This page was created by Anonymous.

This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

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

"Harlem Death Toll Rises to 4; Mayor's Group Starts Probe; 2 More Succumb to Riot Injuries as Inquiry Begins," New York Post, March 23, 1935, 3.

In the New York Post

This page is referenced by:

Daniel Miller arrested Daniel Miller stepped up on a ladder in front of Kress' store about 6:15 PM and began to speak to a crowd he estimated at 100-200 people. The twenty-four-year-old white man who identified himself as a member of the Nurses and Hospital League had said only "Fellow workers" when someone in the crowd threw an object at the windows of the store, breaking one. Patrolman Timothy Shannon of the 28th Precinct, one of about five officers stationed in front of Kress' store, immediately pulled Miller from the ladder and arrested him. Sergeant Bowe testified in a public hearing of the MCCH that he was a "witness" to that arrest. James Parton, the Black man who had carried the ladder, and an American flag banner, to the front of the store and spoke briefly before Miller, was not arrested. Nor was Parton arrested when he climbed a lamppost on the opposite side of 125th Street and spoke to the crowd. However, Harry Gordon, a white man who followed Parton in climbing up the lamppost to speak, was, like Miller, immediately arrested.

Miller's testimony in a public hearing of the MCCH provided the most detailed description of his arrest. Patrolman Shannon also testified in an earlier public hearing, but he was not questioned about the arrest. Louise Thompson testified that she saw Miller begin to speak and the window broken. She did not see his arrest. Patrolman Moran did. Officers stationed with him in front of the store moved to arrest Miller and disperse the crowd listening to him as soon as the window was broken, he told a hearing of the MCCH. Two Hearst newspapers, the New York American and New York Evening Journal, published stories that described the arrest, but they included details that other sources indicate did not happen: Shannon arresting Miller after he refused an order to move on, with no mention of the widely reported broken window; and two white Young Liberators and Harry Gordon coming to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, and battling Shannon and two other patrolmen before also being arrested. Although the newspapers said their information came from police, these elements that did not happen seem to be a product of the anti-Communist stance and sensational style of the Hearst newspapers.

The lists of those arrested during the disorder published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York Evening Journal, the Daily News, the New York American, and the New York Herald Tribune all included Miller among those charged with inciting a riot. However, Miller, and the three other white men arrested in front of Kress' store, are not in the transcript of the 28th Precinct police blotter in the MCCH records. Margaret Mitchell, the Black woman arrested inside Kress' store before Miller's arrest, and Claudio Viabolo, the Black Young Liberator arrested with two white companions soon after Miller, do appear in the transcription. That discrepancy suggests that the white men were omitted from the transcription, perhaps overlooked because they were somehow less readily identified as participants in the disorder among others arrested for unrelated activities at that time.

Miller was among around eighty-nine men and women arrested put in a line-up and questioned by detectives in front of reporters at Police Headquarters downtown on the morning of March 20, before being loaded into patrol wagons and taken back uptown to the Harlem and Washington Heights Magistrates Courts. Police put him on the platform in a group with Gordon and the three Young Liberators, Samuels, Jamison and Viabolo, a New York Herald Tribune story noted; it reported that police described them as all "arrested at a demonstration in front of the Kress store." That grouping was not mentioned in the two other newspaper stories about the line-up, with the Daily Mirror and New York Sun, as well as the New York Herald Tribune focusing on Harry Gordon refusing to answer questions until he saw his lawyer.

The Daily News and New York Evening Journal published photographs taken a few seconds apart that are captioned as showing the four white men arrested outside Kress’ store in the West 123rd Street police station on their way to the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Surrounded on three sides by both uniformed police and detectives in plainclothes, three white men are visible, with another white man party visible behind them, all but the first, identified in the caption as Harry Gordon, looking at the ground. Miller was the man on the right of the group, according to the captions. To his right is a Black man, almost certainly Viabolo, as police had grouped him with these men in the line-up earlier that day, and would again in the courthouse. He was not identified in the captions, and, perhaps as a result, cropped out of versions of the photograph published by several regional newspapers. Reflecting its anti-Communist focus, the New York Evening Journal placed the photograph on page one, across the whole width of the page, with a caption labeling the men “young college-bred Communists.” The next page featured photographs of two placards used in the picket, and the leaflets circulated by both the Young Liberators and the Communist Party. The Daily News photograph, taken at almost the same moment, appeared in the center of a two-page spread of photographs of the disorder in the center of the newspaper. The caption did not identify the men as Communists but as inciting the riot, focusing on drawing a contrast between their uninjured appearances and the damage done during the disorder. (Gordon later testified he had been beaten and had injuries to his face; he may be the man whose face was not visible in that photograph notwithstanding the caption.)

Police continued to group Miller with the other four men when they were appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court. In stories on the court appearances, the New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Times all described the men as the "ringleaders" of the disorder, which was likely the term police used. However, while the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram and Daily Mirror included all five men in that group, the New York American, Home News, and New York Times omitted Gordon. That difference appears to have resulted from Gordon being charged separately from Miller and the other three men. That separation would have resulted from the different arresting officer listed in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book for Gordon, Patrolman Irwin Young, not Patrolman Shannon, the arresting officer recorded for the four other men. The charge recorded for Gordon was also different, assaulting Young, not inciting riot. The Daily News claimed Gordon "was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers."

