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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

"12 Indicted in Riot; Troop Plea Denied," New York Times, March 22, 1935, 1.

In the New York Times

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Dodge grand jury hearing, March 21 (12) With only a handful of those arrested during the riot arraigned in the Magistrates Court on March 21, the focus of the press shifted downtown to District Attorney Dodge’s grand jury investigation. As grand jury proceedings were closed, no details of the evidence presented were available to reporters, and only how many individuals the jurors voted to indict, not their names. Partly as a result, statements Dodge made to the assembled reporters dominated the stories. That he focused attention and blame for the disorder on Communists resulted in particularly prominent stories in the city’s anti-Communist newspapers. Among the Black newspapers, only the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide published any details of Dodge’s claims, while both the Amsterdam News and New York Age quoted editorials rejecting the idea that Communists were responsible for the disorder.

The first day of District Attorney Dodge’s grand jury investigation was widely reported in New York City’s white daily newspapers. Twenty-six witnesses appeared before the grand jury that day according to the New York American, Daily News, New York World-Telegram, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Home News; three other publications reported a different number, 25 witnesses in the New York Evening Journal, and 30 witnesses in the New York Post, New York Sun and Times Union (the Daily Mirror did not mention witnesses). According to the New York Post, more than seventy additional witnesses were in attendance, likely responding to the subpoenas sent the previous day. The New York Sun reported that Assistant District Attorney Saul Price questioned a number of those witnesses before the grand jury convened at 10:30 AM. The witnesses were described as mostly policemen in the New York Times and New York World-Telegram, and as a mix of policemen and Black witnesses by the New York Post, New York American, and Times Union, which all included the detail that the police were bandaged.

Several newspapers identified Lino Rivera as among the witnesses. ADA Saul Price questioned Rivera (before the grand jury convened at 10:30 AM, according to the New York Sun), with photographs of the pair sitting at a desk published in the Daily Mirror, New York American, and New York Evening Journal. Price told the assembled reporters that a threatening postcard had been sent to the boy’s home. It read: "Get out of this city or we will burn you alive. Fair Warning." The threat and text of the postcard were reported by the New York Sun, New York Evening Journal, Times Union, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Daily Mirror, and New York American. The New York Post and New York Times simply mentioned Rivera as “among the witnesses,” without noting the threat. No mention of the boy appeared in the New York World-Telegram. Price also told reporters he had placed Rivera under the supervision of Patrolman Eldridge of the Crime Prevention Bureau (the New York Evening Journal described him as also a “guard” for Rivera, the Times Union as assigned to Rivera as “safety measure;" the Daily Mirror reported a police guard for Rivera without mentioning Eldridge). The Daily News published a photograph of Rivera and Eldridge leaving the building. While the New York Times and Home News included Rivera among the twenty-six witnesses who appeared before the grand jury and the New York Evening Journal reported that he “testified,” other newspaper stories did not include him in those proceedings. The Daily News story had Rivera dismissed when Dodge left for the grand jury. The Times Union reported he would be called before the grand jury. No mention of Rivera testifying appeared in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, Daily Mirror, and New York American. Later, Jackson Smith, the manager of the Kress store, told a hearing of the MCCH that he had sat beside Rivera “before we went in to the Grand Jury room.” It is not clear on what day that happened.

Dodge himself presented the cases to the grand jury, despite assigning that role to ADA Price the previous day, a change only the New York Post noted. Dodge and Price spent much of the day in the grand jury with the result that the body voted for seven indictments charging twelve individuals. While the New York Post, and New York Times reported only the number of people indicted, the New York American, New York Evening Journal, Daily Mirror, Times Union, Daily News, New York World-Telegram, New York Sun, and New York Herald Tribune also mentioned the crimes with which they had been charged: inciting riot in the case of five men, assault in the case of two others, and burglary for the remaining five men. (The next day Dodge announced he had decided not to prosecute the men charged with rioting in the Court of General Sessions, for a felony, but instead in the Court of Special Sessions, for a misdemeanor, according to stories in the New York Sun, Times Union, and New York World-Telegram.) While the seventeen men indicted as a result of Dodge's investigation can be identified, either by notes in the court docket book or in the testimony of ADA Kaminsky at the first public hearing of the MCCH, which of those men were in that group is not clear. Certainly those charged with riot included Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators, the only group indicted together for riot, who were all prosecuted in the Court of Special Sessions, as Dodge intimated they were the men indicted on this date. However, none of the others identified as indicted by Dodge's grand jury are recorded as charged with riot. While the two indictments for assault reported on this date were the only ones for that offense reported as resulting from Dodge's investigation, three men identified as indicted in that process were charged with assault: James Hughes, Isaac Daniels, and Douglas Cornelius. Any of the ten men in the group charged with burglary could have been indicted on this day.

