On Friday, December 8, at 10:12 a.m., Roland James Smith, Jr., 51, a Harlem resident with a criminal record going back 30 years, walked into Freddy's Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned clothing store at 272 West 125th Street, pulled out a gun, ordered all the black customers to leave, spilled paint thinner on several bins of clothing and set them on fire -- a f
ire that resulted in killing 8 people including Smith.
Smith had been part of a group of picketers, led by Al Sharpton , head of the National Action Network and Morris Powell , leader of the 125th Street Vendor's Association, who had been protesting the eviction of Sikhulu Shange, owner of the Record Shack who was subletting from Fred Harari, the Jewish owner of Freddy's.
The picketing, which had gone on for months, had led Harari to seek relief with the State Supreme Court. In papers filed just one day before the fire, he said, "Recently, the protesters have made motions of striking a match and throwing it on outside clothing displays or in the doorway of the store." An affidavit by Kareem Brunner, a black security guard killed in the blaze, said that he had been called a "cracker lover" and "would get mine as a traitor [to the black race]." Brunner, was the only black that Smith did not order out of the store before setting it afire.
Besides Smith and Brunner, all the other victims of the fire were Hispanic and Guyanese. Store manager, Steve Brodsky, described how a particularly vicious demonstrator called Shabazz would force his way into the store, pushing Brodsky aside and shout "I will be back to burn the Jew store down -- burn, burn, burn." It has been reported that there is evidence that Shabazz worked for Mr. Shange.
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