Sheriff Faces Down Female Lynch Mob In January 1937

Get into a conversation with a long-time Queens resident and you're likely to discover a subscriber of the Long Island Star- Journal, a daily paper that informed the community about local and world news until it folded in 1968. A banner across the Star-Journal masthead reminded readers that the newspaper's name came from the merger of the Long Island Daily Star (1876) and the North Shore Daily Journal--The Flushing Journal (1841).

Welcome to January, 1937!

Photo Public Domain At left, the British Pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair.

With the cry of "Lynch him!" more than 200 women started a near-riot in Court Square. Swinging umbrellas, pocketbooks and other improvised weapons, and screaming curses, the women milled and surged in an effort to get to Major Green, an African American suspect who had confessed in the murder of Mary Case of Jackson Heights.

Sheriff Arthur Jaeger's unequivocal response was firm. "We will take every precaution to forestall any attempt to snatch Green away from his guards. Our county wants no part in any lynching."

Gazette Archives Above, the Slocum Memorial located at the Lutheran Cemetery of Middle Village.

The Queens sheriff continued, "This should not be taken that I have any sympathy for the defendant. If he is guilty, he should and will be punished in the due course of legal procedure. He is entitled to his day in court. There would be no mob law in Queens."

On the second day of the New Year, Queens was already looking forward to the 1939 World's Fair. "Flushing Meadow Park will be listed as [a] permanent borough benefit. Public improvements are valued at $8,000,000. Queens stands to gain more than any other borough," wrote Frederick McNutt, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Borough of Queens, in a letter to Richard Whitney, chairman of the World's Fair bond sales committee.

McNutt continued: "Not only will we get a park half again as large as Central Park, but other advantages will include such things as new highways, underpasses at bad intersections and improvements to Flushing Bay."

Whitney, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange, had organized 62 trade and industry groups with committees in every borough (and 1,600 volunteer salesmen) and had distributed more than $7.3 million in subscriptions for the 4 percent debentures. The debentures were sold to finance the fair's costs.

The committee was still well short of its $27.8 million goal.

On January 4, the New York Court of Appeals upheld the city's right to evict 800 "property holders" along a seven-mile stretch of oceanfront boardwalk. Recent years had seen the building of hundreds of shops, apartments and hotels. Making things even grimmer for the property holders, the city also gained the right to recover $3.6 million in cash paid out to acquire the boardwalk in 1933. Rockaway civic and business leaders vowed to fight and carry the matter to the Supreme Court.

On January 8, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and Judge Charles S. Colden, chairman of the Queens College Association, conferred on the curriculum for the proposed city college for Queens.

Colden and La Guardia agreed that the college should have the highest possible standards and be among the outstanding educational institutions along the Atlantic seaboard. Their joint statement also suggested that the school should have both a technical institute and a liberal arts department. Of special interest was the proposal for a special school for careers for both men and women in the federal and state service.

Every day and night, for the last four years, since 1933, he waited and watched in the Lutheran Cemetery of Middle Village. Bitter cold weather had not driven him away. New friends had not tempted him. Withstanding sleet storms, scorching heat and hunger, he lived on in the cemetery, proving once again that a dog is "man's best friend". Even after death.

Four years before, the little black cocker spaniel appeared near a new grave in the cemetery. He was dragging a leash, but he repulsed all advances. Days lengthened into months and the little spaniel still wandered among the graves refusing all attempts at friendship, just as he refused to stir outside the cemetery gates.

The superintendent of the cemetery, Mr. Nestle, was genuinely worried about the mute mourner. He began to leave food for the dog and provide a basin of water. So timid was the derelict that the dog had been in the cemetery nearly a year before the kindly superintendent could get near enough to him to remove his worn leash.

Mrs. B. C. McKenna of Jackson Heights discovered little Blackie one day when visiting her parents' grave. After hearing his story from the superintendent, she vowed to cook the dog a weekly meal.

The cemetery furnished the little dog with a house, a garbage can filled with clean straw, facing away from the prevailing winds. When the snow began to drift, the superintendent had the snow plow driven in front of the kennel so that the dog had a cleared runway at all times.

The pooch seemed perfectly content with his chosen life and never stirred from his regular rounds. Although efforts were made to trace the spaniel's history, no one seemed sure where his master or mistress was buried in the cemetery. Only one thing was certain: the dog was loyal to a treasured memory, as he watched and waited patiently for a joyful reunion.

That's the way it was in January, 1937.

The Greater Astoria Historical society is starting Sports Saturdays, a new lecture series, in mid-January: See upcoming issues of the Western Queens Gazette for details. The Society's' headquarters are open to the public on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. at the Quinn Gallery in the Quinn Memorial Building, 4th Floor, 35-20 Broadway, Long Island City. For more information, call the Greater Astoria Historical Society at 718-278-0700 or visit www.astorialic.org