In the Harlem Magistrates Court Miller was charged with inciting a riot, as were Jameson, Samuels and Viabolo. When their names were called, two lawyers from the International Labor Defense Fund rose to represent them. The appearance of those attorneys was reported by the New York American, Daily Mirror, Home News, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, New York World-Telegram and Daily Worker but for some reason they were not recorded in the column for the name and address of a defendant's lawyer in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book (a section completed for Harry Gordon). The ILD's affiliation with the Communist Party would have been well-known to readers of those newspapers, but the Daily Mirror explicitly made the connection in its story, stating that the men's "Communistic affiliations were declared" by the identity of their attorneys. The Daily Mirror and Daily Worker named the lawyers as "Miss Yetta M. Aronsky and I[sidore] Englander," while Daily News named only Aronsky, and the New York American, New York Herald Tribune and New York Times reported only "a woman lawyer" who would not give her name to their reporters. (Englander later testified about being present in the court in a public hearing of the MCCH).

Assistant District Attorney Richard E. Carey, the Black attorney Magistrate Renaud had requested prosecute those arrested in the disorder, according to the Daily News, requested the men be held for a hearing on Friday on the maximum bail of $2500. The men's ILD lawyers protested that sum. Other arrested during the disorder charged with felonies had their bail set at $1000, including Harry Gordon. Magistrate Renaud dismissed those protests, and complaints by Aronsky, reported by the Daily News and Daily Worker that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest."

When Miller returned to the Harlem Magistrates Court with the three Young Liberators, Magistrate Ford dismissed the charges against the group because the grand jury had indicted them in response to evidence presented by District Attorney Dodge as part of his investigation of the disorder. The Magistrates Court docket book records the deposition of the men's cases as "Dism[issed], def[endant] indicted." Stories in the Daily Mirror and New York Amsterdam News also reported they had been indicted by the grand jury. However, while the grand jury did send the men for trial, it was for a misdemeanor, not a felony, so an information that sent them to the Court of Special Sessions, not an indictment that would have sent them to the Court of General Sessions. Other stories included elements of that distinction. The New York American reported that after being discharged the men were "turned over to detectives with bench warrants based on the Grand Jury informations voted last week charging inciting to riot." The New York Herald Tribune also reported "two informations charging five persons with inciting riot" without naming them; so too did the Daily News, which alone specified that an information charged a misdemeanor and that the men were sent for trial in the Court of Special Sessions. The grand jury also sent all the other individuals charged with inciting a riot that appeared before it to the Court of Special Sessions to face trial for misdemeanors. Testifying in a public hearing of the MCCH, Miller said he was charged with unlawful assembly. That crime involving disturbing the peace, not efforts to prevent the enforcement of the law or incite force or violence.

As other prosecutions resulting from the riot made their way through the courts there were no reports mentioning Miller, or Jameson, Samuels and Viabolo. Finally, on June 20, the four men appeared in the Court of Special Sessions — the New York Amsterdam News reported an additional defendant, a "young sympathizer," Dave Mencher, not mentioned in any other sources or in the Daily Worker story, the only other report of this trial located. Only one prosecution witness testified before the court's three judges, Sergeant Bauer of the West 123rd Street station (likely the sergeant who testified at the public hearings that he was involved in the arrest, although his name was recorded as Bowe in the transcript). It is not clear why Patrolman Timothy Shannon, the arresting officer, did not appear as a witness. International Labor Defence lawyers again represented the men, but not the same attorneys as on the day after the disorder. Instead, Joseph Tauber and Edward Kuntz, who played prominent roles in the MCCH public hearings, represented the men. After cross-examining Bauer to establish that a crowd had collected in front of Kress' store prior to the men arriving, the attorneys moved to have the charges of inciting a riot dismissed. The judges agreed, and freed Miller and the three other men.

Miller's home address is recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book as 1280 South Boulevard in the Bronx. That address is also published by the Daily Mirror, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York American, New York Times, and New York Age. However, the New York Evening Journal reported that address did not exist. A different address was published in the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York American, and New York Amsterdam News: 35 Morningside Avenue, between West 117th and 118th Streets, two blocks west of 8th Avenue. That address fits the information he gave in the MCCH public hearing. All those newspaper stories are reports of Miller's appearance in court, suggesting that the Morningside Avenue address was mentioned at that time even if it was not recorded in the docket book. Miller's organization, the Nurses and Hospital League, had an office downtown at 799 Broadway, identified in the New York Post, New York American, and Daily Worker as raided by police investigating the disorder that was outside Harlem.
August Miller killed Around midnight, August Miller, a fifty-six-year-old white handyman, suffered a head injury in the midst of a crowd at 126th Street and Lenox Avenue. A cab driver took him to the Joint Disease Hospital, according to the police complaint report. It was 12:30 AM when Dr. Millbank attended Miller, so likely around midnight when he collapsed in the crowd. Millbank diagnosed him as suffering a possible skull fracture "received in some unknown manner during disorder," according to hospital records, and admitted him for treatment. However, after Miller died on March 22, the medical examiner conducted an autopsy which he reported showed that the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage, “a natural cause, nothing suspicious.”

