The shooting happened on a Saturday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. in front of 828 Dawson Street and the gangs involved were the Noble Dukes and the Mysterious Five.\u00a0 The newspaper article listed the names of three gang members who were involved in the shooting: George McDaniels, George Clines and Samuel Stringfellow, the subject of this page.\u00a0 However, upon closer inspection, there were others involved too:\u00a0 Stanley Tucker, Ernest Stringfellow (brother of Samuel) and Jesse Cooper.\u00a0 I know when there are lots of names thrown into the pot too quickly, it\u2019s hard to keep track of who is who (this is especially difficult in reading books about the Mafia).\u00a0 Here is the breakdown of the six according to gang affiliation.\u00a0 Refer to this as often as needed:<\/p>\n
Noble Dukes<\/strong><\/p>\n Samuel Stringfellow<\/p>\n Ernest Stringfellow<\/p>\n Jesse Cooper<\/p>\n Mysterious Five<\/strong><\/p>\n Stanley Tucker<\/p>\n George McDaniels<\/p>\n George Cline<\/p>\n 828 Dawson St. in the Bronx where the shooting\u00a0 happened<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n The Noble Dukes and the Mysterious Five were two rival gangs from the East Bronx and leading up to the shooting on Saturday, November 16, there had been \u201cmany\u201d altercations between the two gangs.\u00a0 Before the Saturday afternoon shooting, the two gangs had already come head to head.\u00a0 On Wednesday, November 13, Ernest fired a shot from a .45 caliber handgun, which is some serious fire power.\u00a0 Nobody was hurt.\u00a0 Then, on Friday night (November 15), there was another fight where George McDaniels was stabbed in the hand.<\/p>\n On the day of the shooting (November 16), the temperature between the two gangs was at a high boil.\u00a0 Six members of both gangs that that are listed above agreed to meet at 828 Dawson Street to figure out a spot where they could duke it out (Samuel only lived a few doors down at 832 Dawson Street).\u00a0 This was usually the role of the warlord to figure out a location for a gang fight.<\/p>\n The Noble Dukes asked the Mysterious Five meet them downtown on 16th<\/sup> Street near Second Avenue and that they would have their fight there.\u00a0 However, the Mysterious Five weren\u2019t familiar with the downtown and had no interest fighting there.\u00a0 This was smart on their part; most likely the Noble Dukes knew that area well and would spring a trap on them.\u00a0 Now is a good time to mention that both gangs were packing impressive firepower, to wit:<\/p>\n Samuel Stringfellow had a fully loaded .45 caliber U.S. Army pistol, Tucker had a .22 caliber Winchester rifle in a paper bag, George McDaniels had a large hunting knife in his pocket and Jesse Cooper had a five inch hunting knife.\u00a0 Ernest Stringfellow also had a .22 caliber pistol, but it was unloaded.\u00a0 Everyone but George Cline had a weapon.<\/p>\n And where would Samuel Stringfellow get a U.S. Army pistol?\u00a0 From Mrs. Elizabeth Morgan who lived in the same building as he did.\u00a0 When police later asked her about it, she admitted she loaned the pistol to Samuel and that he was \u201conly going to carry the gun for protection.\u201d\u00a0 To be specific, the pistol was an M-1911 Remington-Rand.\u00a0 This pistol was used by the military since 1926 and it was very likely that the one Samuel had was used in World War 2. \u00a0\u00a0According to Elizabeth, Samuel never intended to shoot it.\u00a0 For backup, Samuel also had a 12 gauge, double-barreled shot gun and 22 rounds of 12 gauge shells at home.<\/p>\n While the two gangs were arguing about where to fight, Tucker suddenly ran behind a nearby parked automobile.\u00a0 This was not the smartest thing to do with a bunch of trigger happy teens in a high-stress situation.\u00a0 Immediately Samuel pulled out the .45 caliber U.S. Army pistol and shot three times at Tucker, missing each time.\u00a0 After shooting at him, Samuel and the other two Noble Dukes ran away and down the street.\u00a0 Seeing them get away, Tucker rose up from behind the car and fired a shot at them from his .22 caliber Winchester.\u00a0 He missed too.<\/p>\n A detective from the 41st<\/sup> Squad (also known as the Simpson Street station), who happened to be nearby, heard the gunfire and rushed to the scene.