The Harlem riot of 1935 marked a turning point in racial violence. Previous race riots had almost always been initiated by whites, and whites fought blacks. In this riot there was no fighting between the two races: instead blacks attacked white property and the police who were trying to protect it.
During the depression, Harlem was a world of poverty and hopelessness, and its miseries were embittered by discrimination and exclusion. Conditions in Northern ghettos, never very good, became appalling as the national economy broke down. Men could find no work, and women competed desperately for jobs as maids at pathetic wages. Local businesses which profited from Harlem trade refused to hire black labor—for example, the public utility company employed three Negro maids and two Negro inspectors. At Harlem Hospital the few black nurses ate in segregated dining rooms. Harlem streets were repaved by white crews, and most labor unions refused to admit Negroes. When Negro activists launched a Jobs for Negroes campaign, and picketed and boycotted the 125th Street stores that remained lily-white, their effort was eventually quashed by anti-picketing injunctions.
The week before the riot of March 19, 1935, a black man was battered by policemen and his eye was gouged out; then the man was charged with felonious assault, although a grand jury refused to indict him. Then on March 19, Lino Rivera, a sixteen-year old Negro, stole a knife from a Kress store (one of the staunchest holdouts against hiring blacks) and was seen being taken to the basement by a police officer. Negro spectators assumed he was going to be beaten up. Crowds formed, and speakers began denouncing the police. When the speakers were then beaten up and arrested, Harlem erupted. Rioters smashed and gutted over two hundred stores, including many that had been picketed unsuccessfully. Looting was widespread, particularly of food and clothing stores. Police shot and killed one Negro, and snipers shot back. More than one hundred people were injured. More than $2,000,000 in property was destroyed.
After the riot, Mayor LaGuardia appointed a commission to investigate its causes, including E. Franklin Frazier, the distinguished Negro sociologist from Howard University. The Commission rejected the widespread idea that Communists or outside agitators were responsible for the riot, and blamed it on discrimination, unemployment, and police brutality. They predicted that if these conditions continued, the events of March 19 would be repeated. Mayor LaGuardia refused to release the report, but it was finally made public by the New York Amsterdam News, the city’s leading Negro newspaper.
The following account of the beginning of the riot is from the Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem: The Negro in Harlem; A Report on the Social and Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak (1935). See Roi Ottley: New World a-Coming: Inside Black America (1943; 1968); and Robert M. Fogelson: “Violence as Protest,” in Robert H. Connery: Urban Riots: Violence and Social Change (1969).
At about 2:30 on the afternoon of March 19, 1935, Lino Rivera, a 16-year-old colored boy, stole a knife from a counter in the rear of E. H. Kress and Company on 125th Street. He was seen by the manager of the store, Jackson Smith, and an assistant, Charles Hurley, who were on the balcony at the time. Mr. Hurley and another employee overtook the boy before he was able to make his escape through the front door. When the two men took the knife from Rivera’s pocket and threatened him with punishment, the boy in his fright tried to cling to a pillar and bit the hands of his captors. Rivera was finally taken to the front entrance, where Mounted Patrolman Donahue was called. The boy was then taken back into the store by the officer, who asked the manager if an arrest was desired. While Mr. Smith, the manager, instructed the officer to let the culprit go free—as he had done in many cases before—an officer from the Crime Prevention Bureau was sent to the store.
This relatively unimportant case of juvenile pilfering would never have acquired the significance which it later took on had not a fortuitous combination of subsequent events made it the spark that set aflame the smouldering resentments of the people of Harlem against racial discrimination and poverty in the midst of plenty. Patrolman Donahue, in order to avoid the curious and excited spectators, took the boy through the basement to the rear entrance on 124th Street. But his act only confirmed the outcry of a hysterical Negro woman that they had taken “the boy to the basement to beat him up.” Likewise, the appearance of the ambulance which had been summoned to dress the wounded hands of the boy’s captors not only seemed to substantiate her charge, but, when it left empty, gave color to another rumor that that the boy was dead. By an odd trick of fate, still another incident furnished the final confirmation of the rumor of the boy’s death to the excited throng of shoppers. A hearse which was usually kept in a garage opposite the store on 124th Street was parked in front of the store entrance while the driver entered the store to see his brother-in-law. The rumor of the death of the boy, which became now to the aroused Negro shoppers an established fact, awakened the deep-seated sense of wrongs and denials and even memories of injustices in the South. One woman was heard to cry out that the treatment was “just like down South where they lynch us.” The deep sense of wrong expressed in this remark was echoed in the rising resentment which turned the hundred or more shoppers into an indignant crowd.