Miller appeared in three of the seven newspaper lists of the injured published on March 20, those in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American, among those the New York Herald Tribune reported still in hospital on March 21, and among those listed as injured in the Atlanta World on March 27. His death was widely reported on March 23, in some cases with information on how he had been killed. The most direct explanations came in stories published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, and Times Union, and in the Associated Press story, which reported Miller had been "beaten by rioters." The Home News offered the additional detail that Miller was "struck by several bricks, knocked down and kicked around by the mob." The New York Times and New York Sun did not attribute Miller's death to anyone, only going as far as saying Miller was "in the midst of rioters" when injured, while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle even more obliquely said his death came "during the height of the disorders." The New York Post implied he had been assaulted in a different way. Noting where he had been injured, the story added that, "He was one of the half a dozen white men seriously hurt during the disturbance." Lists of those killed in the Daily News and stories in the New York Herald Tribune and in the Black newspapers the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News, as well as the lists of those killed published in the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide and Pittsburgh Courier simply listed Miller's injury, a fractured skull.

Miller himself never described what happened to him. It was the taxi driver who brought him to the hospital who provided the information on where he had collapsed to the nurse to whom he delivered Miller, according to the detective who investigated the case. Soon after Miller arrived in the hospital, he briefly regained consciousness. Patrolman Anthony Kaminsky, who had been called when the injured man was admitted, was able to question him. After asking his name, address and age, the officer told a hearing of the MCCH that he asked "how he received his injuries?" As Miller started to answer, he lost consciousness again. He died on March 22 without again regaining consciousness.

Detective John O'Brien was assigned to investigate Miller's injury at 2:00 AM; at the time he was in the midst of investigating the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs. He visited the location where Miller had been injured, questioning business owners, residents, and taxi drivers without finding witnesses to what had happened or locating the taxi driver who had brought him to the hospital. As a result, O'Brien was unable to establish the circumstances of Miller's injury. The detective also visited Miller's home, 1674 McCombs Road in the Bronx, and spoke with the superintendents of the building who employed him as a handyman. They had seen him there about midnight. There was also no information on why he traveled to Harlem, but he must have collapsed almost as soon as he arrived, likely by subway. His employers did report Miller had been “acting peculiar for some months previous.” His family were in Germany, so his employers identified the body. Confusingly, when O'Brien testified at a public hearing of the MCCH on April 20, he mentioned speaking to Miller's sister, who had seen him around 10:00 PM, a meeting not recorded in police records. When the medical examiner reported that he had not died as a result of a fractured skull or suspiciously, O'Brien closed his investigation on March 24.

The version of the case reported to Arthur Garfield Hays by Hyman Glickstein, the lawyer from his law firm working to gather evidence for the MCCH subcommittee on crime, gave the police a greater role that clearly raised their suspicions about the circumstances of Miller's injury: "According to police report [Miller] died of natural causes and was merely picked up by the police in a dead or dying condition." Once testimony in the public hearing put a taxi driver in the place of police in delivering the injured man to the hospital, little basis remained for holding them responsible for Miller's injuries. However, ILD lawyers who questioned Detective O'Brien when he testified about his investigation at a hearing of the MCCH remained unconvinced that Miller died of natural causes. Rather, they suggested he had been struck by police, and his injury had not been accurately reported to prevent officers from being charged. Eventually, Hays cut off their questioning of O'Brien, saying it had no basis unless somebody could "provide evidence how Miller came by his injuries."

Miller was included in lists of those killed in the disorder published on March 23 and 24, and in Black weekly newspapers on March 30, without mention of the autopsy. On March 31 the Home News also included him in its count of those killed in the disorder even while noting that Miller's death "was later found to have been due to heart disease, probably aggravated by exertion and excitement." The Daily News, New York American, Daily Mirror, Times Union, the Associated Press, Afro American, and Chicago Defender reported the death of Lloyd Hobbs on March 30 as the fourth death resulting from the disorder without specifying the other three individuals killed. None of those newspapers included Edward Laurie among those killed, so they also still included Miller after the autopsy, along with James Thompson and Andrew Lyons. So too did the New York Herald Tribune, which identified Hobbs as the fifth death resulting from the riot. (The Daily Worker initially reported Hobbs as the fourth death, on April 1, but a week later referred to him as the third death, while the New York Times reported his death without reference to how many others had been killed).
Leaflets distributed The Young Liberators printed a one-page mimeographed leaflet in the early evening of March 19. Just where they distributed the leaflet was uncertain. "Some white youngsters were passing out handbills" when a reporter for the Afro-American arrived at 125th Street and 7th Avenue at 7:14 PM. Louise Thompson saw people with the leaflet on that corner just after 8:00 PM, suggesting a focus on 125th Street. “They were hurriedly passed put among the throngs of Negro idlers up and down teeming 125th Street,” according to the sensationalized story in Time magazine. The New York American claimed, “These papers received wide circulation throughout Harlem.” The leaflet was also pasted on building walls, according to the New York Evening Journal. Reading its text incited the crowds that had gathered on 125th Street, the police and District Attorney William Dodge claimed, making the Young Liberators, who they considered Communists, responsible for the disorder. The MCCH did not agree. Based on testimony from Louise Thompson that the leaflet did not appear on 125th Street until sometime between 7:30 PM and 8:00 PM, the MCCH's final report concluded that the Young Liberators “were not responsible for the disorder and attacks on property which were already in full swing.” By 7:30 PM, “Already a tabloid in screaming headlines was telling the city that a riot was going on in Harlem,” the MCCH report also noted. Louise Thompson identified that newspaper as the Daily Mirror. Later on March 19, the Communist Party distributed a leaflet, after the Young Liberators approached them, concerned about the growing disorder, according to James Ford’s testimony in a MCCH public hearing. He said that leaflet was “written and distributed” about “9 or 10 o’clock.” Leaflets were still in circulation on Harlem’s streets around 2:00 AM. Sgt. Samuel Battle told a public hearing of the MCCH he came into possession of two or three at that time, without specifying which of the two leaflets.

