Attempted lynching in Manhattan

One hundred years ago today … In the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, a 2,000-strong white crowd tried to lynch Alphonso Mayo, a Black man. Mayo had been accused of sexually assaulting Helen Ryan, an 8-year-old white girl, and possibly also a white woman named Pauline Wenzel; the news reports conflict. The incident started at 546 West 46 Street. After the attack by the mob, police arrived, stopped the lynching, and arrested Mayo, charging him with felonious assault against Pauline Wenzel’s son Adolph, whom Mayo had cut with an (unnamed in the reports) weapon.

The Daily News printed photos of Mayo and Wenzel and of one of the officers. In the News report, Mayo was attacked on the street, and that is where the police fought off the lynchers. 

The New York Tribune’s account differed, stating that Mayo had escaped the crowd in the street, run to 606 West 45 Street, made it to the roof with the whites in pursuit, and that’s where the police intervened. The Tribune named Pauline Wenzel as Mayo’s main victim, the person whom Mayo had been “trying to kiss”; it also named Ryan though (which the News did not, per its policy of not naming minors.) The Tribune offered details of the attempting lynching such as women tearing Mayo’s clothing and a man arriving with a rope, and highlighted that churchgoers watched the attack.

Police Beat Off 2,000 With Rope And Save Negro

Church Crowds Watch as Mob Fights Reserves for Black Accused of Trying to Kiss a White Woman Clubs Swing in Melee

Suspect Captured After the Alleged Victim Runs Screaming to the Street

A mob numbering more than 2,000 persons bent on lynching Alfonso Mayo, a Memphis negro, gave police reserves of the West Forty-seventh Street police station the hardest fight in years just as churches in the vicinity of Forty-fifth Street and Eleventh Avenue were dismissed yesterday morning.

Whon Mrs. Pauline Wenzel, white janitress employed in a tenement building at 546 West Forty-sixth Street, ran into the arms of Patrolman Curran, screaming that Mayo had tried to kiss her, the patrolman pursued Mayo to the top floor of the tenement. Adolph Wenzel, son of the janitress, found Mayo crouching in a dark closet under the roof. The negro attacked him and rushed down the stairway, eluding two patrolmen. He ran to 606 West Forty fifth Street, pursued by a crowd of several hundred men and women. Mayo made his way to the roof, and when taken to the street again in custody of Patrolmen Curran and Dunnigan the crowd had grown to huge proportions,

Although the police used their clubs freely, a sudden rush of the mob overpowered them. Mayo was seized by infuriated women and most of his clothing torn to shreds. A man appeared with a rope and scores were shouting threats of death against Mayo when the reserves arrived. Detectives Manley and Flood, in charge of the reserve squad, fought their way to the aid of Curran and Dunnigan, who had dragged the negro to temporary safety and were defending him with their clubs.

So determined was the onslaught of the crowd that patrolmen and detectives were forced to club their way to a patrol wagon in which Mayo was removed. He was arraigned before Magistrate Frothingham in West Side court and held in $500 bail for appearance this morning. The police say Mayo is also charged with an attempt to attack Helen Ryan, eight years old, of 546 West Forty-sixth Street.

(New York Tribune, 6 November, 1922, p. 4.)

Lynching was much under scrutiny at this moment in the US. Anti-lynching advocates were campaigning for the Dyer bill to be passed by the US senate and make lynching a federal crime. (It would not. That would have to wait until the “Emmet Till Antilynching Act,” of 2022.)

We reported on these anti-lynching campaigns here and here, and discussed lynching in posts about Claude McKay’s poem, “The Lynching” and Madeline Allison’s article about a 1921 survey of lynchings across the US.

– Jonathan Goldman, November 4, 2022

TAGS: racism, violence, law enforcement, race, sexual assault, vigilante, NYPD, journalism