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

FAIN: FEL-273853-21

Stephen Robertson
George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030-4444)

Research and preparation of a digital publication that describes and analyzes the racially based unrest in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City on March 19, 1935.

The outbreak of disorder in Harlem on the evening of March 19, 1935 immediately attracted national attention as the first large-scale racial violence in the United States in more than a decade, and as an expression of the frustrated hopes of black migrants to the north. Later, scholars recognized that night as the first instance of a new form of racial violence characterized by black attacks on white property and clashes with police. This study provides the first detailed analysis of the events of the disorder, maps where they happened, and traces how they were dealt with in the press and in the legal system. This approach directs attention to the complexity and heterogeneity of the form of racial disorder that characterized the second half of the twentieth century. Developing a digital publication structured as a multi-layered, hyperlinked argument showcases that perspective by connecting different scales of analysis: broad narratives, aggregated patterns, and individual events.

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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935 (Book)
Title: Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935
Author: Stephen Robertson
Abstract: The violence that spread across Harlem on the night of March 19, 1935 was the first large-scale racial disorder in the United States in more than a decade and the first occurrence in the nation’s leading Black neighborhood. However, as many observers pointed out, the events were “not a race riot” of the kind that had marked the decades after the Civil War. Racial violence took a new form in 1935. Through a granular analysis of those events and the mapping of their locations, Harlem in Disorder reveals that Harlem’s residents participated in a complex new mix of violence that was a multifaceted challenge to white economic and political power. Tracing the legal and government investigations that followed, this project highlights how that violence came to be distorted, diminished, and marginalized by the concern of white authorities to maintain the racial order, and by the unwillingness of Harlem's Black leaders and their white allies to embrace fully such direct forms of protest. Focused on capturing rather than simplifying the complexity of the new form of racial violence, Harlem in Disorder is a multi-layered, hyperlinked narrative that connects different scales of analysis: individual events, aggregated patterns, and a chronological narrative. Its structure foregrounds individual events to counter how data can dehumanize the past, and to make transparent the interpretations involved in the creation of data from uncertain and ambiguous sources.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://harlemindisorder.org
Primary URL Description: This is a digital monograph, only available online.
Access Model: Open access
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781503630451
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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