Both leaflets identified Kress store staff as responsible for the violence against Rivera with only passing mention of police. That narrative focused protests on the store, and white businesses, Bosses, more generally, rather than police, or the white population. In terms of that framework, attacks on Kress’ store, and on other white businesses later in the disorder, appeared not straightforwardly as attacks on property and economic power, but also as retaliation against violence by those who owned and worked in those businesses

A mimeographed page, the Young Liberators’ leaflet combined handwritten and typewritten text. At the top, the handwritten text read, “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman attacked by Boss and Cops = Child near DEATH.” The remaining typewritten text read:
ONE HOUR AGO A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD NEGRO BOY WAS BRUTALLY BEATEN BY THE MANAGEMENT OF KRESS FIVE-AND-TEN-CENT STORE.
THE BOY IS NEAR DEATH
HE WAS MERCILESSLY BEATEN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT HE HAD ‘STOLEN’ A FIVE CENT KNIFE.
A NEGRO WOMAN WHO SPRANG TO THE DEFENSE OF THE BOY HAD HER ARMS BROKEN BY THESE THUGS AND WAS THEN ARRESTED.
WORKERS, NEGROES AND WHITE, PROTEST AGAINST THIS LYNCH ATTACK ON INNOCENT NEGRO PEOPLE. DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE BOY AND WOMAN.
DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE ARREST OF THE MANAGER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LYNCH ATTACK.
DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM.
JOIN THE PICKET LINE
ISSUED BY YOUNG LIBERATORS.

Predictably, the anti-Communist Hearst newspaper the New York Evening Journal gave the greatest space to the leaflet, publishing both the full text of the Young Liberators' leaflet and photographs of it (and the Communist Party leaflet and two placards carried by pickets, under the headline "Insidious Propaganda That Started Harlem Riot," and a front-page photograph of the men arrested protesting in front of Kress’ store). A portion of the Young Liberators' leaflet appeared in a combination of Associated Press photographs published in several newspapers. In addition to the New York Evening Journal, the Home News, New York World-Telegram, and the New Republic published the text of the leaflet. The New York Herald Tribune quoted only about half of the leaflet, stopping after the first use of “lynch attack.” None of those published versions of the circular included the final line, “JOIN THE PICKET.” That line did appear in the version published by the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the only Black publication in which the leaflets were reproduced. That line was in the photograph published in the New York Evening Journal, in the version of the leaflet in the MCCH’s final report, and was raised by Hays in the public hearing of the MCCH (James Taylor, the leader of the Young LIberators answered that he did not know to what it referred). The text published in the Home News omitted the line DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM and substituted instead “Demand the hiring of Negro workers in Harlem department stores. Boycott the store." That phrase transposed the call not to buy in the store into the terms of boycott of the campaigns of the previous year to effectively treat the tactic as having a single goal. The New York Post quoted only the handwritten headline of the leaflet, the characterization of the incident as “this lynch attack,” and the call for protest. Time quoted only the headline, and the Afro-American only the first two phrases from the headline and omitted “boss” so that the charge of violence was only against police. Quotations in the New York Sun were garbled versions of the actual leaflet text and included words and phrases that appeared but in the wrong form: "A Child Brutally Beaten." "A Twelve-Year-Old Child Was Brutally Beaten for Stealing a Knife from a Five and Ten Cent Store." "Workers Protest Against This Lynch Attack." The Daily News misreported the leaflet as making the more provocative charge that the boy had been beaten to death. Initial stories about the disorder published by the New York Times and New York American did not mention the leaflet but added them to their narrative the next day, March 21.

The Communist Party leaflet, also a mimeographed page, similarly began with handwritten text that read, “FOR UNITY OF NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS! DON'T LET THE BOSSES START RACE RIOTS IN HARLEM!”. The typewritten portion went on:
The brutal beating of the 12-year-old boy, Riviera, by Kress's special guard, for taking a piece of candy, again proves the increasing terror against the Negro people of Harlem. Bosses, who deny the most immediate necessities from workers' children, who throw workers out of employment, who pay not even enough to live on, are protecting their so-called property rights by brutal beatings, as in the case of the boy Riviera. They shoot both Negro and white workers in strikes all over the country. They lynch Negro people in the South on framed-up charges.
The bosses and police are trying to bring the lynch spirit right here to Harlem. The bosses would welcome nothing more than a fight between the white and Negro workers of our community, so that they may be able to continue to rule over both the Negro and white workers.
Our answer to the brutal beating of this boy, by one of the flunkies of Mr. Kress, must be an organized and determined resistance against the brutal attacks of the bosses and the police.
WORKERS, NEGRO AND WHITE: DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE DISMISSAL AND ARREST AND PROSECUTION OF THE SPECIAL GUARD AND THE MANAGER OF THE STORE.
DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS ARRESTED.
DEMAND THE HIRING OF NEGRO WORKERS IN ALL DEPARTMENT STORES IN HARLEM
DON'T LET BOSSES START ANY RACE RIOTS IN HARLEM.
DON'T TRADE IN KRESSES.

