Today in Labor History March 19, 1935: Harlem Uprising occurred, during the Great Depression, after rumors circulated that a black Puerto Rican teenage shoplifter was beaten by employees at an S. H. Kress "five and dime" store, and then killed by the police. Protests were quickly organized by the Young Liberators and the Young Communist League, which were promptly declared illegal by the police. Participants smashed windows of the store and began looting. The protest and looting spread, causing $200 million in damages. Police arrested 125 people and killed 3. Mayor LaGuardia set up a multi-racial Commission to investigate the causes of the riot, headed by African-American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier and with members including labor leader A. Philip Randolph. The identified "injustices of discrimination in employment, the aggressions of the police, and the racial segregation" as conditions which led to the outbreak of rioting, and congratulated the Communist organizations as deserving "more credit than any other element in Harlem for preventing a physical conflict between whites and blacks".
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