on why Taylor received a different sentence.

If the looted store was the A & P store at 510 Lenox Avenue, it continued in business after the disorder, appearing in both the MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935 and the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.
Grocery store on West 137th Street looted Sometime during the disorder the grocery store at 1 West 137th Street, close to the northwest corner of 5th Avenue, was looted. That store was visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The two stores in the foreground were not part of 3 West 137th Street but part of a different building that fronted 5th Avenue which would have had the address 1 West 137th Street. One of those businesses had a sign identifying it as a grocery store. The MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935 included only one store at 1 West 137th Street, a black-owned stationery store that was likely the storefront to the left of the grocery store in the Tax Department photograph. The survey identified the store at 3 West 137th Street, immediately to the left of the triangle on the sign in the Tax Department photograph, as a black-owned grocery store that the investigator described as a "Fairly well supplied store. Has been here 8 years." That was not the grocery store reportedly looted.

When Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with burglary, the Home News added the details that she had "broken a store window at 1 W. 137th St. and taken groceries." No complainant was recorded in the docket book, nor is the name of the store-owner recorded after the disorder by the MCCH investigator. Officer L. W. Adamie of the 46th Precinct arrested Jacobs. He also arrested Courtney Marsh, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man who appeared in court immediately after Jacobs, facing the same charge of burglary. Based on other cases recorded in the docket book, that indicates that Marsh was also arrested for looting the grocery store, but he is not mentioned in the Home News story on the arraignments in the court, nor does he appear in the list of those arrested in the disorder in which Jacobs appeared. Given that absence, and without a complainant recorded in the docket book to confirm a link between the two, Marsh was not included among those arrested during the disorder. Magistrate Ford sent Jacobs to the Court of Special Sessions; there is no evidence of the outcome of her trial.

No details survive of the scale of damage done to the grocery store. While it was not in the MCCH Business survey, that there was a grocery store visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941 suggests that the store may have continued to operate after the disorder.
Albert Yerber arrested Near the end of the disorder, at 5:00 AM on March 20, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Albert Yerber, Charles Alston, Edward Loper, and Ernest Johnson for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a five-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper, Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Yerber lived on the other side of Harlem at 106 Edgecombe Ave, as did Loper, at 298 West 138th Street and, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street, while Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street. The apparent quiet may have made the men willing to travel some distance from where they lived to investigate conditions in the neighborhood. Their arrests starkly illustrate that the reimposition of order did not make Harlem's streets safe for Black residents in the way it did for the reporters who ventured uptown from 125th Street to document their arrest. Discrimination and violence at the hands of police were an everyday feature of the neighborhood's racial order, not the result of its breakdown.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language — for example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Yerber and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the five-story building at 101 West 138th Street. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Yerber and his companions.

On March 20 Yerber, Loper, and Johnson were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, which identified Brennan as the arresting officer for all three men. (Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury). The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person is guilty if they act "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punishes disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge fits better with the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted Yerber and his two companions. Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.

Yerber, and Loper and Johnson, are among those charged with disorderly conduct in the list of the arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. They are not mentioned in stories about the proceedings in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 in the New York Age and New York Herald Tribune, which listed only those convicted.
Moskowitz's tailor shop windows broken

Sometime during the disorder, the windows of Moskowitz's tailor shop at 2310 7th Avenue were broken. Located between 135th and 136th Streets, the shop was one of the northernmost businesses damaged during the disorder. A shoe repair shop two blocks north, on the northwest corner of West 138th Street, also had windows broken. Although the blocks of 7th Avenue north of West 135th Street had few of the white-owned businesses that made up almost all those damaged during the disorder, there may have been more stores damaged in this area, as the Monterey Luncheonette at 2341 7th Avenue felt the need to post signs identifying it as a Black-owned business. The luncheonette's windows were not broken.

Patrolman Carter of the 32nd Precinct arrested Julius Hightower, an eighteen-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a brick through the window of the store, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. When he appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge recorded in the docket book was malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in cases of individuals who allegedly broke windows during the disorder. During Hightower's arraignment, that charge was reduced to disorderly conduct, an offense that indicated police had no evidence he had damaged the business. They may have simply grabbed him from those in the crowds nearby. Magistrate Ford convicted Hightower and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse or a fine of $25. He served the time. That sentence was reported in the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Age.