Issued by
Communist Party
Young Communist League

The Daily Worker published the Communist Party leaflet text, while not publishing the Young Liberators' leaflet, perhaps because the public position of the Young Liberators was that the organization was not affiliated with the Communist Party. The handwritten headline of that leaflet appeared at the end of the story in the New York World-Telegram, after the full text of the Young Liberators' leaflet: “In another manifesto, signed by the Communist party and the Young Peoples’ League, a plea was made “for unity of Negro and white workers—don’t let the bosses start race riots in Harlem!” While the New York Evening Journal published a photograph of the leaflet, no other white newspapers reproduced the text, nor did it appear in the MCCH final report. The Norfolk Journal and Guide was the only Black publication in which the leaflet text was published.

Initial newspaper stories reported that police said that the leaflets were responsible for moving the crowds on 125th Street to violence. The sensationalized version of that story employed metaphors of fire that placed the leaflets at the start of the disorder: leaflets were the “match which ignited Harlem and pitted its teeming thousands against the police and white spectators and shopkeepers” in the Daily News, “inflammatory handbills, the spark that fired the tinder” in Newsweek, and "inflame the populace" in a New York Age editorial; and in the New York Sun and Daily Mirror leaflets fanned the crowd’s fury. The New York Evening Journal opted for a more racist image evoking slavery, in which the leaflet was “largely responsible for whipping the Negroes to a frenzy.” The New York Age columnist the "Flying Cavalier" described the leaflets as as an example of the Communist "technique in the making up of their messages which would incite a lamb to jump on a tiger—if the lamb didn’t think first." Other newspapers framed the leaflets in terms of rumors: as having started the rumor in the New York Herald Tribune, as “the chief agency which spread the rumor" in the Home News; and as having “helped spread resentment” in the New York Post. (The New York World-Telegram described the leaflet without giving it a specific role; the “tinder for the destructive conflict” was the rumor that a boy had been beaten and killed, “assiduously spread by Communists.”) Writing in the New Republic, white journalist Hamilton Basso devoted two paragraphs to weighing the role the leaflet played in the disorder. He concluded that it “helped to rouse the crowds to violence,” but rejected the idea that the leaflet’s purpose “was deliberately to provoke a race riot” as requiring belief in “the stupid Red Scare of the Hearst press.”

The only direct evidence of when the Young Liberators' leaflet was distributed came from Louise Thompson. She told a public hearing of the MCCH that the leaflets were not in circulation when she left 125th Street around 7:30 PM. It was when Thompson returned around 8:00 PM that she “first saw the leaflet” in the hands of several people, but not anyone handing them out. Thompson was not a disinterested witness; as a member of the Communist Party, she would not have wanted to see them held responsible for the disorder. L. F. Cole, who like Thompson had been inside Kress’ store after Rivera was grabbed but was not a Communist, told the MCCH he saw pamphlets in the crowd around 8:00 PM (the number is smudged in the transcript so that time was uncertain). Inspector Di Martini’s report supported that timeline, locating the appearance of “a number of pamphlets under the heading of the YL and YCP” after the crowd that gathered the rear of Kress’ store around 7:00 PM had been dispersed. Presumably that timing was based on the statements of officers on 125th Street — but not Patrolman Moran, who told the MCCH he was on duty in front of Kress’ store from 6:00 PM throughout the night and did not see leaflets passed out. Copies of the leaflets were attached to the report. They may have been the copies that Lieutenant Battle told the MCCH public hearing that he had gathered near the end of the disorder, around 2:00 AM.

Newspaper stories presented a different timeline that had the leaflet appear earlier, around 6:00 PM, for which there was no direct evidence. The New York Evening Journal and Home News, the New York Post the next day, and the New Republic, reported that the Young Liberators' leaflet appeared about an hour after Kress’ staff grabbed Rivera, which would have been around 3:30 PM. When District Attorney William Dodge spoke to reporters on March 20, the Daily News, New York World-Telegram, and New York American reported him as saying that the leaflets appeared within two hours of the incident in the store. No one at the scene described that timeline. It was likely based on the text of the leaflet, which read “One hour ago a twelve-year-old boy was brutally beaten by the management of Kress five-and-ten-cent store.” At that time, however, the Young Liberators were unaware of what had happened in the store. It was not until around 5:00 PM, as police were clearing people from Kress’ store, that a Black man brought news to the offices of the Young Liberators, James Taylor testified. Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, was asked about the timing referred to in the leaflet; he replied that he did not know whether that was correct. The New York Times story reporting Dodge’s comments had the “first of the Communist handbills” appear at 6:00 PM. That timeline was at least plausible; it would have been around an hour after the Young Liberators learned of an incident in Kress’ store. It was not, however, a timeframe that fitted with Di Martini’s report. The Daily News had the Young Liberators distributing the leaflets as they picketed Kress’ store at a time not specified in the story. However, that detail was part of the truncated timeline police provided that had all five alleged Communists that they arrested arriving at Kress’ store at the same time rather than separately over a period of forty-five minutes starting around 6:00 PM as testimony from those at the scene indicated. The pickets were the final protesters to arrive at Kress’ store at around 6:45 PM. Thompson saw them so would have seen leaflets had they been distributed at that time.