Dodge spoke to the reporters before and after he went into the grand jury, and again after he later met with police officials. Those statements and responses to questions from reporters expanding on his claim the previous day that Communists were responsible for the disorder dominated stories about the grand jury, reported in varying detail and emphasis by different publications. A handful of newspapers noted that Dodge’s statements came at different times; most simply combined them in some way.

On his way into the grand jury, according to the New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal, Dodge told reporters: “The Reds have been boring into our institutions for a long time, but when they begin to incite to riot it is time to stop them.” "They have been safe because we are sticklers for free speech, but when that free speech undermines our laws and causes riots drastic action must be taken.” Those were Dodge’s most widely reported statement, in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, Daily News, New York American, New York Herald Tribune, Daily Mirror, and New York Sun. The New York Evening Journal, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and New York Post added, “We must stiffen our laws.” Only the Daily Mirror reported Dodge suggesting that as “dealing with rioters on the basis of their having committed misdemeanors is not practical” an alternative would be to use Sect. 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which provided a sentence of ten years for those advocating the overthrow of organized government by force or violence.” Given the reaction provoked when Dodge made the same call several days later, it is unlikely that would have gone unreported by other publications. (A reporter from the New York American raised the use of this statute in questions posed to Commissioner Valentine after he left a meeting with Dodge later in the day.)

In seeking action against those involved in the disorder, Dodge also argued that those found guilty should be removed from Home Relief rolls and if aliens, deported. He would make those recommendations to the Mayor and the Home Relief Bureau and Commission of Immigration respectively. The New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and New York Sun reported those proposals; they were not mentioned, somewhat surprisingly, in the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal, New York American, and Daily Mirror, that otherwise amplified Dodge’s anti-communism.

Some of the charges Dodge made against the Communist Party were also absent from the three Hearst newspapers. They did not join the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun in reporting that Dodge said, “Half the troubles in labor unions are caused by Reds.” However, the New York Evening Journal together with the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, New York Times, did report his charge that Communists had sent threatening letters to judges. The Times Union named General Sessions Judge Joseph E. Corrigan, Judge Otto A. Rosalsky, and Edward R. Finch as recipients, the New York Post Corrigan and Rosalsky, the New York Evening Journal Corrigan and Finch, the New York Times only Finch, and the New York World-Telegram just “various judges.”

Dodge’s claims were staple anti-Communist charges. The New York Post reporter recognized them as such, noting that the “inquiry threatened to turn into a red-baiting campaign.” That prospect concerned the New York Herald Tribune, which saw "red-baiting" as one of "passions, fears and follies" that the disorder could incite, and wished that Dodge had restrained himself from "making allegations and proclaiming crusades." A New York Sun editorial (reprinted in the New York Age on March 30) was more dismissive of Dodge’s charges commenting that “seeing red is an official privilege, diversion and avocation at the moment; no disorder can occur without being attributed to those terror-inspiring Communists whose shadows darken the sky at noonday.” So too was a story in the Afro-American later in the week, which asserted that “Colored goody, goodies—ministers, social workers, et al—who are whooping it up that last week’s rioting was the work of Communists, and who are ready to deny freedom of speech to 'radicals who come to Harlem,' are, right now, a greater menace to Harlem than the Reds.”

After Dodge left the grand jury, the Daily News, New York Times, New York American, New York Herald Tribune and Home News reported he made a more specific claim about the Communist role in the disorder. "We have evidence that within two hours after that boy stole a knife the Reds had placed inflammatory leaflets on the streets. We know who printed those leaflets and where they were printed.” That allegation echoed what police had told reporters in the immediate aftermath of the disorder; those papers that did not include it in their stories may not have seen it as new information.

Following a meeting with several police leaders, including Commissioner Valentine, that lasted around an hour and a half, Dodge returned to his broad attacks on Communists. While the New York American and Home News stories suggested a statement (and the New York American reported slightly different wording), the New York Times reported Dodge as responding to questions from reporters. Dodge likely announced his plan to have the grand jury undertake a city-wide investigation of radical agitators. It was in answer to a question as to whether that investigation would be focused on Communists that Dodge asserted, "I am not interested in the labels by which they are known. We are interested in any people, no matter what they call themselves, who believe and advocate the overthrow of the Government.” He went on, “A challenge has been thrown down to law and order, and the Grand Jury, the District Attorney and the Police Department have accepted that challenge.” Despite repeated questions, he declined to offer further details. That it was late in the day by the time the meeting was over likely contributed to how few papers reported; other reporters had left.