Moskowitz's tailor shop was operated by a father and son who had had businesses in Harlem for eighteen years, according to a note by a investigator conducting the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935. The store's sign read "Full dress and Tuxedos to rent."
Elva Jacobs arrested Sometime in the disorder, Officer L. W. Adamie of the 46th Precinct arrested Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, and charged her with burglary for allegedly having "broken a store window at 1 W. 137th St. and taken groceries," according to a story in the Home News. At a subsequent court appearance, the prosecutor reduced the charge against Jacobs to unlawful entry, an offense used when there was not evidence that she had taken any merchandise. However, that charge did not fit with the allegation that Jacobs had broken a window, as the charge in that circumstance would have been malicious mischief. Most likely, Adamie had allegedly seen or found her in the grocery store. Like almost all of those arrested for looting on the eastern boundary of Harlem north of 130th Street, Jacobs lived relatively near the store. Her home was at 56 West 142nd Street, between 5th Avenue and Lenox Avenues, five blocks north of the store, which was just off 5th Avenue.

The only information on the circumstances of the arrest was the statement in the Home News, reporting Jacobs' arraignment in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20. It is possible that Adamie arrested a second person for looting the store, and that Jacobs had been part of a larger group. Adamie was recorded in the docket book as the officer who arrested Courtney Marsh, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man who appeared in court immediately after Jacobs, facing the same charge of burglary. Like her, he lived north of the store, but further away, at 263 West 152nd Street. Based on other cases recorded in the docket book, the charge of burglary indicated that Marsh was also arrested for looting the grocery store, but he was not mentioned in the Home News story on the arraignments in the court, nor did he appear in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide in which Jacobs appeared (neither of them are in the list published in the New York Evening Journal). Given that absence, and without a complainant recorded in the docket book to confirm a link between the two, Marsh was not included among those arrested during the disorder.

Magistrate Ford remanded Jacobs in custody. When she returned to court the next day, Ford set her bail at $1,500 according to the docket book. Two days later, on March 23, Jacobs was back in court. This was likely when the charge against her was reduced from burglary to unlawful entry; in the docket book, the original charge is crossed out and "Red. to unl. entry" written in its place, in a different handwriting than the original charge. The same handwriting records that on this date Ford sent her to the Court of Special Sessions, which adjudicated misdemeanors such as unlawful entry, reducing her bail to $50. It took a month before Jacobs was tried in the that court. On May 3, the magistrates convicted her, suspended her sentence, and put her on probation, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records. (The prosecution of Marsh followed the same process until March 23, when Magistrate Ford discharged him rather than sending him for trial as he did Jacobs.)
James Smith arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer C. G. Weiler of the 32nd Precinct arrested James Smith, a seventeen-year-old Black man. Smith appeared in the lists of those arrested in the disorder charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, in the New York Evening Journal and in the Daily News. By the time that Smith appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against him had been reduced to disorderly conduct, a charge recorded in the docket book and reported in New York American. That change suggests that police did not have any evidence that Smith had taken any merchandise, or had been trying to take merchandise, the acts that constituted the offenses of burglary and larceny. He may have been accused of breaking store windows; a third of those police alleged broke windows faced a charge of disorderly conduct. But the definition of the offense did not actually encompass property damage, only various forms of breach of the peace. If the prosecutor was employing the charge in line with that definition, it was likely Smith had been part of a crowd near a looted store, but police could not establish that he attacked or took items from the store.

Magistrate Ford convicted Smith and sentenced him to six months in the Workhouse, an outcome recorded in the docket book and reported in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News and later in the New York Age. That was the maximum prison term the Magistrate could impose for disorderly conduct, and one of the heaviest punishments given to those arrested during the disorder. Notwithstanding the decision to charge him with disorderly conduct, that outcome suggests that police did allege that Smith had been involved in looting.

There is considerable variation in Smith's age and home address in as reported in the press. The docket book recorded him as seventeen years of age and living at 125 West 123rd Street, near the heart of the disorder. The New York Evening Journal and Daily News reported that home address, but Smith as eighteen years of age. The New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and New York Age reported Smith was forty-eight years of age, living at 112 West 136th Street, while the New York American reported his age as twenty-six years and his home as 158 West 123rd Street. Based on the docket book, the stories could not refer to anyone else who appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 other than James Smith.
Raymond Taylor arrested Officer D. Conn of the 24th Precinct arrested twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor some time during the disorder for "stealing a quantity of groceries from a chain store at 135th St. and Lenox Ave," according to a story in the Home News. The store was likely the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue, the only chain grocery store near that intersection in the MCCH business survey. The only reference to the looting was the Home News report of the appearance in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court of Taylor and two other Black men, forty-two-year-old Preston White and fifty-year-old Joseph Payne. White and Payne allegedly smashed the store window and took food. All three men were arrested "in the store." Officer Archbold of the 30th Precinct, not Officer Conn, was recorded as having arrested White and Payne in the Magistrates Court docket book. There was no mention of the value of the merchandise the men allegedly stole. Only one other reported event occurred on Lenox Avenue north of West 135th Street, the arrests of Charles Alston, Edward Loper, Albert Yergen, and Ernest Johnston for allegedly shooting at police at 138th Street at the very end of the disorder. Police likely arrested the three mwn after 12:30 AM, when officers appear to have begun patrolling this far north on Lenox Avenue. Taylor lived at 2228 5th Avenue, a block east of the grocery store.

