Police Brutality

STATEMENT AND PROOFS WRITTEN AND COMPILED BY FRANK MOSS AND ISSUED BY THE CITIZENS’ PROTECTIVE LEAGUE

It might seem strange to some to include a document from a hundred years ago in a contemporary anthology on police brutality. Yet the words from these Black citizens brutalized by White mobs and police in New York City in August 1900 have a powerful and chilling resonance today. In some ways, the testimony may at first appear overwhelming, but it is precisely this repetition of incidents and observations that gives these voices a stunning authority.

What follows here are selections from some of the affidavits collected from law-abiding and innocent men and women, both Black and White. These eyewitness accounts of police brutality, official indifference, and the holding of what is essentially a people’s tribunal eerily echo the responses to police brutality today. Many of those whose words are included here were illiterate; their affidavits are signed with an X. It is reasonable to assume that many were also former slaves who had moved North to search for opportunity and to escape the terrors of both slavery and the vigilante tactics of the post-Reconstruction South.

One must appreciate the landscape of both the country and New York City at the time of this violence. According to the U.S. census, there were almost nine million African Americans living in the United States as the nineteenth century became the twentieth, or 11.6 percent of the entire population. Nearly 90 percent of Blacks still lived in the South, and slightly more than one-fourth in urban areas of the South and the North. In 1900, Booker T. Washington published Up from Slavery, while in London, W. E. B. Du Bois was elected vice president of the first Pan-African Congress. There were 115 recorded lynchings in the United States that year, yet the first bill to make lynching a federal crime, introduced by Representative George H. White of North Carolina, the last African American elected during Reconstruction, never got out of congressional committee.

The writing had been on the wall for the three preceding decades. In fact, nothing underscored the loss of rights more than the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896, in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the practice of “separate but equal” was a “reasonable” solution to prevent the mingling of the races. But the Supreme Court decision was merely the latest in a series of laws that had effectively created a climate where lynchings were not only condoned but encouraged in the last thirty-five years of the nineteenth century. Although key events are too numerous to list here, one might briefly mention the creation of the Ku Klux Klan in 1865, the dissolution by Congress of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1872, which had been established to assure fair treatment of African Americans after the Civil War, and the brokered presidential election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, which resulted in renewed southern control of state governments without federal interference, as well as the end of Reconstruction. By 1898, it was hardly surprising that the Supreme Court would rule in Williams v. Mississippi that the poll tax did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

That the riots described in this chapter occurred in New York reflects the fact that conditions were different in the North but hardly better. What we know of the cause of the riot is the following: on August 12, 1900, Arthur Harris and his wife were at Forty-first Street and Eighth Avenue, when Harris left his wife to buy a cigar. While she was standing alone and waiting for her husband to return, a plainclothes police officer named Robert J. Thorpe attempted to arrest Mrs. Harris for “solicitation.” Harris saw a man in civilian clothing taking his wife away and attempted to rescue her. Thorpe struck Harris with a club, and Harris responded by stabbing Thorpe with a penknife and fled the scene. Thorpe died of his wounds, and the riots, led by police officers and mobs of White citizens, began on August 15, the day of Thorpe’s funeral.

One month later, on September 12, some 3,500 people convened at Carnegie Hall to protest police brutality and the failure of the city government to act on behalf of all of its citizens. Out of this meeting came the formal collection of eighty pages of sworn affidavits, some of which are excerpted here. They stand as a record of the events that occurred in New York City on August 15 and 16, 1900.

I reside at No. 341 West 36th Street. I am a laborer, and am at present employed as a longshoreman at Pier 16, North River. On the evening of August 15, 1900, I went to bed as usual at 9:30 o’clock. About two o’clock in the morning I was awakened by somebody beating me on the back with a club. When I awoke, I found six policemen in the room; they had broken in the door. They asked me for the revolver with which they said I had been shooting out of the window. I told them I did not have a revolver. One of the officers said that he had seen me shoot out of the window. Three officers then began to club me, while the other three were searching the house. They found an old toy revolver, which was broken and not loaded, and could not shoot if it had been loaded, and said that that was the pistol I had used. I denied that, which was the truth. They dragged me out of the house, and proceeded to take me to the station house. I was only in my undershirt, being asleep at the time they broke into the house, and begged them to allow me to put on my trousers and my shoes. They only sneered at this, and one of the officers said, “You’ll be d—d lucky if you get there alive.” Here another of the officers pulled out a revolver and said, “Let’s shoot the d—d nigger,” to which a third officer replied, “We can take the black son of a b— to the station house as he is.” When I got to the station house, I was bleeding from my head and other parts of my body, as a result of these clubbings. There were only two other persons in our apartments that evening—William Seymour, from whom I rent my apartments, and Walter Gregory. When they saw the officers running into the house, acting as they did, they ran out of the house, leaving me asleep. They did not shoot out of the window, and we never kept any weapons in the house. Mrs. Lucy Jones, who lives next door to us, saw the officers beat me. She was in the house during all this time, and saw no firing from our windows. Her affidavit is hereto annexed. When I arrived at the station house, after the entry had been made on the blotter, I was placed in a cell. Before this I was struck by one of the officers in the station house in front of the sergeant’s desk, and in his presence, without any interference on his part. After I was placed in the cell somebody (I believe the police surgeon) bandaged my head. The next morning the police loaned me a pair of old trousers, so that I could be taken to the Police Court. Officer Ohm, one of the officers who struck me and abused me, as aforesaid, made the charge against me; he charged me with firing a pistol through the window. I was brought before the magistrate, and he asked me if this was so. I told him it was not, and endeavored to explain matters to him, but he would not listen to me and sent me to the Penitentiary for six months. There were a great many similar cases before him that day, and he was very impatient. I did not have a lawyer to represent me, and I was given no opportunity to deny the false charges of the officer. While I was being taken to the station house, one of the officers said to another officer who was clubbing me, “Club as hard as you can; this is a d—d hard head.” Another said, “I will teach you d—d niggers to club white people. We will kill half of you.” I have the sheet which was on the bed on the night in question. It is full of blood stains. I had six stitches put into my head by a surgeon at the building in which the Magistrates’ Court is located on 54th Street. This was before I was taken to Blackwell’s Island. After I had been there ten days, I was released, I do not know the reason why. Sentenced August 16, released August 25, about eight A.M. The only one of the officers I could recognize is Officer Ohm, who made the formal complaint in the Magistrates’ Court. I was almost beaten into insensibility that night, and all of the officers were in uniform. Last summer I was employed for the season as a butler by General O. O. Howard, at his summer home in Burlington, Vermont, and I have a recommendation from him. I am not a drinking man, and never was arrested before in my life.

