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

William Gindin's shoe store looted

Around 9:45 PM William Gindin locked up his business, William's Shoe Store, at 333 Lenox Avenue, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit, and presumably went home. Unusually for a white business owner, he lived in an apartment at 346 Lenox Avenue a block to the north. Crowds gathered on Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street and began to smash store windows around 10:30 PM, when a group of men looted Towbin's Haberdashery at Lenox Avenue and West 125th Street. Gindin's store was targeted sometime soon after as one display window was already smashed and a large quantity of merchandise stolen by 11:20 PM, according to Patrolman Nador Herrman. At that time he allegedly saw Julian Rogers, a thirty-seven-year-old Black auto washer, kick in the other display window, take three odd women's shoes worth $1 each, and put them under his jacket. Herrman arrested Rogers about 100 feet from the store and recovered the shoes, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit.

Just over an hour later, at 12.30 AM, a crowd gathered in front of the shoe store and threw stones and other objects at the windows, breaking more of the glass, after which a police officer arrested John Kennedy Jones for allegedly both inciting the group and throwing stones. The multiple attacks combined to do significant damage to the shoe store. Both display windows were smashed and emptied of their contents in a photograph of the store published in the New York World Telegram. Merchandise scattered on the street is also visible. Gindin told a Probation Department investigator that shoes valued at $1,200 were stolen during the disorder.



Gindin was one of the twenty white business owners that the New York Sun, New York World-Telegram, and New York Amsterdam News identified as filing claims against the city for failing to protect their stores. He claimed $1,273.89 in damages, well above the median reported claim of $733. By the time the city comptroller heard testimony from those bringing suit, 106 owners had sought damages. Gindin was not among those whose testimony appeared in newspaper stories about that proceeding. Nor was he one of those whose cases went to trial. The city lost those cases, so Gindin likely was awarded some amount of damages. Whatever the award, Gindin was able to remain in business. His store appeared in the MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935, and Gindin still owned and operated the store when he registered for the draft in 1942.

Born in Russia in 1894, Gindin was resident in New York City at least by 1917 when he registered for the draft. He owned the shoe store by 1930, when he was one of a small number of white business owners who resided in Harlem. According to the federal census schedule, he lived a block north of his store, at 363 Lenox Avenue. Unusually, all six of the other apartments in that building had white residents, including three households headed by men who owned stores in Harlem later looted during the disorder who joined Gindin in suing the city, Irving Stekin, Jacob Saloway, and Michael D'Agostino. In 1935, Gindin lived at 346 Lenox Avenue, where he would have been a neighbor of Herman Young, who lived above a hardware he owned at that address that was also looted during the disorder. While Young and his wife went to his store when they heard glass smashing and witnessed the looting, Gindin apparently did not go to his store during the disorder. The Magistrates Court affidavit specified that no one was in the store when Rogers stole the shoes. By 1942, while still in business in Harlem, Gindin had moved to the Upper West Side, according to his draft registration.

Rogers was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with burglary. Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury. After they indicted him, Rogers agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny. Judge Allen gave Rogers a suspended sentence.

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