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

Windows broken in Black-owned business (5)

At least five Black-owned businesses had windows broken during the disorder, 7% (5 of 69) of the businesses reported damaged. That proportion is far below the share of Harlem's businesses that had black owners, ? (? of ?) according to the MCCH business survey taken after the disorder. The limited scale of that damage, and its nature, supports the claim that violence during the disorder was not indiscriminate but aimed at white-owned businesses made in stories in a variety of newspapers and the MCCH report. The Manhattan Renting Agency storefront was the office of Everard M. Donald, a twenty-seven-year-old Black real estate broker and owner of a chain of barbers, but also where Hary Pomrinse, a sixty-six-year-old Jewish real estate broker did business. While the front windows of the Williams Drug Store facing 7th Avenue were broken, after the owner wrote “Colored Store, Nix Jack” on the side windows on West 127th Street, they were not damaged. Two other businesses that a La Prensa reporter recorded as having damaged windows, a billiard parlor and the Castle Inn saloon on Lenox Avenue south of 125th Street, also put up signs, according to another story in La Prensa. The reporter did not appear to understand the intent of the signs, [seeing them as a move toward racial segregation], and did not relate them to the damage suffered. However, as the reporter[s?] could see the signs as well as the broken windows, those stores too had been able to prevent extensive damage by identifying themselves as having Black owners. Other businesses followed the strategy of putting up signs, and at least three suffered no damage. The success of that strategy suggests that broken windows in Black-owned businesses resulted from ignorance of who owned them. The other damaged store would not have needed such a sign to identify its owners. The grocery store was a Peace Market operated by followers of Father Divine. (controversial figure, so attack not likely evidence of indiscriminate violence).

Black-owned businesses being spared from attack are mentioned in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York World-Telegram and Afro-American. [include details here that not in looting of Black owned business page]. The one contrary report was published in the New York Herald Tribune: 40 windows broken in the exclusively Negro section north of 130th St (of 8th Avenue). However, that story misrepresents those blocks, which remained overwhelmingly populated by white-owned businesses. The character of the street did change, but from entirely white-owned businesses from ? to ? Streets, to a small proportion of Black-owned businesses on blocks from ? to ? street. [The one arrest in this area for allegedly breaking windows, of Henry Stewart, involved a white-owned business] If there were another thirty-nine windows broken in this area they too were likely in white-owned businesses.

Also in Police Report on riot for Mayor/MCCH. The MCCH initially concluded that the violence against businesses was indiscriminate: "Subcommittee which Investigated the Disturbances of March 19th" reported on May 29, 1935, "Nor is it true that stores owned by Negroes were spared. There is no evidence of any program or leadership of the rioters." The final MCCH Report was less definitive, in line with the evidence of Black-owned stores being spared from attack reported in the press, but argued that the discrimination of those on the streets faded over time. "While, of course, many motives were responsible for the actions of these crowds, it seems that as they grew more numerous and more active, the personality or racial Identity of the owners of the stores faded out and the property itself became the object of their fury. Stores owned by Negroes were not always spared if they happened to be in the path of those roving crowds, bent upon the destruction and the confiscation of property." The reported events of the disorder contradict that claim. No Black-owned businesses are among those identified as looted.

 

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