Harlem during riots in the summer of 1943

WHY do African Americans — a small, but significant minority of them — loot businesses, destroy property, attack and even kill people in response to what they claim to be brutal treatment?

Truthfully, it doesn’t make sense and does not seem in the long run to be an effective strategy for gaining sympathy. But race riots of this kind are nothing new.

The first riot in which blacks joined together to attack and loot businesses was reportedly in Harlem in 1935, as the influence of Communist agitators in black neighborhoods was increasing. (Communists lie to African Americans and tell them they are perpetual victims and cannot get what they want without violence. It has brought them untold sorrow, destruction and chaos.) According to Wikipedia:

It has been described as the first “modern” race riot in Harlem, because it was committed primarily against property rather than persons. Harlem is a northern neighborhood on Manhattan Island in New York City whose population at the time was predominately African American.

The rioting was sparked by rumors that a black Puerto Rican teenage shoplifter was beaten by employees at an S. H. Kress “five and dime” store. That evening a demonstration was held outside the store and, after someone threw a rock through the window, more general destruction of the store and other white-owned properties ensued. Three people died, hundreds were wounded, and an estimated $2 million in damages was caused to properties throughout the district. African American-owned homes and businesses were spared the worst of the destruction.[1]

An even more dramatic example, this time provoked by alleged police brutality, was the riot that started on August 1, 1943 in Harlem, went on for three days and left sections of the black city neighborhood in ruins. The riot was caused by an incident at a Harlem hotel in which no one was seriously hurt.

Harlem, 1943

According to The History Channel, sympathetic to the looters:

That night, a black woman named Marjorie Polite, checked into the establishment. Unhappy with her room, Polite requested another one, but it too didn’t meet her standards. After she received a refund for her accommodations and checked out, Polite asked for the $1 tip back, which she allegedly had given to the elevator operator. After he refused to return it, Polite began to argue.

James Collins, a white policer officer who patrolled the hotel, reportedly grabbed Polite’s arm and tried to arrest her for disorderly conduct. Florine Roberts, a guest at the hotel who was a domestic worker from Connecticut in town visiting her son, witnessed the confrontation and tried to help Polite. When her son, Robert Bandy, a soldier in the 703 Military Police Unit in Jersey City, arrived at the hotel to take his mother to dinner, he saw the altercation and intervened.

In his book, The Harlem Riot of 1943, Dominic Capeci, a professor emeritus from Missouri State University, describes the evening’s events, including an account of the different versions that Collins and Bandy gave about the altercation. The official police report stated that Bandy threatened and attacked Collins, who in turn shot Bandy in the arm after he attempted to flee. Bandy, however, stated that he intervened when Collins pushed Polite and threw his nightstick, which Bandy caught. When he hesitated to return the weapon, Collins shot him. Police came to the scene and both men were taken to the hospital.

A rumor rapidly spread that a white police officer shot and killed Bandy, when in fact, he was treated for a superficial wound. Crowds of Harlem residents, unaware of the truth, gathered around the neighborhood, enraged that a white patrolman had killed a black soldier.

In The Cult of Equality: A Study of the Race Problem (Pelican Publishing Company, 1945), Stuart Omer Landry described the riot, using the language of his time. The riot, he wrote,

 … caused the death of six people, the wounding of 543 more and the destruction of approximately $5,000,000 worth of property. More than 500 people were arrested, among them were 100 women carrying loot. Most were Negro youths, and several wore zoot suits. Among those arrested were two Negro soldiers and a Negro marine.

The riot started when a policeman attempted to arrest a Negro woman for disorderly conduct in a hotel which had a bad reputation when a soldier interfered, and seizing the policeman’s night stick knocked him down. The policeman shot the private. At first crowds gathered around the hospital where the wounded men were taken, and then gangs of hoodlums started running around breaking windows and looting.

During the riot the most frequent manifestations were the throwing of stones and bottles from roof tops and the breaking of store windows followed by looting. According to the New York Times, the main shopping thoroughfares around West 125th Street and Seventh and Eighth Avenues looked as if they had been swept by a hurricane or an invading army. Windows were smashed, fixtures wrecked, and the gutters piled with foodstuffs, canned goods, clothing, household furnishings and other articles that the looters could not carry off.

All sorts of stores were sacked, but particularly jewelry stores, pawn shops, grocery, delicatessen and food stores. The damage for plate glass and window breaking alone amounted to $1,500,000. Many stores lost everything, and their stocks could not be replaced.

Over 400 stores had broken windows and of the 40 liquor stores in Harlem, 30 were cleaned of their stock. The Secretary of the Uptown Chamber of Commerce said that the rioting was carried on mainly by zoot suiters from 16 to 22 years old and that a number of young girls took part in it.

Negro apologists rushed into print to place the blame for the riot on everything except the deficiencies of their own race. The Secretary of the communist party came out immediately with “Our demands for the wiping out of Jim Crowism, discriminations, high rent, bad housing, high prices and police callousness that are the root cause for the profound dissatisfaction among the Negro people.”

In spite of the fact that white people had nothing to do with the rioting in Harlem except that it was set off when a white policeman, attempting to do his duty, was attacked by a Negro soldier — all sorts of organizations and prominent individuals issued statements and opinions and laying the cause of the riot on racial hatred and prejudice.*

It is remarkable how many excoriate the police, and charge that the police are brutal, or that they exceed their authority, and even that they violate the law. If the police were not well organized and forceful enough to command respect, in certain sections of our large cities conditions would be terrible indeed. The policeman’s lot is not a happy one, particularly in slum sections where there are organized gangs of toughs, but policemen protect society against the forces of crime and on the w’hole they are doing a good job. In fact, sometimes policemen are not forceful enough.

Recently in Brooklyn a Grand Jury protested against disorderliness and hoodlumism in “Little Harlem,” and a social worker explained that one of the causes of the crime wave was the fact the policemen on duty in this section were not “tough” enough. She was probably right.

Perhaps she was.

These riots do not represent the aspirations of most black Americans. They are based on lies. And yet there is not the will and collective, political energy among blacks to resist them and prevent them from happening again.

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