The sporadic attempts on the part of the police to assure the crowd within the store that no harm had been done the boy fell upon unbelieving ears, partly because no systematic attempt was made to let representatives of the crowd determine the truth for themselves, and partly because of the attitude of the policemen. According to the testimony of one policeman, a committee of women from among the shoppers was permitted to search the basement, but these women have never been located. On the other hand, when the crowd became too insistent about learning the fate of the boy, the police told them that it was none of their business and attempted to shove them towards the door. This only tended to infuriate the crowd and was interpreted by them as further evidence of the suppression of a wronged race. At 5:30 it became necessary to close the store.
The closing of the store did not stay the rumors that were current inside. With incredible swiftness the feelings and attitude of the outraged crowd of shoppers was communicated to those on 125th Street and soon all of Harlem was repeating the rumor that a Negro boy had been murdered in the basement of Kress’ store. The first sign of the reaction of the community appeared when a group of men attempted to start a public meeting at a nearby corner. When the police ordered the group to move from the corner, they set up a stand in front of Kress’ store. A Negro who acted as chairman introduced a white speaker. Scarcely had the speaker uttered the first words of his address to the crowd when someone threw a missile through the window of Kress’ store. This was the signal for the police to drag the speaker from the stand and disperse the crowd. Immediately, the crowd reassembled across the street and another speaker attempted to address the crowd from a porch on a lamp-post. He was pulled down from his post and arrested along with the other speaker on a charge of “unlawful assemblage.” … the extreme barbarity which was shown towards at least one of these speakers was seemingly motivated by the fact that these policemen who made derogatory and threatening remarks concerning Negroes were outraged because white men dared to take the part of Negroes.… These actions on the part of the police only tended to arouse resentment in the crowd which was increasing all the time along 125th Street. From 125th Street the crowds spread to Seventh Avenue and Lenox Avenue and the smashing of windows and looting of shops gathered momentum as the evening and the night came on.…
From its inception, as we have pointed out, the outbreak was a spontaneous and unpremeditated action on the part, first, of women shoppers in Kress’ store and, later, of the crowds on 125th Street that had been formed as the result of the rumor of a boy’s death in the store. As the fever of excitement based upon this rumor spread to other sections of the community, other crowds, formed by many unemployed standing about the streets and other on-lookers, sprang up spontaneously. At no time does it seem that these crowds were under the direction of any single individual or that they acted as a part of a conspiracy against law and order. The very susceptibility which the people in the community showed towards this rumor—which was more or less vague, depending upon the circumstances under which it was communicated—was due to the feeling of insecurity produced by years of unemployment and deep-seated resentment against the many forms of discrimination which they had suffered as a racial minority.
While it is difficult to estimate the actual number of persons who participated in the outburst, it does not seem, from available sources of information, that more than a few thousand were involved. These were not concentrated at any time in one place. Crowds formed here and there as the rumors spread. When a crowd was dispersed by the police, it often re-formed again. These crowds constantly changed their makeup. When bricks thrown through store windows brought the police, the crowds would often dissolve, only to gather again and continue their assaults upon property. Looting often followed the smashing of store windows. The screaming of sirens, the sound of pistol shots and the cracking of glass created in many a need for destruction and excitement. Rubbish, flower pots, or any object at hand were tossed from windows into the street. People seized property when there was no possible use which it would serve. They acted as if there were a chance to seize what rightfully belonged to them, but had long been withheld. The crowds showed various needs and changed their mood from time to time. Some of the destruction was carried on in a playful spirit. Even the looting, which has furnished many an amusing tale, was sometimes done in the spirit of children taking preserves from a closet to which they have accidentally found the key. The mood of these crowds was determined in many cases by the attitude of the police towards their unruly conduct. But, in the end, neither the threats nor the reassurances of the police could restrain these spontaneous outbursts until the crowds had spent themselves in giving release to their pent-up emotions.…