I reside at No. 320 West 37th Street. I am employed in Flannery’s drug store, at No. 103 West 42nd Street, and have been so employed for the last ten months. On August 15, 1900, at about ten o’clock P.M., while going to my home, walking on the west side of Eighth Avenue between 38th and 39th Streets, I saw a crowd of people, composed mostly of police officers and children. Some one in the crowd said, “There is a nigger!” pointing at me. One of the policemen ran towards me, and seeing that I was in physical danger I ran away from the place, going north to 39th Street on Eighth Avenue. Somebody threw a brick at me, which struck me in the back, and then one of the policemen came up to me and struck me in the left eye with his club. My eye and my forehead are still lacerated and discolored. I then ran into the saloon at the southeast corner of 39th Street and Eighth Avenue. One of the policemen ran in after me, and told me to go outside and run towards Broadway; that the mob had dispersed. I started toward the door, and as I reached it I saw that they were still waiting outside. I said to the officer as I started back into the saloon, “No, sir, I can’t go out there; they’ll kill me.” The policeman then lifted me from the ground and threw me through the swinging door into the street. The glass in the door was broken, and I fell on my hands and knees. The policemen and the mob then began beating me, the policemen beating me with their clubs. They did not disperse the crowd or protect me from it. I then started to run towards Broadway; another policeman ran after me and struck me in the back with his club. I staggered, made one or two jumps, and fell in front of No. 236 West 39th Street. The lady of the house, a white woman, came out, and I was taken into the house by someone, I don’t know whom. Two or three days after she told me that the officers soon left the house, but that the mob tried to break in, and that she told them that if they would not leave she would kill them. The lady rang for a messenger boy and sent word to my employer to call. He came and brought some bandages, etc., and bandaged my head. He then called two police officers and asked them to take me to the station house. They refused. He insisted, and they finally yielded and took me to the station house. I was treated there by a police surgeon. My employer remained with me until three o’clock the next morning. I did not work for three days after this. I saw one man treated very harshly at the station house, being clubbed by police officers, and I believe he would have been treated still worse if it had not been for the presence of reporters. I did nothing whatever to justify this brutal treatment on the part of the police officers. I believe that had it not been for the presence of my employer I would have been beaten still more. There were over twenty-five policemen in the crowd. I was unconscious part of the time. I have never been arrested in my life.

I reside at No. 309 West 37th Street. On August 15, 1900, I was working for a man named Mr. O’Connor, who keeps a saloon at Coney Island. I quit work at one o’clock A.M. the next day (August 16), and started for home with a man named Wilson. We boarded an Eighth Avenue car at Warren Street and Broadway, which was going north; just before we reached the street whereon I reside, the conductor of the car upon which we were riding told us that there had been a riot, that it was because of the death of the police officer, and that they were attacking every colored man that they caught. I then said that we had better get off; the conductor then said that it was “pretty quiet” when he came down. We got off the car at Eighth Avenue and 37th Street, and at 3:30 A.M. had almost reached the front door of my home when several police officers from among a group of about a dozen called to me asking me where I was going. I told them, “Home here.” I was then in front of my door, and immediately after making my reply an officer hit me with his club, knocking me down. I struggled to my feet and endeavored to run towards 8th Avenue, but was pursued by the officers and knocked down again at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 36th Street. It was raining very hard at the time, and they threw me into the gutter, which was full of rain water; they kept my head in the water until I strangled, when they let up, jumped on me, and pushed me back again into the gutter. After a while they called a patrol wagon, into which they threw me, and beat me all the way to the station house in 37th Street. Upon my arrival there my head had been cut open; I was covered with blood and bruises from the beating and clubbing I had received. While in the station house I told Captain Cooney that I had been clubbed by policemen. I remained in the station house for about half an hour, and while there I heard a man who was dressed in citizen’s clothes say to the officers present, “Club every d—d nigger you see; kill them; shoot them; be brave, the same as I was.” The man answered, “All right; will you stick to us?” He answered, “Yes, I’ll stand by you.” I heard this man called Thompson by some of the officers. He went among the colored men who were present and who were in almost as bad condition as I was, asking their names, where they had lived, and what they had been doing. After receiving their answers, he said to each of them, “Get ter h—l home out of here; they’d ought ter have killed yer!” When he came to me he said, “What’s your name?” I told him; then he said, “What were you doing?” I said, “I just come from work at Coney Island.” He exclaimed, “Coney Island, eh! That’s a d—d nice place to be working. Where do you live?” I told him, when he said, “Another nice place right in my district, the worst block in the whole district.” He did not tell me to get out, but I was shortly after taken to Roosevelt Hospital and from there to Bellevue Hospital, where I remained a week, when I was taken to 54th Street Court, where I had a hearing and was discharged on August 28, 1900. While I was being clubbed in the street, one of the officers said, “Search him,” whereupon they stopped the clubbing long enough to search my pockets and take fourteen dollars in bills from me, which I had in my hip pocket of my trousers. I have never had the said money returned to me. While I was in the station house, Captain Cooney was there, but not in uniform, and the aforesaid man whom they called Thompson was giving orders to the men, in the presence of Captain Cooney. At the time that I had reached my home on the said night there was no disturbance in the neighborhood, and there was but one man in sight, and he was chased away by the officers. Everything was quiet in the neighborhood, and on the way uptown on the car I saw no signs of a disturbance, and would not have known anything about there having been anything of the kind if I had not been informed by the car conductor. I can identify two of the officers who took part in the clubbing, one of whom was dressed in citizen’s clothes, and who, I think, was one of the wardmen attached to that precinct. (The witness subsequently identified Officer Herman Ohm.) Deponent further states that he has resided in the City of New York for the past fifteen years, and has never been arrested before in his life, and has always been a quiet, law-abiding citizen.