\u00a0 By this time the Noble Dukes and Mysterious Five had run into two different houses.\u00a0 Detective Rumberg and his partner were able to collar all the boys and when they arrested him, Samuel Stringfellow still had the .45 calibre U.S. Army pistol with three bullets discharged.\u00a0 Why Samuel didn\u2019t ditch the gun I\u2019m not sure.\u00a0 Perhaps he thought he got away with it and decided to keep the gun, not knowing there was a detective in the vicinity.\u00a0 Or maybe the adrenaline of the shootout and escaping was too much and he wasn\u2019t thinking clearly.<\/p>\n When they were arrested, both gangs were already planning what they would do when they met again.\u00a0 They were certainly a bellicose bunch of boys.\u00a0 It seemed that all of them lived in the same neighborhood and everyone felt that as long as they lived so close to each other, the fighting would be continual and they would use whatever object they could use for a weapon, whether it was deadly or not.\u00a0 When Samuel was questioned about the shooting, he admitted that he shot at Tucker and said the reason he did so was because he felt that if he didn\u2019t shoot first, Samuel would have shot and killed him.<\/p>\n Samuel Stringfellow<\/p><\/div>\n The District Attorney indicted Mysterious Five members George McDaniels and George Cline with rioting, but this was pleaded down to a simple disorderly conduct (which always seems to happen with initial charges) on Feb.6, 1947.\u00a0 McDaniels was put on probation and\u00a0 Cline was sent to Elmira Reception Center where they would \u201cclassify\u201d him and send him to an appropriate reformatory.<\/p>\n Samuel\u2019s Brother Ernest was adjudged a Delinquent Child and put on probation on Jan.23, 1947. \u00a0\u00a0The Children\u2019s Court tried to arrange for Ernest to move out of the neighborhood and live with his Uncle Isaac Duffie in Baltimore, Maryland.\u00a0 He was a minister, but unfortunately he wasn\u2019t able to take on the financial responsibility of caring for Ernest.<\/p>\n Jesse Cooper, the Noble Duke who had the five inch hunting knife, and Mysterious Five member Stanley Tucker (who shot the .22 caliber Winchester rifle) were both adjudged as delinquent and sent to New York State Training School for Boys in Warwick.\u00a0 This was a reformatory for juveniles.\u00a0 I wonder if their hatred spilled out in that institution too, or if they were more concerned with surviving and getting out.\u00a0 As a side note, Cline was later sent to the same reformatory that Stringfellow was sent to.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Morgan, the woman who supplied the gun to Samuel, was arrested by the NYPD and her punishment was a $50 fine.<\/p>\n Lastly, Samuel Stringfellow \u2013 the one who fired the three shots from the U.S. Army pistol \u2013 was charged with 1st<\/sup> Degree Assault and a Violation of 1897 which meant carrying a dangerous weapon.\u00a0 However, he ended up pleading guilty on Feb.6, 1947 to 3rd<\/sup> Degree Assault on a recommendation from Assistant District Attorney O\u2019Brien.\u00a0 On February 20, 1947, he was sentenced for three years to an upstate New York reformatory.<\/p>\n For those who have read other pages on this website about reformatories, the way it worked was the prisoner was shipped to Elmira Reception Center, where they took about three \u00a0months to analyze the prisoner.\u00a0 After their analysis, they sent the prisoner to the reformatory that they thought would best rehabilitate him.\u00a0 In Samuel\u2019s case he arrived at Elmira on March 3, 1947, stayed there until May 13, 1947 and was sent to an upstate reformatory.<\/p>\n Samuel had some discipline infractions, one of which will be discussed below, but for the most part his time there was uneventful.\u00a0 One of the first reports from the institution about Samuel\u2019s progress was on September 2, 1947.\u00a0 It said:<\/p>\n This inmate has been assigned to the bake shop for a period of 4 months.\u00a0 His adjustment has been satisfactory.\u00a0 He is dependable with supervision.\u00a0 A good worker.\u00a0 Friendly and cooperative with others.\u00a0 He has made an exceptional adjustment in general education.