Taylor, White and Payne appeared in the lists of those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. When they appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against them was originally recorded as burglary. The magistrate denied Payne and White bail and Taylor held on bail of $1,000. The Home News mistakenly reported different bail decisions for Taylor and Payne: $500 for Taylor and $1,500 for Payne. No complainant was listed in the docket book.

The three men returned to the Magistrates Court on March 26, at which point all had the charge against them reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change was recorded in the docket book in the same handwriting as the outcome of the case, a quite different hand than the original entry. The new charge indicated that police did not have evidence either that the men had damaged the store or taken merchandise from it. Instead, typically those who faced that charge had been part of crowds in the area of attacks on businesses and looting. Police could have found them in the damaged and looted store, if the Home News reported that detail of their arrest accurately.

Magistrate Ford convicted all three men, and suspended Taylor's sentence, an outcome in keeping with him being part of a crowd. Only a block for his home, Taylor may have been one of the crowds of residents watching the events of the disorder. However, Ford sentenced White and Payne each to the Workhouse for five months and twenty-nine days, one of the longer terms given to individuals convicted as participants in the disorder. There was no information on why Taylor received a different sentence, but it was likely that the other men had clashed with police in some way.
Isreal Riehl's Unclaimed Laundry store looted Sometime during the disorder, Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, allegedly threw a rock that shattered the window of a store selling unclaimed laundry at 1 West 131st Street, and then took a bag of laundry from the store, according to the report of his appearance in the Magistrates' Court published by the Home News. Patrolman C. Jackson of the 32nd Precinct was recorded as having arrested Jackson in the Magistrates Court docket book. There are no other details of those events in the sources. There was only one other looting in this area, two blocks south on 5th Avenue, and a fire reportedly set on the roof of the building next door, 5 West 131st Street. A block west, Lenox Avenue saw multiple stores looted, assaults, and three fires, but there were far more business on that street than in this area of 5th Avenue.

Although the store was identified as at 1 West 131st Street, the business was likely the white-owned unclaimed laundry store the MCCH business survey identified at 3 West 131st Street (the survey includes no businesses at 1 West 131st Street). The first building on West 131st Street is number 5, so 3 West 131st Street would be in the building on the northwest corner of 131st Street and 5th Avenue. The awnings visible in the Tax Department photograph on the left side of the building would be over the store.

Jackson appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny. That charge suggests a lack of evidence he had broken in and entered a store to take merchandise. Isreal Riehl was listed as the complainant, so was likely the owner of the store. Magistrate Ford sent Jackson to the Court of Special Sessions. There are no surviving police or legal records of the outcome of his prosecution.

The business seems likely to have survived the disorder, but there is no evidence that definitively links the store visited by investigators compiling the MCCH business survey to that looted during the disorder.
Ernest Johnson arrested Near the end of the disorder, at 5:00 AM on March 20, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Ernest Johnson, Albert Yerber, Charles Alston, and Edward Loper for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a five-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper, Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Yerber lived on the other side of Harlem at 106 Edgecombe Ave, as did Loper, at 298 West 138th Street and, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street. The apparent quiet may have made the men willing to travel some distance from where they lived to investigate conditions in the neighborhood. Their arrests starkly illustrated that the reimposition of order did not make Harlem's streets safe for Black residents in the way it did for the reporters who ventured uptown from 125th Street to document their arrest. Discrimination and violence at the hands of police were an everyday feature of the neighborhood's racial order not the result of its breakdown.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language — for example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Johnson and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the five-story building at 101 West 138th Street. Soon after, police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.

On March 20, Johnson, Yerber, and Loper were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, which identified Brennan as the arresting officer for all three men. (Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury). The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person is guilty if they act "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punishes disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge fits better with the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted Johnson and his two companions (Alston was later discharged when he appeared in court on April 9, presumably after he recovered from his injuries.) Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.

Johnson, and Loper and Yerber, are among those charged with disorderly conduct in the list of the arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. They are not mentioned in stories about the proceedings in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 in the New York Age and New York Herald Tribune, which listed only those convicted.
Philip Jaross' Tailor's shop looted Sometime during the disorder, Philip Jaross' Tailor's shop at 531 Lenox Avenue, between West 136th and West 137th Street, was looted. Jaross was recorded as the complainant in the prosecution of Earl Davis, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, for petit larceny in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court. There was no mention of this event in any other sources. It was the northernmost reported incident of looting of the disorder, one of a small number of events north of West 135th Street. A charge of petit larceny suggested that Davis was not alleged to have broken the store window or otherwise gained entry to the building, only to have stolen merchandise of low value. The business was likely attacked after midnight when looting became more widespread. Police would not have arrested Davis until sometime after that, as they were occupied with groups in the blocks around West 132nd Street and further south around midnight.