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CHARLES x BENNETT.

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Statement of Paul Leitenberger and Alfred E. Borman (white), of 105 East 22nd Street:

On August 15 we were on 28th Street, and were going home, walking up Seventh Avenue, and at 29th Street a crowd was coming down about ten P.M. We followed the crowd up 35th Street, and it went into the Dorê (a dive), and yelled, “Give us a coon and we’ll lynch him!” They then went to Corbett’s on Broadway. He has a colored man working for him. Then the police came with their clubs and dispersed the crowd, which went up Broadway. A cable car was coming downtown, and someone cried, “There’s a nigger; lynch him!” and several white men jumped on the car. A colored man was standing in the car, and with a cane or umbrella warded off the blows. The car went on with him; the gripman would not stop it, though they called on him to stop. Some of the men were thrown off of the car and nearly run over. There was a Negro on the second car behind that, and the crowd pulled him off, and the man escaped by running into the Marlborough Hotel, where he was sheltered. There were no policemen present at these times, but some policemen appeared and the mob moved up Broadway to about 41st Street, and tried to get into the Vendome Hotel. Some got in, and one cried out, “Give us the coon!” The police coming up, they moved on and went up as far as the Hotel Cadillac at 43rd Street, and went in to get the colored hall man, and an officer came up and clubbed right and left. Other officers came and the crowd scattered. We waited a half hour, and the police kept the people moving. We walked through 42nd Street to Eighth Avenue, and saw more of the rioters, and several policemen would not allow them to make any disturbance, and the rioters spread, breaking up. The whole aim of the rioters was to catch Negroes. We saw Devery the first night. We didn’t see him the second night. He was in command. We observed the first night that the police generally made no effort to disperse the crowds, but ran along with them. The only places where they attacked the crowds were at Corbett’s and the Cadillac. The disturbing element were young fellows, such as frequent “Hell’s Kitchen.” We talked with a ringleader at the northeast corner of 28th Street and Eighth Avenue, a few nights after. He said he had been a leader in the riots and would do it again—that the “niggers” must be treated the same as down South. At the Cadillac there was an officer who did splendid work in dispersing the crowd. For a while he was alone, and he clubbed the crowd indiscriminately; in a little while two other officers came and helped him, and those three men ejected the mob from the hotel, and when they were in the street other officers appeared and effectually dispersed the crowd. This showed what could be done when they wanted to. They protected the hotel in good shape, also Corbett’s, when the mob tried to get in.

PAUL LEITENBERGER.

ALFRED E. BORMAN.

I reside at No. 129 West 27th Street; on Thursday, August 16, 1900, about 6:30 P.M., I left the house and walked to the corner of Seventh Avenue and 28th Street, where I met a friend of mine, with whom I stood and chatted for about three-quarters of an hour, when I left and returned down Seventh Avenue towards 27th Street, and had got within about one hundred feet of 27th Street, when I was struck by a missile thrown by an Italian boy. I naturally turned around and asked him what he had done that for. I passed on, however, and had got about fifty feet east of Seventh Avenue, on 27th Street, when a police officer ran after me, and seizing me commenced feeling around my clothes as if in search of something. I had an ordinary pocket knife in the change pocket of my coat, and the officer finding it said, “What are you doing with this?” I answered, “Do you see me doing anything with it?” He then took me to the 30th Street station house (19th Precinct), and while going up the steps of the station house I stumbled, and the officer then hit me on the back of the neck with his club. I was arraigned before the sergeant, who took my pedigree, and at the close of that proceeding the officer who had me in charge, and whose name is Kennedy, said to the sergeant, “What will we do with this feller?” The sergeant replied, “Kill the black son of a b—!” The said officer then brought me back, and when we reached a flight of stairs leading down to the cells he shoved me down the whole flight; when I reached the bottom some other officers who were down there grabbed me and punched and beat me with their fists. I was arraigned the next day and charged with carrying a knife, and I was committed for ninety days. I served part of the time, when I was released on bail. I was not intoxicated, and had never been arrested before in my life. I never have and do not stand around the corners of the neighborhood; and further, I am employed by the Standard Oil Company as a porter.