William Ford’s testimony in a MCCH public hearing was the only evidence related to the origins and timing of the Communist Party pamphlet. The leaflet appeared after members of the Young Liberators visited Ford about an hour after distributing their leaflet, he testified. They “were very much disturbed” that “these leaflets had not been able to allay mass resentment in Harlem,” and instead “a rumor had got around that a race riot had started in Harlem.” The Communist Party immediately produced a leaflet intended “to stop race rioting,” Ford testified, and he went to Harlem around 8:00 PM. The leaflet arrived an hour or two later, about “9 or 10 o’clock.” The MCCH report stated that that Communist Party leaflet was issued “about the same time” as the Young Liberators’ leaflet. None of the newspapers mentioned the time that the leaflet was distributed.

District Attorney William Dodge and Police Commissioner Valentine both amplified the police narrative when they spoke to reporters on March 20 after Dodge's appearance before the grand jury to seek indictments against alleged participants in the disorder. Valentine summarized Di Martini’s “departmental report on the cause of the rioting” as detailing “that 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,” the New York Sun reported, a chronology also reported in the New York American, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. (The hearse was not the final element in Di Martini’s report; it was mentioned before the Young Liberators). Two days later, Dodge showed the grand jury a typewriter and mimeograph machine. The fruits of police raids on the offices of several organizations affiliated with the Communist Party, the machines were used to produce the Young Liberators’ leaflet, he told the grand jury, according to stories in New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, New York American, Daily News, and New York Times. (The mimeograph machine was taken from the Nurses and Hospital Workers League, the organization which employed one of the men arrested for trying to speak in front of Kress’ store, Daniel Miller, the New York Post and New York American reported.) According to the Daily News, after the grand jury examined that material, “Dodge said arrests might be expected momentarily.” There were no reports of any arrests related to the leaflets.

Mayor La Guardia did not echo the district attorney and police commissioner in directly blaming Communists for the disorder. While his statement distributed and displayed in Harlem the evening after the disorder followed the same police narrative, and mentioned the leaflets, it did not present them as triggering the disorder. Instead, he used them to characterize those responsible: “The maliciousness and viciousness of the instigators are betrayed by the false statements contained in mimeographed handbills and placards.” That statement indirectly implicated the Young Liberators and Communist Party, who had signed the leaflets. However, the circular presented the disorder as “instigated and artificially stimulated by a few irresponsible individuals” who went unnamed. Questioned by journalists, La Guardia "would not say whether he agreed with the police that the instigators were Communists," the New York Herald Tribune reported.

Newspaper stories about the MCCH public hearing treated the testimony regarding the time at which the leaflets appeared in a variety of ways. The New York Herald Tribune and an editorial in the New York Amsterdam News highlighted how that testimony undermined what police said in the aftermath of the disorder. “Reds' Handbills Are Cleared As 'Chief Cause' of Harlem Riot” was the headline of the New York Herald Tribune story, which reported that “The committee learned that the circulars did not appear on the streets until 8:30 PM, fully two hours after the worst of the rioting was over. Therefore, the committee was asked by Communist lawyers to conclude that the literature could not have been a cause of much loss of property or life.” The New York Amsterdam News editorial, “The Road is Clear,” described the testimony that “The much-publicized Young Liberator pamphlets, carrying the false reports, did not appear on the streets until two hours after the worst rioting was over” as “one important fact” established by the MCCH. “With the red herring out of the way,” the editorial went on, “the investigating body can set out to probe the basic factors which really precipitated the riots - the discrimination, exploitation and oppression of 204,000 American citizens in the most liberal city in America. The New York Age, Home News and New York Times reported the testimony on when the leaflets appeared without addressing the implications of that evidence for the police narrative of the disorder. The New York American and Daily News mentioned other aspects of Taylor’s testimony about the leaflet but not when it was distributed, with the Daily News continuing to describe the leaflet as having "brought the riot into being." No mention of testimony about the leaflet appeared in stories about the hearing in the New York World-Telegram, Times Union, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal. In other words, the anti-Communist Hearst newspapers that had given the most attention to the leaflets did not respond to the testimony at odds with their narrative.
Andrew Lyons killed Andrew Lyons, a thirty-seven-year-old Black man, died as a result of injuries "sustained during the thick of a melee at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue," according to a story in the New York Amsterdam News. Stories in two white newspapers reported the circumstances of Lyons' injury in similar, slightly more specific terms as the result of having been "beaten over the head with a blunt instrument," according to the Times Union. The New York Herald Tribune added that "rioters" had delivered the beating. However, the white newspapers located the assault a block to the east, at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue. None of the stories provided information on when Lyons was injured. Both the white newspapers incorrectly gave Lyons' home address as 210 Lenox Avenue. Only the New York Amsterdam News published the correct address, 147 West 117th Street.

There was no indication of the source of the information reported in the New York Amsterdam News, New York Herald Tribune, and Times Union. No evidence of the circumstances in which Lyons was injured was produced for the MCCH. One of Communist Party-affiliated lawyers who questioned Captain Rothengast during a MCCH hearing did claim that "Andrew Lyons died of injuries inflicted by clubs of the police." Rothengast replied, "I'd have to consult records to be exact." The MCCH had its investigators gather information on those killed during the disorder. In Lyons' case, the only material in their files were the death and autopsy records.

