In Manhattan's Harlem one afternoon last week a dusky little Puerto Rican of 16 wandered past the cutlery counter in a Kress 5-10-25¢ store on 125th Street . Into Lino Rivera's kinky, stocking-capped head popped the notion of stealing a penknife to match his pen & pencil set at home. Into the pocket of Lino Rivera's leather coat a moment later popped the 10¢ knife.
Two floorwalkers spotted the theft, pounced on Rivera. Someone threatened to "take him down in the basement and beat the hell out of him." Lino began frantically biting his captors' hands. A salesgirl fainted. Some 500 Negro customers, thrown into a panic by the commotion, began upsetting counters of goods, yelling, breaking things. An Irish policeman went in, saw he could not quell the hysterical confusion singlehanded, sent for emergency reserves. It was almost twilight before the police had driven the disturbers from the debris-strewn store.
In the excitement, Lino Rivera had vanished.
There the affair would probably have ended had not a mischiefmaking band of youthful Harlem Reds calling themselves the Young Liberators seized upon the incident as material for a demonstration. They quickly issued hundreds of mimeographed handbills crying:
CHILD BRUTALLY BEATEN
WOMAN ATTACKED BY BOSS AND COPS
CHILD NEAR DEATH
These were hurriedly passed out among the throngs of Negro idlers up & down teeming 125th Street. Believing that one of their own race had been victimized, a black rabble of 3,000 marched to the Kress store. Orators hoisted themselves up to shout against the additional injustice of white storekeepers in Harlem refusing to employ Negro help. Squads of white police arrived on the scene to be met with a barrage of stones and bottles. Before long three officers were hospitalized. Thereupon, the police waded in roughly with nightsticks, made arrests right & left. At this critical point a hearse drove up, destined for a house in the neighborhood. "They've come for the child's body!" shrieked a black woman. For the rest of the night most of Harlem gave itself over to riot, pillage and bloodshed.
Bands of Negro hoodlums went about bashing in store windows. A few Negro shopkeepers sought immunity with signs saying: COLORED STORE. Some white merchants took this cue to post notices: COLORED HELP EMPLOYED HERE. Vainly a Chinese laundryman pleaded: ME COLORED TOO. Hanging eternally out of their windows, Harlem's less excitable householders saw a Fifth Avenue bus stoned, heard the frightened cries of passengers in a Boston bus as eleven pistol shots thudded into its side. Looting followed the smashing of more than 200 shop windows. And when the looting started, police dropped their nightsticks, took out their guns. Five robbers were shot, one fatally. In a wholly irrelevant brawl, a white man was so badly beaten by Negroes that he died within 72 hours. With their streets swarming with police afoot, in squad cars and on horseback, the Harlem Merchants Association wildly telegraphed Governor Lehman at Albany for National Guardsmen.