Robert Myrick, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he resides at 414 West 39th Street, and is employed by Bernard Brennan, saloon keeper at 49th Street and Broadway; that on Thursday evening, August 16, at about eight P.M., he left his work at the said saloon and walked to Eighth Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets; that he entered a restaurant on that block, and after eating a meal he asked the proprietor whether there was any trouble downtown tonight. He replied, “No, it is kind of quiet tonight, but I guess you had better take a car and ride down, it will be safer.” He replied, “I guess that will be the best way,” and then walked out onto the avenue and boarded a car bound downtown, and had gone as far as 42nd Street when a mob of about one hundred boys, none of whom apparently were over nineteen years of age, began to throw stones at the car and yell, “There’s a nigger in the car; let’s kill him!” Some woman on the car said, “Come over here, mister; don’t stand there and get killed.” I went along the footboard from the rear of the car, where I had been, and got under the seat, where the mob could not see me; but the mob continued following the car and stoned it until I reached 39th Street, where I wanted to get off, but was advised there by three men (who were the only passengers that had remained on the car) not to get off. I continued on until the car reached 38th Street, when the car stopped and the mob caught up with it. I then got off the east side of the car, and ran over to the southeast corner of Eighth Avenue, to where I saw five men standing, and going up to one I said, “Officer, will you please see me home?” He said, “Where do you live?” I told him. He then said, “What are you doing on the street at this time of night?” I answered, “Going home from work.” He then asked me where I worked. I told him. He then said, “Have you got a gun or a razor?” I said, “I have neither.” He then proceeded to search me, when I remembered having a razor in a case in my outside coat pocket, and I told the officer and showed him where it was. He then took the razor out of my pocket, and, striking me across the back of the neck with his club, said, “You black son of a b—!” and then struck me several times on the head. I said to him, “I come over to you for protection, and this is what I get.” He then said, “Shut up!” I was then taken to the 37th Street station house, and while there I was kicked by the officers in the section room, and by the doorman, and when I protested I was told to shut up. I was locked in cell No. 13, and in the morning I was brought to the 54th Street police court, where the judge turned me loose. While in my cell I got into conversation with a colored man who is a porter for the N.Y.C.&H.R.R., and he said that he was dragged from a streetcar and clubbed by police officers. Deponent further states that he had the aforementioned razor in his pocket by reason of the fact that it needed repairing, and he had taken it to a barber to see if he could fix it, and finding that he could not fix it he was taking it to his home to lay it away in its place. Deponent says further that the time of the clubbing was about 8:30 P.M.

I reside at No. 243 West 32nd Street, and work for the Anchor Steamship Company, foot of West 24th Street, as a longshoreman. On Tuesday morning, August 14, 1900, I went to work for the said company, worked all that day, all that night, and until Wednesday night at 10:30 P.M.—39 1/2 consecutive hours. At the said hour I left the pier at the foot of West 24th Street, and walked east on 24th Street, and when I reached the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 24th Street a white gentleman advised me not to go up Eighth Avenue, as there was a riot up there and they were fighting “like he did not know what.” I continued east on 24th Street until I reached the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 24th Street, when I met another white man, who advised me not to go up Seventh Avenue, as there was a riot in progress, and that they were fighting at that time in the neighborhood of 41st Street and 37th Street, but, thinking that I could get home in 32nd Street before the riot could get down to that street, I started uptown on the west side of Seventh Avenue, and had reached the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 28th Street, when I saw three officers coming down Seventh Avenue. In the meantime three other colored men, whom I did not know, had caught up with me, and were walking behind me. I had gone about one hundred feet north of the aforesaid corner when I saw the three officers break into a run in our direction. I was grabbed by one of them, while the other two chased the three men who had come behind us and overtook them and clubbed them; the officer who had me immediately, without saying a word, struck me on the body with his club; then between the blows he said, “Get out of here, you black son of a b—!” One of the blows he aimed at my head, but I threw up my arm and received the blow on it. It was such a severe blow that I was lame in it for quite some days. I escaped from him as soon as I could, and ran to 28th Street, and down 28th Street to No. 211. I ran into the hallway and out into the back yard, where I stayed all night in fear of my life. The officer followed me, and when I ran into the hallway he clubbed the colored people who were on the front stoop, and drove them into the house. During the heavy rainstorm Wednesday night and early Thursday morning I took refuge in a small place that led into the cellar of the said house. Thursday morning about six o’clock I ventured out and went towards the dock at the foot of West 24th Street, where I intended to go to work again, and had reached Eighth Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets, when I saw two police officers on the opposite side of the street, one of whom started to run towards me, but his companion stopped him, and drew him back. Deponent states further that if he had not been interfered with and clubbed by the police officer he could have reached his home in safety, and that he saw no signs of a disturbance, such as a large crowd of people, as far as he could see up the avenue; that deponent was watching for such signs by reason of his having been warned twice. Deponent also declares that he can identify the officer who clubbed him; that he knows him by sight, and that, about a month before the said clubbing, the same officer had come to him at his home, where he lived at that time, in West 28th Street, and had told him that the roundsman had got him, and that he had given him as an excuse that he was at the house where deponent then lived and was quelling a disturbance there, and asked deponent to verify that statement if the roundsman asked him. Deponent promised so to do, notwithstanding the fact that nothing of the kind had occurred there, and promised to do so simply to get the officer out of trouble. That the officer’s first name is “Joe,” and that he is attached to the 20th Precinct. Deponent further declares that he was perfectly sober, and that the assault by the officer was unwarranted and an outrage upon a peaceable citizen.