When Davis appeared in court on March 20, Magistrate Ford held him for the Court of Special Sessions. There was no record of the outcome of that prosecution.

The investigator for the MCCH business survey noted that Jaross' Merchant Tailors was a "Store operated by two Jewish men. Carry a cheap line of tailor made clothes. Been here 3 1/2 years." Its presence in the survey indicated that it continued to operate after the disorder and it was still doing so when the Tax Department photographed the building between 1939 and 1941.
Edward Loper arrested Near the end of the disorder, at 5:00 AM on March 20, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Edward Loper, Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, and Ernest Johnson for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a five-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper. Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Loper lived on the other side of Harlem at at 298 West 138th Street, as did Yerber, at 106 Edgecombe Ave, and, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street, while Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street. The apparent quiet may have made the men willing to travel some distance from where they lived to investigate conditions in the neighborhood. Their arrests starkly illustrate that the reimposition of order did not make Harlem's streets safe for Black residents in the way it did for the reporters who ventured uptown from 125th Street to document their arrests. Discrimination and violence at the hands of police were an everyday feature of the neighborhood's racial order, not the result of its breakdown.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language. For example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the five-story building at 101 West 138th Street. Soon after, police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.

On March 20 Loper, Yerber, and Johnson were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, which identified Brennan as the arresting officer for all three men. (Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury.) The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person is guilty if they act "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punishes disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge fits better with the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted Loper and his two companions. Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.

Loper, and Yerber and Johnson, are among those charged with disorderly conduct in the list of the arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide.They are not mentioned in stories about the proceedings in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 in the New York Age and New York Herald Tribune, which listed only those convicted.
Albert Brown arrested Albert Brown, a twenty-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Brown was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that Brown was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested, either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicates that Brown was arrested above 130th Street but there was no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

The docket book recorded T. M. McCabe of the 32nd Precinct as the police officer who arrested Brown. Three other Black men arrested by McCabe appeared in the court at the same time also charged with disorderly conduct: James Simon, Roosevelt Dration, and Porter O'Neill. They too appeared alongside Brown in the press as arrested for riot. Police likely arrested the men together.

Magistrate Ford convicted Brown and sentenced him to one month in the workhouse. He also convicted the other three men and imposed the same sentence on Simon and Dration. O'Neill, however, he sentenced to only five days in the workhouse.

Brown's address was recorded as 119 West 133rd Street.
Lamter Jackson arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Jackson of the 32nd Precinct arrested Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a rock that shattered the window of a store selling unclaimed laundry at 1 West 131st Street and then taking a bag of laundry from the store. The only source of details of the event was the report of Jackson's appearance in the Magistrates' Court published by the Home News. Officer Jackson was identified as the arresting officer in Magistrates Court docket book. Lamter Jackson lived at 78 West 135th Street. There were multiple lootings and assaults on the stretch of Lenox Avenue between his home and the laundry store, noise and crowds which could have brought Jackson on to the streets. Several other men arrested in this area — Lawrence Humphrey, Carl Jones, Raymond Taylor, and Preston White, likewise lived in the blocks of 135th–132nd Streets between Lenox and 5th Avenues.

Jackson was listed among those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. Both those lists flip his name, identifying him as Jackson Lamter; the Home News and the docket book recorded him as Lamter Jackson. He appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny, not burglary. That charge did not require the evidence of breaking in and entering a store to take merchandise that burglary did. Magistrate Ford sent Jackson to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on $100 bail. For some reason, just over two months passed before Jackson's trial took place. On May 27, the magistrates convicted him and sent him to the Workhouse for thirty days, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records.
James Lloyd arrested James Lloyd, a twenty-three-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. While the later two newspapers correctly reported Lloyd's name, the New York Herald Tribune misidentified him as James Lord. While James Lloyd did not appear in the lists of those arrested during the disorder, James Lord did, in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. The list did not include either an age or address that could confirm that Lloyd had been misreported as Lord.

Lord was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that Lord was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. If the man in question was Lloyd, the change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicated that Lloyd was arrested above 130th Street, but there is no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

Magistrate Renaud convicted Lloyd and sentenced him to six months in the Workhouse, the maximum sentence for disorderly conduct. He was one of only twelve of the seventy-seven convicted to receive a term of imprisonment of six months or longer, with only three others convicted of disorderly conduct. There was nothing in the surviving information about the circumstances of his arrest that explains that sentence. It could be that he had a criminal record, as did the man who received the longest sentence, Edward Larry.