Despite the unity of purpose Dodge claimed with the police department, Commissioner Valentine did not echo the DA’s plans to target Communists. He took the opportunity of appearing before reporters to announce a summary of the report Inspector Di Martini had submitted about the disorder. The New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York World-Telegram, and New York Times reported Valentine pointed to four causes for the disorder: "a Negro youth had been caught stealing, that a woman had screamed, that the 'Young Liberators' had met, that they had thereafter disseminated 'untruthful deceptive and inflammatory literature' and that all these events had been climaxed by the appearance of a hearse in the vicinity," as summarized by the New York Sun. The New York Times and Home News offered slightly longer summaries that described the woman who screamed as “hysterical” and the appearance of the hearse as “accidental.” The Daily Mirror mentioned only the role of the Young Liberators and the appearance of the hearse, quoting Valentine as saying that he believed “that the hearse which drew up in front of the store Tuesday was part of the plot.” The remaining reports of Valentine’s statements in the New York Post, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Daily Worker described him as simply blaming Communists for the disorder. The New York Post, New York Evening Journal, Times Union, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily News made no mention of Valentine's statement in their stories.

The reporter for the New York American also put a series of “written” questions to Valentine reflecting the newspaper’s anti-Communist agenda, asking: “Why are Communists allowed to roam in Harlem?"; "Why was the situation allowed to get out of control?"; and "Why were no steps taken to invoke the penal law regarding advocacy of criminal anarchy?” Only the New York Times joined the New York American in including his answers in its story, publishing more extensive answers to some questions, with the New York Evening Journal following suit the next day, while the New York Post summarized those answers as Valentine indicating “that his men would be careful not to violate constitutional rights of agitators.” Valentine had answered that the Constitution gave Communists the right to assemble, that the situation did not get out of control, and that there had been arrests under the criminal anarchy statute but “It is difficult to convict under this section. The smart fellow does not advocate anarchy. He is very cautious not to overstep himself."
MCCH members' meeting with La Guardia (March 22, 1935) The members of the MCCH gathered for the first time on March 22, to meet with Mayor La Guardia in his office at City Hall. That meeting must have been announced to the press, as multiple white newspapers reported it. The New York Evening Journal presented the meeting as “Answering criticism by Negro leaders that disturbed social and economic conditions in Harlem were the real cause of the rioting.” Together with the New York Times, that story quoted La Guardia as saying, '"Tell the newspapers… that what we need just now is cooperation. We hope they will reserve their criticism until the job is over. We trust they will give the committee a chance to operate, to see what can be done." The New York Herald Tribune emphasized the broad focus of the MCCH, an “investigation of the riot and the underlying causes” that would involve “a thorough social and economic study similar to that made after the Chicago race riots.”

While New York Evening Journal and another of the Hearst newspapers, the New York American, mentioned only that the meeting was going to happen, other white newspapers also published stories after the meeting. It lasted just over an hour, according to the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun, after which “the Mayor had nothing to say,” the New York Herald Tribune reported. Several members of the MCCH, however, did speak to journalists; the Daily Worker named Morris Ernst as speaking to its reporter. As the meeting had been presented as the start of the commission’s work, the stories in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, New York Sun, New York Post, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Daily Worker all focused on the extent to which that had occurred. As two of the members were absent — the New York Herald Tribune identified them as Hays and Villard — all those stories reported that the decision about the chairman was deferred until the next meeting on March 25, for which they provided a time and location, the 7th District Municipal Court, 447 West 151st Street, which would serve as the headquarters of the MCCH. While the New York Post presented the investigation in broad terms, other newspapers published comments from commission members more narrowly focused on the events of the disorder. The MCCH was working “to find remedies for the underlying causes of the outbreak,” as “it appears to be generally agreed that though agitators had a part in inciting the Harlem populace to the violence, the real cause of the trouble lies in deep-seated resentment against economic and social conditions,” in the New York Post’s story. By contrast, the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun both reported that “some” committee members said that many in Harlem did not believe that Lino Rivera was the boy who had been caught in the Kress store. Commission members also told at least the reporters from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Times that they had spent much of the last two days in Harlem trying to determine the causes of the disorder.

There are no minutes or any other record of the meeting in the files of the MCCH.
In court on March 21 On March 21, with the arraignments of 122 men and women arrested during the disorder completed, around seventy witnesses, mostly police officers together with a few Black residents, responded to subpoenas to appear before the grand jury convened by District Attorney Dodge. Who among that group actually testified, what evidence they provided, and who the grand jury voted to send for trial are not known as such proceedings took place behind closed doors. Only the number of people indicted was provided to journalists, twelve individuals named in seven indictments. At odds with what legal records indicate were the details of those charges, outside the grand jury room Dodge took the opportunity of the legal proceedings to expand the claims he had made the previous day that Communists were responsible for the disorder. So focused was he on Communists that a story in the New York Post noted that the “inquiry threatened to turn into a red-baiting campaign.”