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ADOLPHUS x COOKS.

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I reside at 203 West 33rd Street, and am engaged in the active practice of my profession at that address. On Thursday morning, August 16, 1900, about ten A.M., I heard a noise in the street, and going to the window I saw a colored man trying to get into one of the flats on the opposite side of the street. He failed, and went east to the corner saloon, kept by a man Gallagher, and entered. After he went in, I noticed three policemen in the saloon. Almost immediately a mob came down Seventh Avenue. At the saloon they commenced to shout, “Bring him out, we’ll lynch him!” Several of the rioters went into the saloon, and in a few minutes they came out again and formed in a semicircle, evidently waiting for something. The police officers appeared with the colored man, clubbing him unmercifully. They then shoved him into the mob. He managed to get through them and ran down the street, and I heard him shortly shouting for mercy, saying, “For God’s sake don’t kill me, I have a wife and children.” Deponent has been informed that two of the officers ran down the street after him and knocked him senseless.

I reside at the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 34th Street. On Wednesday evening, August 15, 1900, I went to the home of a sick brother on Lexington Avenue, and started then to go to my lodge on 29th Street near Seventh Avenue, and had reached Eighth Avenue and 41st Street, opposite Driggs’ saloon, when two officers jumped on the car. One hit me on the head with his club, and the other struck me in the eye with his club. A white man interfered, and the police desisted. I stayed on the car, and when we had gone a little further the mob boarded it and attacked me. The car had quite a number of women in it, who began to scream, and some of them told me to get under the seat, which I did, and it proceeded down the avenue. I reached the neighborhood of Hudson Street House of Relief, where the white gentleman who interfered in the first instance took me, and where I had my head bandaged. I could not get home that evening, and I remained in a cellar in 30th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. The next morning I started to get home, and had reached the corner of 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue, when I was stopped by an officer who wanted to know where I was going, and what weapon I had on me. I told him I had nothing on me. He said, “You look as if you had been in the scrap. They ought to have killed you; get out of here.” As he said this he struck me across the back with his club, and I yet am unable to lay flat on my back without suffering extreme pain. Deponent further states that he was perfectly sober and was not creating any disturbance, and that the assault by the police officers was entirely unjustified and an outrage.

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STEPHEN x SMALL.

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I am a musician. I am employed at “The Fair,” kept by Mr. Samuels, on 14th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues. My wife is employed there also. On August 15 I finished my work about 11:30 P.M. I took the crosstown 14th Street car and changed to the Seventh Avenue horse cars. I had not heard anything of the riot. The car stopped between 36th and 37th Streets, and my wife and I were dragged from the car by a crowd of men and lads armed with sticks and stones. I ran into a stable at 37th Street and Seventh Avenue, and they beat me in there and left me for dead. A stone or something hit me in the stomach, and I fell into a water trough. My wife and I were separated, and she did not find me. I crawled out of the stable into a lumber yard and lay there in my blood until three A.M. I have been in the doctor’s care ever since, and am out today for the first time. My doctor is Dr. Yarnell, of Park Avenue near 84th Street. When I was pulled out of the car, I noticed a colored man lying unconscious on the ground. There were at least a dozen policemen standing around. They did nothing, and made no effort to protect me.

Mrs. Annie Hamer, being duly sworn, deposes and says that she resides at 494 Seventh Avenue; that she is employed as a musician at “The Fair,” in East 14th Street; that on Wednesday, August 15, 1900, about midnight thereof, she in company with her husband arrived at Seventh Avenue between 36th and 37th Streets on a Seventh Avenue car; that when she alighted from the car she found herself surrounded by a mob, and almost instantly was struck in the mouth with a brick, thrown by someone whom she does not know. She became separated from her husband, and did not know what became of him until three A.M. the next morning, when he came home all covered with blood. Deponent states further that she has read the affidavit of her husband, hereto attached, and knows of her own knowledge that the facts therein stated are true. Deponent further states that she has been informed by her mother that the “captain” stationed officers at the door of her residence, and told them to “not let anyone in or out, and if anyone attempted it to shoot them.”

Walter W. Coulter (white), 481 Seventh Avenue, being duly sworn, deposes and says that on Wednesday evening, August 15, 1900, there was quite a disturbance around his place of business, and at about 11:30 P.M. he saw a number of officers and men in citizen’s clothes go into the houses 481 and 483, and he, thinking they were part of the crowd of roughs, stepped up to a police officer, who was quite tall and stout and of reddish complexion, and said to him, “Why do you allow those rowdies to go up into that house? There is no one except a lot of respectable women and children in there, and possibly one man.” The police officer replied as follows: “You go on and mind your own respectability, and you will have enough to do; they just shied a brick at us.” Deponent further states that no brick had been thrown; that, in fact, they could not get a brick, as he was looking for one a short while before that to do some repairing with, and could not find one; that the only apparent reason for their going into the house was the fact that a large, tall man, whom he can identify if he sees him again, came along Seventh Avenue, and seeing this colored man in the window called out, “There’s a big nigger; get him!” and immediately there was a rush made for the house. Deponent states further that the police knew there were none but respectable people in that house, as deponent had gone to a great deal of trouble to get rid of a lot of dissolute people who were in the house about a year ago, and in his endeavors to get rid of them had called upon the police to aid him, so that they were perfectly cognizant of the facts in the case.