Lloyd's address was recorded as 7 Ludlow Street. At the bottom of Manhattan, in the Lower East Side, this was an unusual residence for a Black New Yorker, far further from Harlem than the homes of most of those arrested during the disorder.
James Simon arrested James Simon, a twenty-three-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30 (where his name was misspelled Simmons). He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Simon was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that Simon was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicated that Simon was arrested above 130th Street, but there was no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

The docket book recorded T. M. McCabe of the 32nd Precinct as the police officer who arrested Simon. Three other Black men arrested by McCabe appeared in the court at the same time also charged with disorderly conduct: Albert Brown, Roosevelt Dration, and Porter O'Neill. They too appeared alongside Simon in the press as arrested for riot. Police likely arrested the men together.

Magistrate Ford convicted Simon and sentenced him to one month in the Workhouse. He also convicted the other three men and imposed the same sentence on Brown and Dration. O'Neill, however, he sentenced to only five days in the Workhouse.

Brown's address was recorded as 170 East 129th Street, on the eastern boundary of Black Harlem. That was the same address recorded for Charles De Souse, also arrested for riot, charged with disorderly conduct and convicted in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court. The three newspaper stories that reported his appearance in court recorded him as thirty-three years of age. As the docket book was the official record of the legal proceedings reported in the press, the age given there was used rather than the age reported in the press.
Julius Hightower arrested Patrolman Carter of the 32nd Precinct arrested Julius Hightower, an eighteen-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a brick through the window of Moskowitz's tailor shop at 2310 7th Avenue, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. The complainant recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book is L. Hackner, with the address 2310 7th Avenue, confirming the location of Hightower's alleged offense published in the New York Herald Tribune. The tailor shop was operated by a father and son, so Hackner was likely a manager or staff member. Located between 135th and 136th Streets, the shop was one of the northernmost businesses damaged during the disorder, in an area where most of the other businesses had Black owners. Police likely arrested Hightower after 11:00 PM, when groups began to come down Lenox Avenue from around 135th Street.

Hightower lived at 204 West 148th Street, more than ten blocks north of the tailor store. He appeared among those charged with disorderly conduct in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, when Hightower appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge recorded in the docket book was malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in cases of individuals who allegedly broke windows during the disorder. During his arraignment, that charge was reduced to disorderly conduct, an offense that indicated police had no evidence he had damaged the business. They may have simply grabbed him from those in the crowds nearby. Magistrate Ford convicted Hightower, and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse or a fine of $25. He served the time. That sentence was reported in the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Age and without the duration in the Home News.
Joseph Fernandez arrested Joseph Fernandez, a twenty-three-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicated that Fernandez was arrested above 130th Street, but there is no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. Fernandez did not, however, appear in any of the published lists of those arrested during the disorder. The charge of disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets.

Magistrate Ford convicted Fernandez and sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse. He imposed that sentence on just under half of those charged with disorderly conduct when there are no details of their alleged offenses.

Fernandez's address was recorded in the docket book as 15 West 118th Street.
Preston White arrested Officer Archbold of the 30th Precinct arrested forty-two-year-old Preston White sometime during the disorder for smashing the store window and taking food from "a chain store at 135th St. and Lenox Ave," according to a story in the Home News. The store was likely the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue, the only chain grocery store near that intersection in the MCCH business survey. The only reference to the looted business is a Home News report of the appearance in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court of White and two other Black men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor and fifty-year-old Joseph Payne. Like White, Payne allegedly smashed the store window and took food, whereas Taylor was arrested for "stealing a quantity of groceries." All three men were arrested "in the store." While Officer Archbold also arrested Payne, Officer D. Conn of the 24th Precinct is recorded as having arrested Taylor in the Magistrates Court docket book. There is no mention of the value of the merchandise the men allegedly stole. Only one other reported event occurred on Lenox Avenue north of West 135th Street, the arrests of Charles Alston, Edward Loper, Albert Yergen, and Ernest Johnston for allegedly shooting at police at 138th Street at the very end of the disorder. Police likely arrested While after 12:30 AM, when officers appear to have begun patrolling this far north on Lenox Avenue. White lived at 26 West 134th Street, a block south and east of the grocery store.

White, Payne, and Taylor appeared in the lists of those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. When they appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against them was originally recorded as burglary, with White and Payne denied bail, and Taylor held on bail of $1,000. The Home News mistakenly reported different bail decisions for Taylor and Payne: $500 for Taylor and $1,500 for Payne. No complainant is listed in the docket book.

The three men returned to the Magistrates Court on March 26, at which point all had the charges against them reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change is recorded in the docket book in the same handwriting as the outcome of the case, a quite different hand than the original entry. The new charge indicated that police did not have evidence either that the men had damaged the store or taken merchandise from it. Instead, typically those who faced that charge had been part of crowds in the area of attacks on businesses and looting. Police could have found them in the damaged and looted store, if the Home News reported that detail of their arrest accurately.