Before the grand jury convened at 10:30 AM, Assistant District Attorney Saul Price interviewed several witnesses, including Lino Rivera, with whom he posed for photographs. Speaking to reporters, Price displayed a threatening postcard that had been sent to the boy’s home. It read: "Get out of this city or we will burn you alive. Fair Warning." Who might be responsible for the threat went unexplained, although it was largely only the anti-Communist press and tabloids who reported it. The journalists in attendance did not agree on whether Rivera was among the gathered witnesses who actually testified before the grand jury. Nor did they agree on how many testified, reporting numbers of witnesses ranging from twenty-five to thirty, suggesting the lack of an official source for that information.

Price was to have presented the witnesses to the grand jury, but Dodge changed his mind and took on that task himself. That gave the district attorney the opportunity to speak to reporters on his way in and out of the grand jury room. He offered up a series of staple anti-Communist charges and remedies to them that echoed the line taken by the Hearst newspapers. “The Reds have been boring into our institutions for a long time,” Dodge stated in his most widely reported claim, “but when they begin to incite to riot it is time to stop them.” More specifically, he charged that “Half the troubles in labor unions are caused by Reds” and that they had sent threatening letters to several judges who served in the Court of General Sessions. "They have been safe because we are sticklers for free speech, but when that free speech undermines our laws and causes riots drastic action must be taken.” Dodge promoted removing those found guilty from Home Relief rolls and deporting any found to be aliens. At that time he did not mention invoking the criminal anarchy law, an approach promoted in questions journalists from the anti-Communist Hearst newspaper the New York American later asked Police Commissioner Valentine. That would come the next day, after Dodge had to withdraw several indictments charging riot he would secure in the day’s hearing.

The grand jury voted a total of seven indictments charging twelve individuals in response to the evidence that Dodge presented to them. Two of those indictments charged five men with riot, almost certainly among them Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators arrested at the beginning of the disorder. Two additional indictments each charged an individual with assault, likely James Hughes, accused of throwing rocks which hit a police officer, and Isaac Daniels, who likewise had allegedly thrown rocks, in his case hitting a white storeowner. The remaining three indictments charged five individuals with burglary, for looting. Neither Hughes nor Daniels nor any of those indicted for burglary had any connection to the Communist Party.

While less than half of those indicted had any connection with the Communist Party, it was still the party who Dodge wanted to talk about on his way out of the hearing. "We have evidence that within two hours after that boy stole a knife the Reds had placed inflammatory leaflets on the streets. We know who printed those leaflets and where they were printed.” Pressed on his focus on Communists after a meeting with police officials later in the day, Dodge asserted, "I am not interested in the labels by which they are known. We are interested in any people, no matter what they call themselves, who believe and advocate the overthrow of the Government.” He went on, “A challenge has been made to law and order, and the Grand Jury, the District Attorney and the Police Department have accepted that challenge.” Despite the unity of purpose Dodge claimed with the police department, Commissioner Valentine did not echo the DA’s plans to target Communists. At the same press conference he summarized a police report that while identifying the Young Liberators disseminating "untruthful deceptive and inflammatory literature" as one cause of the disorder also pointed to three other causes that did not appear to be the responsibility of the Communist Party, "a Black youth caught stealing, a woman who screamed, and the appearance of a hearse." Such a disjuncture between Dodge’s rhetoric and the details of the disorder being reported led the New York Sun to editorialize dismissively that “seeing red is an official privilege, diversion and avocation at the moment; no disorder can occur without being attributed to those terror-inspiring Communists whose shadows darken the sky at noonday.” A distorted picture of the events of the disorder was not the only result of his anticommunism. His pursuit of Communists meant that the grand jury did not investigate the details of the violence of the disorder.

While Dodge focused on the role of Communists and the grand jury hearing began the process of deciding who should be tried and in what court, police brought two additional men arrested during the disorder to the Harlem Magistrates Court. They charged both with looting Benjamin Zelvin’s jewelry store. It is not clear why they had not been arraigned the day before. John Henry had been arrested in the company of Oscar Leacock, who had appeared in court the previous day. Henry, however, was only sixteen years of age, so police may have been confirming his age in case he was young enough to be sent to the juvenile court. Henry Goodwin was older, thirty-one years of age, but was missing from lists of those arrested police circulated to the press, so perhaps had been arrested later. Both were remanded to appear again the next day. No additional individuals arrested during the disorder appeared in the Washington Heights court, although one man, Louis Cobb, appeared again as police still did not have the information on his criminal record needed to set bail.