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

William Feinstein's liquor store looted

Around 9.30 PM, David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue, and a Black staff member, closed the store and secured the iron gate protecting the store. While the manger’s Magistrate’s Court affidavit mentioned only the mechanics of the store closing, the New York Times reported he testified at a later Municipal Court hearing that “he had seen rioting in the neighborhood” at that time, “but that he and Negro helper too scared to do anything about it.” By rioting, he likely meant attacks on stores. A later story on the Municipal Court case in the New York Times offered a more dramatic scenario, in which Schmoockler closed the store “when police began shooting about midnight.” While there are other press reports that police did begin shooting at that time, that was long after other stores in the area had closed, and this is the only source that mentioned that scenario. On the hand, the liquor store was located between West 132nd and West 133rd Streets, further from the beginnings of the disorder on West 125th Street than locations on Lenox Avenue not reached by crowds and violence until 10.30 PM or later. However, the affidavit more directly records the legal proceeding, whereas the New York Times misattributed Schmoockler's testimony to Feinstein, got the manager's name wrong, so it likely more reliable evidence, putting crowds on this area of Lenox Avenue around 9.30 PM. What the manager should 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.

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. The New York Times provided the time of the attack, and the same details, but misattributed the testimony to Feinstein. It is not clear who the witnesses were; the store manager had left hours earlier, and the police were effectively on trial. Both reports noted that police could not control the crowds. Given that the crowd had to first break through the store's iron gate before the windows could be smashed, the attack on the store 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.

The manager put the total losses at around $1000 in the Magistrates Court affidavit; Feinstein later claimed $627.40 in damages when he sued the city in the case tried in the Municipal Court, according to the Home News and New York American. He was not among the twenty business-owners identified as the first to bring suits identified by the New York Sun. Nonetheless, he became the test case; as a result much of the newspaper stories on the trial focused on the legal basis for damages, with no details of what happened to Feinstein’s store in stories in the Home News, New York American, New York Herald Tribune, and World-Telegraph. The jury awarded him $450. Two months later, the Judge upheld that award, a decision reported in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune. The award 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 appears in the Tax Department photograph taken in 1939-1941.

Louis Cobb appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court on March 20. However, the affidavit making the complaint against him is 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'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 values of the three bottles of liquor Officer Carter allegedly found on him, $7, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit. There is no evidence of the outcome of the case.

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