Magistrate Ford convicted all three men, sending White and Payne to the Workhouse for five months and twenty-nine days, and suspending Taylor's sentence. There is no information on why Taylor received a different sentence.
Charles De Souse arrested Charles De Souse, a twenty-seven-year-old Black West Indian man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. De Souse was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that De Souse was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicates that De Souse was arrested above 130th Street but there is no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

Magistrate Ford convicted De Souse and sentenced him to one month in the Workhouse.

De Souse's address was recorded as 170 East 129th Street, on the eastern boundary of Black Harlem. That was the same address recorded for James Simon, also arrested for riot, charged with disorderly conduct and convicted in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court.

All the newspaper sources recorded De Souse's name as De Soto. As the docket book was an official record of the legal proceedings, the name recorded there is used.
Earl Davis arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer William Butler of the 18th Precinct arrested Earl Davis, a twenty-six-year-old Black man. The arrest likely took place near 531 Lenox Avenue as that is the address listed for the complainant against him in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court, Philip Jaross. Although that column of the docket book was for the complainant's residence, clerks commonly instead recorded the address of looted or damaged stores. The address, on the block between West 135th and West 136th Streets, opposite Harlem Hospital, was the location of Jaross' Merchant Tailors, which the MCCH Business survey described as a "Store operated by two Jewish men. Carry a cheap line of tailor made clothes. Been here 3 1/2 years."

Davis is among those named as charged with petit larceny in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. (He is not in the list published in the New York Evening Journal.) A charge of petit larceny suggests that Davis was not alleged to have broken the store window or otherwise gained entry to the building, but rather to have stolen merchandise of low value. There is no mention of this event in any other sources. It is the northernmost reported looting of the disorder, one of a small number of events north of West 135th Street. Davis lived at 110 West 127th Street, between Lenox and 7th Avenues, to the south of the store.

When Davis appeared in Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, Magistrate Ford held him for the Court of Special Sessions, on bail of $100. When he appeared in that court on March 22, the Magistrates convicted Davis and sentenced him to ten days in the Workhouse, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records.
Salathel Smith arrested Officer Connelly of the 32nd Precinct arrested Salathel Smith, a forty-seven-year-old Black man, somewhere north of West 130th Street sometime during the disorder, perhaps for assaulting Vito Capozzio, a man of unknown race and age. Smith, who lived at 246 West 121st Street, appeared in lists published in the Home News and New York Age of those arrested during the disorder who were found guilty in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court and sentenced to the Workhouse for two days on March 20. The story included no information on the events that led to his arrest. No other newspaper lists or stories mention Smith, including the other reports of those court proceedings. He did appear in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, where the charge against him was recorded as disorderly conduct.

The other information in the docket book suggests Smith may have been involved in a fight, not in the disorder. Check marks indicate that the charge, complainant and arresting officer in his case were the same as those of the man who appeared above him in the docket book, Richard Jackson, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man who lived at 102 West 119th Street. The charge was annotated "fight." Like Smith, Jackson was found guilty by the Magistrate and sentenced to only two days in the Workhouse. That violence cannot have resulted in any injury if the charge was disorderly conduct: the applicable section of the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior." Vito Capozzio was the complainant, his address recorded as "3764 Boulevard," perhaps in the Bronx. Given that evidence, Smith and Jackson may have got into a fight in a business which Capozzio either owned or worked in. Their appearance in the Washington Heights Court, and arrest by an officer from the 32nd Precinct, indicate that they were arrested north of 130th Street, an area that saw fewer incidents and arrests during the disorder. Smith and Jackson would not have been the only men who appeared in court that day not arrested as part of the disorder; eleven of the forty-four recorded in the docket book on March 20 faced charges obviously unrelated to the disorder, such as offenses against the Sabbath Law.

Disorderly conduct was a charge that could be adjudicated in the Magistrates Court. Magistrate Ford convicted Smith and Jackson. He sentenced both to just two days in the Workhouse or a $5 fine; neither paid the fine. Jackson did appear in two sources that Smith did not: the list of those arrested for assault published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and a New York Herald Tribune story that reported the charge and sentence. However, he, like Smith, is missing from most sources that provided information on those arrested. The presence of Smith in the New York Age story likely reflects the reporter's confusion about whether his arrest related to the disorder, given that the charge against him was one made against others arrested in the disorder.
Ernest Barnes arrested Ernest Barnes, a thirty-two-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicated that Barnes was arrested above 130th Street but there was no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody. He appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide and lists published in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal, all of which recorded him as charged with riot. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. Barnes did not appear in the stories that reported the hearings in the Washington Heights court in the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and New York Age. Those stories only mentioned those convicted; Magistrate Ford found Barnes not guilty. He was the only one of the fifteen men charged with disorderly conduct in unknown circumstances that the magistrate did not convict.