Mrs. Elizabeth Mitchell, being duly sworn, deposes and says that she resides at 481 Seventh Avenue; that on Wednesday evening, August 15, 1900, about 11:30 P.M., two police officers in citizen’s clothes and one in citizen’s dress broke in the door of her apartments claiming to be looking for “the man that threw the bottle.” She answered and said that “no bottle was thrown,” and that it was a shame for them to break in the door of respectable people; that her sister, Mrs. Kate Jackson, became frightened at the uproar, and thinking that the life of her children and herself was in danger, jumped out of the window with her three-year-old child in her arms, thereby endangering the life of herself and child, and in consequence is now confined to her bed with shock, fright, and bruises. That at six A.M. the next morning she saw a colored man and woman assaulted on the corner of 36th Street and Seventh Avenue. Also at 52nd Street and Seventh Avenue, between eleven and twelve A.M., she saw a colored man assaulted by a white man, and when the officer attempted to interfere and arrest the white man the motormen around the stables refused to allow him to arrest him. She states further that one of the officers’ first name was “Jim,” as she heard him so addressed by the man in citizen’s clothes.

I reside at 339 West 36th Street. On Thursday, August 16, 1900, about two A.M., while lying on a lounge in the front room of my house, I was aroused by hearing a shot fired, followed by several others. I went to the window, when someone in the street shouted with a curse, “Get your head in there or I’ll shoot it off.” I withdrew my head, and then realized that some of the shots had entered my windows. One imbedded itself in the ceiling, and another passed through a glass door leading into an inner room, and occupied by a lodger named Floyd Wallace. I awoke the said Wallace, and told him that someone was firing into the windows. Shortly after I heard sounds as of a number of people coming down the stairs from the roof, past my door, and stopping on the floor below me. In a very short while they returned, and without asking to be let in broke open my door, and then I saw that they were police officers in full uniform, six in number. They asked me if I knew who fired the shots. I said I did not know. They then told me I lied. Then they asked me if there were any guns in the house, and I answered no; whereupon I was again told that I lied. I then said, “All right, go ahead and search for them,” which they proceeded to do. They went from room to room, and broke into a closet in the front room, which contained my husband’s and my own clothes; they then opened a small satchel in which was my pocketbook. In the said pocketbook I had six dollars in bills and one dollar and seventy-five cents in silver. While part of the men were making the search, the others seized the aforesaid Wallace and took him out into the hallway, where deponent has been told they clubbed the said Wallace on the wrist and face. When he came in, after the officers left, deponent saw that his face and cheek were bruised and his wrist swollen. Deponent declares it to be her belief that the bullets which were shot into her room (one of which she has) could not have been fired from the street, but must have come from the houses opposite. Further, that when the officers left she remembered having left her pocketbook in the aforesaid satchel, and immediately ran into the front room to see if it was safe; she found that the six dollars in bills was gone, and declares it to be her belief that the same was taken by the three officers who were in the room making the search. Deponent further states that when her husband returned on the following Saturday she told him of the visit of the police officers. He then searched in the closet for some money, amounting to about sixty dollars, which he stated to have left there without my knowledge, and could not find it. Deponent declares it to be her belief that this money was also taken by the police officers aforementioned. Deponent further declares that there were no shots fired from her apartments, and that no one therein had a firearm of any sort.