\u00a0 His teachers all speak well of him.\u00a0 He is working on a 9th<\/sup> grade level.\u00a0 In physical education his adjustment has been fair.\u00a0 He has very little interest in physical activities and appears to be lazy.<\/p>\n You will have noticed that the progress report said Samuel worked in the bake shop.\u00a0 He had entered the bake program on May 20, 1947, and worked there off and on for 15.5 months.\u00a0 The report on him three days before Christmas 1948 was solid:<\/p>\n He performs the following: general cleaning; cleaning, greasing bread and cake pans; care of work benches; care and cleaning bread racks; care of dough and mixing machines; care and cleaning of ovens; scaling ingredients; molding dough; making bread and rolls; making and roll mixtures; making cake and cookie mixtures; making pies; and oven work.\u00a0 He received a rating of A- in work and B- in attitude.\u00a0 Usually a good and dependable worker.<\/p>\n On July 8, 1949, Samuel was caught for making a home brew along with two other inmates.\u00a0 Interestingly, one of the prisoners had the same last name as him.\u00a0 This tells me it had to be his brother Ernie.\u00a0 Ernest must have performed poorly on probation and either repeatedly broke the rules or committed a crime and got thrown into the same reformatory as his big brother Samuel.\u00a0 As you will recall, Samuel\u2019s sentence was for three years and his maximum expiration was Nov.27, 1949.\u00a0 He had already been rejected by the parole board prior to his home brew bust, and it appears that Samuel served the entire three-year sentence which is very unusual to see.\u00a0 No word on whether Samuel was able to taste the home brew.<\/p>\n Like so many stories of this time, Samuel disappears from the record after being released on Nov.27, 1949 and nothing more is known about him.\u00a0 His plan was to move back in with his mother and get a job in a bakery somewhere, but it looked like he was only able to get a job as a Western Union messenger boy.\u00a0 Hopefully the scare of her son being sent to a reformatory made his mother change her parenting tactics, although at the time of his release he would be 20 years old.\u00a0 Samuel was no longer a kid.\u00a0 When he was growing up, Samuel\u2019s mother wasn\u2019t interested in her children and he was allowed to hang out on the street until the late hours and associate with anyone he chose to.\u00a0 His mother said she was aware of the poor neighborhood conditions and even that her sons Samuel and Ernest were members of a gang.\u00a0 In fact, she was frightened about what would happen if her son returned back home.\u00a0 She previously tried to get police protection for her sons, but wasn\u2019t successful.\u00a0 Most likely she didn\u2019t see that it was the other kids that needed to be protected from her sons.\u00a0 Samuel said that it was true he was a member of the Noble Dukes and that the gang was created to protect themselves, but also to gain a \u201crep\u201d in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n When he attended Food Trades Vocational High School in Harlem, he took a baking class, but school wasn\u2019t for him and he had to repeat his 4th<\/sup> term.\u00a0 He was a behavior problem and a truant.\u00a0 During his first term he was present for 23 days and absent 68 days.\u00a0 A teacher said that Samuel was \u201cdeaf to all pleas to mend his ways and become a respectable student and citizen.\u201d\u00a0 I hope the teacher\u2019s words came back to Samuel and he was able to turn things around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On November 18, 1946, on page 14 of the \u201cPM\u201d newspaper, a headline stared out at readers who had read this far into the Monday edition.\u00a0 The headline simply stated: \u201cGang-Buster Note.\u201d\u00a0 In four sentences, it briefly told the story … Continue reading ![\"828](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newyorkcitygangs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/828-Dawson-Street.jpg?resize=640%2C940&ssl=1\")
<\/a>![\"Samuel](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newyorkcitygangs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Mug-Shot.jpg?resize=640%2C433&ssl=1\")
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