The docket book and the lists published in the Daily News, and New York Evening Journal recorded Barnes' address as 224 West 124th Street.
Joseph Payne arrested Officer Archbold of the 30th Precinct arrested fifty-year-old Joseph Payne some time during the disorder for smashing the store window and taking food from "a chain store at 135th St. and Lenox Ave," according to a story in the Home News. The store was likely the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue, the only chain grocery store near that intersection in the MCCH business survey. The only reference to the looting is a Home News report of the appearance in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court of Payne and two other Black men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor and forty-two-year-old Preston White. Like Payne, White allegedly smashed the store window and took food, whereas Taylor was arrested for "stealing a quantity of groceries." All three men were arrested "in the store." While Officer Archbold also arrested White, Officer D. Conn of the 24th Precinct is recorded as having arrested Taylor in the Magistrates Court docket book. There is no mention of the value of the merchandise the men allegedly stole. Only one other reported event occurred on Lenox Avenue north of West 135th Street, the arrests of Charles Alston, Edward Loper, Albert Yergen, and Ernest Johnston for allegedly shooting at police at 138th Street at the very end of the disorder. Police likely arrested Payne after 12:30 AM, when officers appear to have begun patrolling this far north on Lenox Avenue. Payne lived at 28 East 128th Street, on Harlem's eastern boundary and much farther from the grocery store than Taylor or White.

Payne, White, and Taylor appeared in the lists of those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. When they appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against them was originally recorded as burglary, with Payne and White denied bail, and Taylor held on bail of $1,000. The Home News mistakenly reported Payne as younger, twenty-three years-of-age, and different bail decisions for Payne and Taylor: $1,500 for Payne and $500 for Taylor.

The three men returned to the Magistrates Court on March 26, at which point all had the charge against them reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change is recorded in the docket book in the same handwriting as the outcome of the case, a quite different hand than the original entry. The new charge indicated that police did not have evidence either that the men had damaged the store or taken merchandise from it. Instead, typically those who faced that charge had been part of crowds in the area of attacks on businesses and looting. Police could have found them in the damaged and looted store, if the Home News reported that detail of their arrest accurately.

Magistrate Ford convicted all three men, sending Payne and White to the Workhouse for five months and twenty-nine days, and suspending Taylor's sentence. There is no information on why Taylor received a different sentence.
Frank Hall arrested Frank Hall, a forty-six-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. However, Hall did not appear in any of the published lists of those arrested during the disorder, so there is no indication of what police alleged he had done. The charge of disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicated that Hall was arrested above 130th Street but there was no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

Magistrate Ford convicted Hall and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse. Half of those convicted after being arrested for unknown activities received a similar term of fewer than ten days in the Workhouse.

Hall's home address was recorded as 28 West 132nd Street, in the heart of Black Harlem.
Porter O'Neill arrested Porter O'Neill, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. O'Neill was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that O'Neill was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicates that O'Neill was arrested above 130th Street but there is no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

The docket book recorded T. M. McCabe of the 32nd Precinct as the police officer who arrested O'Neill. Three other Black men arrested by McCabe appeared in the court at the same time also charged with disorderly conduct: James Simon, Albert Brown, and Roosevelt Draiton. They too appeared alongside O'Neill in the press as arrested for riot. Police likely arrested the men together.

Magistrate Ford convicted O'Neill and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse. He also convicted the other three men but imposed a longer sentence on them of one month in the Workhouse.

O'Neill's address was recorded as 34 West 135th Street.
Robert Porter arrested Patrolman Rappel of the 30th Precinct arrested Robert Porter, a forty-two-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing an ashcan through the window of a shoe repair store at 2360 7th Avenue, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. That story was the only information on the location of Porter's alleged crime; there was no complainant recorded in the court docket book. Located on the northwest corner of West 138th Street, the shop was the northernmost business damaged during the disorder.

Porter lived only three blocks north of the store, at 221 West 141st Street. He appeared among those charged with disorderly conduct in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. That was also the charge recorded in the docket book when Porter appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20. The offense of disorderly conduct was one that a magistrate could adjudicate. Magistrate Ford convicted Porter and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse or a fine of $25. "Porter went to jail," the New York Herald Tribune reported, an outcome also reported in the New York Age.
Jack Berry arrested Jack Berry, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicated that Berry was arrested above 130th Street but there is no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Berry was listed among those charged with disorderly conduct, a charge that gave cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets.

Magistrate Ford convicted Berry and sentenced him to three days in the Workhouse. Half of those convicted after being arrested for unknown activities received a similar short term of less than ten days in the Workhouse.