I reside at No. 351 West 37th Street, in the rear house. On August 15, 1900, I went to the restaurant which is in the front building for supper. This was about 10:30 P.M. After I had been there a few minutes some one told me that the mob was coming. I had seen them beat colored people during the morning without any cause, so I walked out of the restaurant into my apartments, which are in the rear, only a few steps away; I live in the basement floor. I did this so as to avoid any trouble. As I reached the front door and walked in, I closed it and proceeded to go into my apartments. Four officers immediately came, and one of them said, “Stop!” and kicked open the door. Then one of them grabbed me and said, “Here is a d—d nigger; kill him!” The four officers then beat me with their clubs until I became unconscious. They then carried me to the station house. I was unconscious during all this time, but my friends tell me that the police were beating me all the way to the station house. It is located one block west from where I live. At the station house I recovered my consciousness. I was arraigned before the sergeant, and the officer who struck me first made the complaint against me. At the sergeant’s desk I felt very weak, bleeding from my head and eye, and I held on to the railing for support. One of the officers struck me in the ribs with a night stick, and said, “God d—n you, stand up there!” I fell forward on the sergeant’s desk, and I said, “For God’s sake, take a gun and blow out my brains! If you have got to take a life, take mine, and don’t murder me this way!” The sergeant then said very gruffly to the officer, “Take him away!” While all this was going on, Chief of Police Devery was in the station house standing about ten feet away, talking to somebody whom I did not know. He saw all this, but did not interfere, conversing with the man all the time, as if nothing unusual was going on. I have known Chief Devery for three or four years, and have spoken with him in a friendly way many times. When I was brought into the muster room, in the rear of the station house, I saw several colored people being treated for their wounds. I was bleeding from my head and eye, and could not see well, and I sat down in the wrong chair. Two policemen then came over to me, pulled me out of the chair, and were raising their clubs to strike me when someone said, “Don’t hit this man any more,” and they obeyed. My wounds were then dressed, and I was taken to a cell. About twelve o’clock, when the officer who was making the prison rounds came to my cell, I asked him for permission to see the sergeant. He asked why, and I told him that my house was unlocked, and that I wished he would send an officer to lock it. He said he would speak to the sergeant about it. In a few minutes he returned and said, “The sergeant said, ‘D—n him,’ and that ‘he had no business with the house’” and he did not send anyone to lock it and protect my property. While I was in the station house I saw a colored man, John Haines, struck by several officers with their clubs. He was naked, only wearing a little undershirt. The officers were striking all the colored men in the station house, and without any interference. In court, the next morning, I was arraigned before Judge Cornell. The officer swore that I was causing a riot in the street. I denied this. I did not have any witnesses in court, because I did not have any opportunity to produce them. The Judge did not ask me whether I wanted an examination or not, and expressed his doubts as to my guilt, and said the case was “very curious.” But the officers were persistent in their false statements, aforesaid, and the magistrate put me under $100 bonds to keep the peace. Not being able to furnish this, I was sent to the Penitentiary, where I was for thirty days. I was treated at the Penitentiary by Dr. Thomas Higgins, who told me that my head would never be right as long as I lived. I have been sick ever since. Dr. Higgins told me that he would testify for me in any proceeding which I might institute. I am employed by the Metropolitan Street Railway Company as a rockman, but am unable to work at present. I have lived in New York City for over forty-three years, and have never been arrested before in my life. I did not participate in the riots, was not on the street, and did nothing whatever to justify this conduct on the part of the police. I can recognize the officer who made the charge against me; he was the first to strike me.

I reside at 341 West 36th Street, on the fourth floor front, west side. John Hains resides on the same floor on the east side. I have read his affidavit, which is hereto annexed, and so far as it relates to the occurrences at said address on the evening of August 15 it is true. I had only returned to the city at six o’clock that evening, having been in the country for two months. I had been in the house, looking out of the window occasionally. I saw shooting in the street, but this was all done by white people. There were no colored people on the street. This shooting was done mostly by white people living at 342 West 36th Street, which is a tenement, and is occupied by a very low class of rowdies, who have constantly abused and insulted the colored residents of the block. The police officers constantly go in and out of this house. On the night in question I saw a great many police officers enter this house and talk with its occupants. They were shouting and using abusive language, and saying, “Kill every d—d one of the niggers!” “Set the house afire!” etc., etc. About two o’clock in the morning I heard somebody at the door of Mr. Seymour’s flat next door, saying, “G— d— you; open this door, or I’ll kill every d—d nigger in the house.” Mr. Hains, who was the only one in the house just then, was asleep, and he did not open the door. They broke the door open, and I saw them club Hains and accuse him of firing a pistol out of the window. He denied this. Then three of the officers beat him, while the other three were searching the house. They did not find any pistol there, so they came into my apartments, and one of them said to me, “You G— d— black son of a b—, you know a lot about this d—d shooting, and if you don’t tell me I’ll blow the brains out of you.” I told them that they could look through my flat, which they did, but did not find anything. Then they went back to the Seymour flat, and I heard one of the officers say, “I’ve got the revolver; let’s kill the G— d— son of a b—,” and began to club him in the head and other parts of his body unmercifully. He begged them to allow him to put on his clothes, but the one who had the revolver said, “Shoot the d—d nigger,” and he was led to the station house only in his undershirt. Another officer said, “You will be glad if you get there alive.” At one time during this fracas I attempted to look into the Seymour flat to see what was going on, but one of the officers said to me, “You G— d— black b—, get back where you belong, or I’ll club the brains out of you.” After they left I went into the room, and I found the pillows and sheet on the bed full of blood stains. The people in 342 inspired the policemen, telling them to “Burn the house!” “Lynch the d—d niggers!” etc., etc. I am a widow. My daughter, who is about twenty-one years of age, saw this clubbing, and heard the police use this vile and abusive language. After they had arrested Hains I looked out of my window to see how he was being led by the officers. One of the rowdies in 342 said, “Look at the d—d nigger wench looking out of the window. Shoot her! Shoot her!”

I reside at 117 West 134th Street. On Wednesday, August 15, 1900, I resided at 433 West 36th Street. On the said 15 of August I was ill in bed, and while I lay in bed I heard at different intervals during the night, and until about three or half past three the next morning, the screams and shouts as of persons in agony, and cries of “Why are you hitting me? I haven’t done anything!” Deponent states that these cries and screams came from the 37th Street station house, the rear of which abuts on the rear of the house in which deponent then resided. Deponent states further that her husband was unable to reach his home for four nights on account of the disorder in that neighborhood. Further, that her husband works at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue.