The medical records showed that Lyons did not receive medical attention until the evening after the disorder. An ambulance was called to his home, 147 West 117th Street, at 5:10 PM on March 20, by a friend, George Harris, according to the death record issued by Harlem Hospital. When Lyons arrived at the hospital, he was was described as "stuporous," too groggy to tell doctors what had happened to him. The doctor who completed the death record, Emanuel Hauer, wrote that Lyons was "said to have been hit on the head during riot on 3-19-35." He told a MCCH hearing that it was Harris who told him that Lyons "came home [on the night of March 19] stuporous" and had gone to bed. Harris also said he did not know what had happened to Lyons. The ambulance man's report, which Hauer read to the MCCH hearing, simply recorded that Lyons had been "Struck over the head" not that he had been hit during the disorder. Nor did the autopsy report completed on March 24. It recorded that Lyons had been "injured in some unknown manner." Lyons died three days after being admitted to hospital, on March 23rd; the recorded cause of death was a "fractured skull, laceration of the brain, terminal pneumonia." His brother James, a resident of Stem, North Carolina, identified his body on March 25, according to the autopsy. Although the autopsy also noted "Detectives investigating" the death, there were no avenues for investigation in the records. Likely as a result, Lyons' death appeared to have remained unexplained.

Given that their was no evidence of clashes between "rioters" and Black men on the streets during the disorder, the ILD lawyer who questioned Rothengast was likely correct that Lyons' injuries came from a police baton. The intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue saw the most sustained clashes between police and crowds on the street, so the beating probably occurred where it was reported by the New York Amsterdam News. Clashes between police and people on the street occurred there from 8:00 PM until around 10:30 PM. The Black newspaper also correctly reported Lyons' address, which the white newspapers that reported the alternative location did not.

Lyons' delayed admission to hospital explained why he was not in any lists of the injured published in newspapers on March 20 and March 21. The first mentions of Lyons in the press were reports of his death in the New York Post and Daily News on March 23, in the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, New York Times, and an AP story on March 24, and in the Atlanta World on March 27. Lyons also appeared in lists of those killed published in the weekly Black newspapers, the New York Age, Pittsburgh Courier, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, as well as the New York Amsterdam News, on March 30.
In Harlem court on March 23 (6) All the city's major newspapers reported the hearings in the Harlem Court even as they involved just five men and one woman arrested in the disorder being sentenced on the minor charge of disorderly conduct. Only the New York Evening Journal story referred to conditions at the court, that "special squadrons of police stood guard outside." Given that previous stories in other newspapers had mentioned similar deployments, their failure to do so on this occasion likely indicates that additional police were not actually present. The New York Evening Journal was also alone in directly drawing attention to what the charges and outcomes reported in the stories indicated, that those sentenced were "minor offenders in the outbreak."

The woman, Margaret Mitchell, was mentioned in all those stories. Those stories continued to confuse her with a woman on 125th Street who screamed that Rivera had been killed some time after Mitchell’s arrest. They presented Mitchell's actions as having started the disorder, a claim that publications presented in different ways. The New York American reported Mitchell "started" the disorder, the Afro-American and New York Times that she "provoked" it (a claim they attributed to police), the Daily News that she "precipitated" it, the New York Evening Journal that she "set-off" the disorder, the New York Herald Tribune that she was "the spark which fired the riot," a claim attributed to police, and the Home News and New York Amsterdam News that she "stirred up the mob." More qualified claims were presented in the New York World-Telegram, that she only "helped stir Harlem mobs to rioting," and the New York Age, that she "precipitated" the disorder, but that the reaction to her outcry was "magnified to riot proportions by Communist literature." The New York Post opted for a more specific framing that more clearly captured the scope of Mitchell's responsibility, that she was "instrumental in starting the rumor that led to the riots." The Daily Worker did not ascribe any responsibility to Mitchell, describing her only as having "raised the outcry." The headlines to stories in the in the Home News and New York World-Telegram described Mitchell as the "cause" of the disorder (notwithstanding the more qualified statement in the later story itself), and "Blamed for Riot" in the New York Times. Mitchell shared the description in newspaper headlines of having caused the riot with Lino Rivera.

Only the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Home News reported that Mitchell told Renaud that she was "sorry." Whatever her role, Magistrate Renaud determined it was not "malicious" or intended to have the consequences it did. That statement appeared in only the New York Times, New York World-Telegram, Home News, and New York Age, and implicitly in the New York American, which did not mention Renaud, but described Mitchell as having "unwittingly" started the disorder. By contrast, the New York Herald Tribune reported that Reanud "lectured Miss Mitchell on keeping the peace." No story mentioned her lawyer, who likely would have had some role in promoting Renaud's assessment. The magistrate's judgement was reflected in the light sentence he imposed, reported as a choice between a $10 fine and three days in the Workhouse in the New York Times, New York Evening Journal, Daily Worker, New York Age, and Afro-American and simply as a fine in the Daily News, New York American, New York World-Telegram, Home News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Amsterdam News. However, Mitchell's sentence proved to be more punitive than those given to most of the others arrested for inciting crowds: six of the seven received suspended sentences, the other a month in the Workhouse.