Berry's residence was in the heart of Harlem, at 142 West 131st Street, according to the docket book.
Vito Capozzio assaulted Vito Capozzio may have been assaulted somewhere north of West 130th Street during the disorder. He was recorded as the complainant in the prosecution of Richard Jackson, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, and Salathel Smith, a forty-seven-year-old Black man, in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20. No details of the case appear in any sources, but the men's arraignment in that court indicated they had been arrested within its jurisdiction, which began above 130th Street. Jackson appeared in the list of those arrested for assault in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, which included only his name and the charge. Smith was not included in that list. However, his name was recorded directly beneath Jackson in the docket book, with check marks indicating that the complainant, charge and arresting officer were the same in both cases. Although his name suggests Capozzio was likely a white man, there is no evidence of his race. The docket book recorded his address as "3764 Boulevard," which appears to be an incomplete address, perhaps referring to Southern Boulevard in the Bronx.

Other evidence in the docket book, and Jackson and Smith's absence from most newspaper reports of those arrested during the disorder, suggest that this incident was not part of the disorder. When Jackson and Smith appeared in court on March 20, the charge against them was the lesser offense of disorderly conduct, not assault, annotated with the word "fight." The reduced charge could simply indicate that Capozzio's injuries did not warrant a charge of assault. However, this is the only instance in which the charge was annotated with "fight." Another possible interpretation is that Jackson and Smith may have gotten into a fight in a business which Capozzio either owned or worked in rather than assaulting him. The area north of 130th Street where the men were arrested saw fewer incidents and arrests during the disorder. Jackson and Smith would not have been the only men who appeared in the court that day not arrested as part of the disorder; eleven of the forty-four recorded in the docket book on March 20 faced charges unrelated to the disorder, such as offenses against the Sabbath Law. While stories in New York Age and New York Herald Tribune reported Jackson's appearance in court, only the New York Age also mentioned Smith, the only time he appeared in the newspapers. That inconsistency, and the absence of the men from other stories about the court proceedings, suggest at least some confusion about whether their arrests related to the disorder. Magistrate Ford did convict both Jackson and Smith, but sentenced them to just two days in the Workhouse or a $5 fine.
Homer Thomas arrested Homer Thomas, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Thomas was listed among those charged with disorderly conduct, a charge that cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in that court indicated that Thomas was arrested above 130th Street but there was no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

Magistrate Ford convicted Thomas and sentenced him to three days in the Workhouse. Half of those convicted after being arrested for unknown activities received a similar short term of fewer than ten days in the Workhouse.

Thomas' residence was well outside Harlem, downtown at 330 East 23rd Street.
Roosevelt Dration arrested Roosevelt Dration, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Dration was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that Dration was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicates that Dration was arrested above 130th Street, but there is no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

The docket book recorded T. M. McCabe of the 32nd Precinct as the police officer who arrested Dration. Three other Black men arrested by McCabe appeared in the court at the same time also charged with disorderly conduct: James Simon, Albert Brown, and Porter O'Neill. They too appeared alongside Dration in the press as arrested for riot. Police likely arrested the men together.

Magistrate Ford convicted Dration and sentenced him to one month in the Workhouse. He also convicted the other three men and imposed the same sentence on Simon and Brown. O'Neill, however, he sentenced to only five days in the Workhouse.

Dration's address was recorded as 10 West 134th Street. The New York Age misspelled Dration as Drayton.
Charles Jones arrested Charles Jones, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Jones was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that Jones was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicates that Jones was arrested above 130th Street but there is no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

Magistrate Ford convicted Jones and sentenced him to ten days in the Workhouse.

Jones' address was recorded as 128 West 134th Street.
Robert Banks arrested Robert Banks, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21, and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Banks was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that Banks was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested, either mistaking them for participants or simply trying to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicates that Banks was arrested above 130th Street, but there was no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

Magistrate Ford convicted Banks and sentenced him to one month in the Workhouse.

Banks' address was recorded as 205 West 112th Street.
Walter Jones arrested Walter Jones, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21, and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Jones was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that Jones was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or trying to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicates that Jones was arrested above 130th Street but there was no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

Magistrate Ford convicted Jones and sentenced him to ten days in the Workhouse.

Jones' address was recorded as 151 West 121st Street.
Vernon Daniels arrested Vernon Daniels, a thirty-eight-year-old Black man, was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21, and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. Daniels was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that Daniels was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting, or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or trying to get them off the streets. His appearance in the Washington Heights Court indicates that Daniels was arrested above 130th Street but there is no information on exactly where or when police took him into custody.

Magistrate Ford convicted Daniels and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse or a fine of $25.

Daniels' address was recorded as 102 West 143rd Street.