I reside at 444 Seventh Avenue, New York City. On Sunday morning, August 12, 1900, about six A.M., two officers in full uniform came upstairs and, pushing the door of my room open, said, “Did not a man come up here just now?” I answered, “Yes.” The officer then said, “Where is he? Bring him out.” I then started to call the man, but before I got to the room the officer had preceded me, and he called the man out (his name is Joe Netherland) and took hold of him, and rubbing his hand over his head said, “Got a scar?” Netherland said, “No. Who are you looking for—the man that cut the officer?” The officer said, “Yes. We’re going to make it hot for you niggers!” After making a further examination they found two more men, and after making a close examination of them they found that they were not the men they wanted. After threatening to do up all the “niggers” for killing Officer Thorpe they left.

I reside at 433 West 36th Street (in the rear of the 37th Street station house). On the night of Wednesday, August 15, 1900, also Thursday, the 16, I heard people screaming and groaning, and shouts of people pleading not to be clubbed any more. I saw one man lying on the station house floor, apparently almost helpless. One man who was pleading seemed to be between the main building and the out building where the cells are located. An officer who was on one of the upper floors leaned out of the window and threw a bottle down at the said man, saying, “Kill the black son of a b—!” Deponent further declared that it was impossible to sleep during both of the aforesaid nights on account of the heartrending shrieks and groans coming from the station house; and further, that she saw a number of colored men lying up in a corner of the station house.

I reside at 433 West 36th Street, New York City, Manhattan Borough. My home is directly in the rear of the 37th Street station house. On the evening of Wednesday, August 15, 1900, and the evening of August 16, 1900, I heard cries and shrieks of people being beaten, coming from the 37th Street station house—such groans as, “O Lord! O Lord! don’t hit me! don’t hit me!” spoken in pleading tones. This continued all of Wednesday night, with such frequency, and was so heartrending, as to make it impossible to sleep. It was not quite so bad Thursday evening. Deponent states further that it is a common thing to hear coming from the 37th Street station house cries of people, as if they were being beaten, except since last Labor Day; since which day it has been exceptionally quiet.

I reside at 330 West 53rd Street. I am employed as a Pullman car porter, on the cars running out of the West Shore depot, Weehawken, N.J. I arrived on my train at the said depot on Thursday, August 16, 1900, at 2:35 P.M. I arrived in New York about 5:30 P.M. the same day, and, having heard of the riots, I had prepared to protect myself from the mob by carrying home with me a revolver. I boarded a car at the West Shore ferry at the foot of West 42nd Street and transferred to an Eighth Avenue car at 34th Street, and had proceeded as far as 40th Street, when the car was assailed by a mob shouting, “There’s another nigger! Kill him! Lynch him!” I stood up and was ready to defend myself, when a passenger on the car asked me to sit down, saying that if the mob got on the car he would help me defend myself. I sat down as requested, and happening to look over my shoulder I saw three police officers in uniform running after the car. They boarded the car, and, seizing me, one of the officers put his hand in my pocket and took the revolver from me, then pulled me off the car, saying, “Come off of here, you black son of a b—!” When they had pulled me off the car, they immediately commenced clubbing me, and continued to do so all the way to the station house. While in the station house I saw several colored men beaten by police officers. The sergeant at the desk, when I was sent to a cell, shouted to the police officers, “Don’t hit this man!” repeating the same several times. I was taken to the police court the next day, where I was discharged. Deponent states further that the officer who arrested him and appeared against him in the police court is the one who did the most of the clubbing; in fact, all of it except one blow. Deponent declares further that he was proceeding quietly to his home, where he was determined to go, and was not molesting anyone, and that when the officers signified their intention to arrest him he made no show of resistance, and that therefore the clubbing was unjustifiable and an outrage.

Maria Williams, of No. 206 West 27th Street, and Carrie Wells, of No. 239 West 29th Street, in the Borough of Manhattan, being severally duly sworn, depose and say:

On Wednesday, August 15, 1900, we were sitting on the stoop of No. 239 West 29th Street, talking; we had been sitting there since 9:30 P.M. We had there learned of the assaults on the Negroes in this section, and heard the noise of the crowds and the stopping of the cars on Eighth Avenue. There was no crowd in the street at this time. There were white and colored folks sitting on nearly all the stoops, the same as occurs on any ordinary warm night. About 11:30 several officers came through the street from Eighth Avenue and walked towards Seventh Avenue, three on the north side and four on the south side. No one in the street had been molested by anyone. These officers walked up the stoops, and without any warning ordered us into our houses, at the same time striking at us. Mrs. Wells, the mother of deponent Carrie Wells, was on the stoop one step from the bottom with three of her children, aged respectively fourteen, thirteen, and twelve years. An officer who is called “Joe,” and whom we know, stepped up to Mrs. Wells, and said, “Get in there, you black son of a b—,” and struck her viciously across the right hip, when she ran in with her children, the officers still following, striking at her until he reached the top step, looked around, and threatened to strike us if we came out again, and he then went away. Deponent Williams looked out of her window and saw these officers go through the same procedure wherever colored folks were sitting. Nothing was said or done to any white people. We see this officer every day. At about 2:15 in the morning some officers came through the block and clubbed colored people wherever they saw them, men as well as women. Deponent Wells lives at home with her mother and helps her keep house; deponent Williams keeps house for herself and husband. Deponent Wells is a member of the Church of the Transfiguration, at 29th Street and Fifth Avenue, where I have attended for years. Mr. and Mrs. Miller, of West 29th Street, know of us; Mrs. McGurk, of No. 225 West 29th Street, Mrs. Kloze, of 223 West 29th Street, all can vouch for our character.

CARRIE WELLS.

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MARIA x WILLIAMS.

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