Four of the five men sentenced at the same time were reported as charged with breaking windows, rather than the actual offense, disorderly conduct, in the Daily News, New York Times, Home News, New York World-Telegram, New York Age, and Afro-American, while the offense was reported in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and New York American. Unlike Leo Smith, James Bright, and Arthur Bennett, there was no other evidence that John Hawkins had broken windows. Initially charged with riot, in the analysis he has been classified with those inciting riot. The Home News, New York American, New York World-Telegram, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal did not name the men. While the Daily News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Home News, and the New York Age and Afro-American, identified a white man, Leo Smith, among that group, his presence went unmentioned in the New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and New York American. In the later two Hearst newspapers, that silence fitted their emphasis on white men and women as victims of violence during the disorder. The men were not mentioned at all in the New York Amsterdam News. The fifth man, Rivers Wright, had been charged with assault. None of the stories mentioned a charge in his case, only his conviction of disorderly assault and lesser sentence, ten days in the Workhouse compared to thirty days for the other men.
Rivers Wright arrested Detective Doyle of the 5th Division arrested Rivers Wright, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, for allegedly being part of a group of men who attacked an unnamed white man at 125th St and Lenox Avenue at some point in the disorder. Wright lived at 2137 7th Avenue, a block west and two blocks north of the site of the alleged assault, and in the heart of the disorder. Police arrived at the intersection around 11:00 PM, so Doyle likely arrested Wright around then or later.

Only one source provided any details of the circumstances of his arrest. The Home News reported on March 21 that Wright was arrested "after he and a number of others are said to have attacked a white man at 125th St and Lenox Ave." Wright appeared in lists of those arrested during the disorder in the Atlanta World, Afro-American,and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York American, New York Evening Journal, and Daily News.

Among the first arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Wright was charged with disorderly conduct, not assault, as was the case with half of those arrested for assault. As the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," police did not appear to have evidence that Wright participated in the assault. Instead, he may have been part of a crowd nearby, caught up in police efforts to arrest those responsible for the assault. Those circumstances fitted the definition of the offense.

Disorderly conduct was an offense that was adjudicated by a magistrate rather than referred to another court as was the case with misdemeanor and felony offenses. Magistrate Renaud convicted Wright and remanded him for sentence on March 23. On that date, he sent Wright to the Workhouse for ten days. His appearance was widely reported, in stories that named him in the Daily News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and New York Age and stories in which he was unnamed in the New York World-Telegram, New York American, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and Home News. None of those stories mentioned what Wright had allegedly done. Four other men convicted of disorderly conduct sentenced at the same time, after being charged with breaking windows, received terms of thirty days. The disparity in sentence offered further evidence that Wright had not actually been involved in the alleged assault.
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.
Dodge grand jury hearing, March 22 (4) Despite Dodge’s statements that the grand jury investigation of the disorder would be as extensive on March 22 as it had been the previous day, it heard only eight witnesses give evidence, less than a third of the number who had appeared earlier. Neither Dodge nor Price presented those witnesses, leaving the task to a group of assistant district attorneys, a further suggestion that their evidence did not relate to the DA’s claim of Communist responsibility. The three indictments charging four people voted by the grand jury were for the offense of burglary, looting in the context of the disorder, not for the incitement of riot and violence that Dodge had invoked the previous day. In addition, Dodge had to announce that he had sent the men indicted for inciting riot the previous day for trial on lesser misdemeanor charges not they felony offense with which they had initially been charged. In the afternoon, Dodge returned to the grand jury to present evidence seized that day in raids on the offices of organizations affiliated with the Communist Party, the ILD, and the Nurses and Hospital League. He took a typewriter and a mimeograph machine into the grand jury room, together with two unnamed witnesses. No indictments resulted from that evidence; the grand jury instead adjourned for the weekend.

Only the New York Sun and Times Union reported the number of witnesses, while the Daily Mirror mentioned that most were police officers. The assistant district attorneys presenting the witnesses were also identified by the New York Sun and Times Union, while the New York Times gave their number. The number of indictments, the number of people charged in them and the offense with which they were charged were widely reported, in the New York Evening Journal, New York Sun, Times Union, New York American, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, Daily News, and Daily Mirror. Only the Home News, New York Post, and New York Herald Tribune did not report the indictments. That Dodge had to reduce the inciting riot charges the grand jury voted the previous day was only mentioned in the New York World-Telegram, New York Sun, and Times Union, none of which commented on that decision.

The grand jury voted those indictments in the morning, before adjourning for lunch. Reporters from most newspapers appeared not to have returned in the afternoon. Only the New York American, New York World-Telegram, and New York Herald Tribune included the typewriter taken from the ILD offices at 415 Lenox Avenue and the mimeograph machine from the offices of the Nurses and Hospital League at 780 Broadway in their stories. The New York World-Telegram led with those details, that the typewriter had “type faces which seemed to correspond with those of allegedly inflammatory circulars distributed before the Harlem riot Tuesday night.” It attributed that information to police, who likely also provided the information that one of the two unnamed witnesses who appeared before the grand jury after the machines had to be threatened with removal to the House of Detention, reported in both the New York World-Telegram and New York American. The New York Herald Tribune quoted Dodge as saying “experts would testify” that the circulars had been produced on the machines. The New York Post mentioned only that the typewriter was believed to be in the district attorney's possession (it did not report the grand jury hearings).