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

"4 More Indicted in Harlem Riots," New York Times, March 23, 1935, 7.

In the New York Times

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Police find Lino Rivera Sometime during the disorder, police tried to locate Lino Rivera so they could show that he had not been killed or beaten. Chief Inspector Seely ordered the boy be located, according to the New York Times, which indicated that those efforts started after 9:00 PM when senior officers took charge of the police response. However, the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Times, Times Union, and Afro-American newspapers simply reported that police searched for Rivera throughout the night. They were unable to find him because the home address they had was incorrect: 272 Morningside Avenue rather than 272 Manhattan Avenue. (The New York Age story written early in the disorder included the incorrect address.) The Daily News reported that “the mistake was made” when Eldridge gave the address to an officer at the West 123rd Street station over the telephone — not that he had misrecorded the address as the New York Herald Tribune reported or that Rivera had given a false address as the Home News reported. According to Louise Thompson, a group of women who had tried to locate Rivera at the beginning of the disorder also had the wrong address, although one on the correct street: 410 Manhattan Avenue. Joe Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, also heard a rumor that Rivera lived at 410 Manhattan Avenue and went to investigate around 7:30 PM.

At 1:30 AM, Officer Eldridge was woken at his home on Whitlock Avenue in the Bronx by a telephone call telling him to report to the Chief Inspector at the West 123rd Street station, he told a hearing of the MCCH. The police officers who had been at the Kress store, Eldridge and Patrolman Donahue, had gone off duty at 4:00 PM. Until he was woken, Eldridge thought Rivera had been arrested and was unaware of what was happening in Harlem. He was able to go directly to Rivera’s home, arriving around 2:00 AM. He found him asleep, according to his testimony. The boy had not been there all night, as initially reported in the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun, but had gone out around 9:00 PM. Rivera had a cup of coffee and returned home after about twenty-five minutes because he "saw there was a lot of trouble around,” the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported. Rivera said Eldridge told him people thought he was dead, the New York World Telegram and New York Herald Tribune reported.

Eldridge took Rivera to the West 123rd Street station. Only the New York Sun described Rivera as “blubbering and frightened.” Rivera told a reporter for the New York World Telegram that he was at the station for about half an hour. During that time, police questioned him, he spoke with reporters and was photographed with Lt. Battle and Officer Eldridge. Newspaper stories that quoted his statements mentioned that he spoke to two different officers, Kear, according to the Daily News, and Captain Oliver, according to the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun. Battle told the MCCH that he asked Rivera “if he had been hurt by anyone and had he been arrested.” The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Sun, and New York American published separate stories about Rivera’s statements. The Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and Atlanta World appended his statements to larger stories on the disorder. Reporters also interviewed and photographed Rivera at his home later on March 20. The New York World Telegram, New York Herald Tribune, and La Prensa published separate stories based on those interviews, while the New York Times included Rivera in a larger story.

Inspector Di Martini took credit for having Battle appear in the images. “It was my idea to get Lieut. Battle to pose with the boy and get the picture into the streets as soon as possible,” he told a hearing of the MCCH. Battle said the reason Rivera posed with him was “for the moral effect.” Not made explicit in either statement was that having the boy photographed with a Black police officer added to the credibility of the image and cut across the racial divisions expressed in the disorder. “A lot” of pictures were taken, Rivera told a MCCH hearing, but only six different published images have been identified. An Associated Press photo that showed Battle seated with his arm around Rivera, who was standing, was published in the New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Sun. Rivera was only 4 feet 8 inches tall according to the New York Herald Tribune, so that pose put the two on the same level. Their height difference was visible in an image of them standing in the same pose taken by an International Photo Agency photographer. That difference was further emphasized in the photograph of this pose published in the Daily Mirror in which Battle is looking down at Rivera. (The Daily Worker took offense at Battle having "his arm protectively around" Rivera as the "Harlem masses...know that Battles would kill a worker on the slightest excuse.") Photographs taken by the International Photo Agency and Daily News revealed that Eldridge was on the other side of Rivera in both poses. Eldridge did not have an arm around Rivera, as Battle did, so was detached from their grouping. A second Black officer added to message Di Martini wanted to send. However, Battle was in uniform and well known as the senior Black police officer in New York City, while Eldridge was in plainclothes, a suit and tie, and not a public figure. It was likely on that basis that some photographers and editors decided not to include Eldridge. An ANS photo showed Rivera and Battle standing surrounded by white reporters, looking at a camera to their left. Where the other photographs showed Rivera unharmed, in contradiction of the rumors circulating in Harlem, the ANS image presented him as telling his story. Rivera, dressed in a leather jacket, is smiling in all the photographs. Photographed at home later that day, Rivera wore a suit and tie because he said his mother suggested he “dress for the picture." In the image published in the New York Evening Journal, he shows a pensive expression rather than smiling. (The New York Times reporter who visited Rivera at home described him as "a dejected figure," "overwhelmed by the fact that his desire for a ten-cent knife had precipitated the riot and resultant bloodshed.")

If the primary purpose of finding Rivera was to show that he was alive and unharmed, his appearance at the police station also brought some consistency to reports about the identity of the boy who had been in Kress' store. Louise Thompson heard from the women she spoke to in Kress' store that a "colored boy" aged ten to twelve years had been beaten. The signs carried by the Young Liberators who picketed the store an hour or so later referred to a "Negro child" and the leaflets their organization distributed an hour later later described a "12 year old Negro boy." The first newspaper stories published appear to have relied on those rumors and leaflets in describing the boy; with neither Eldridge nor Donahue still on duty, police apparently did not have more precise information until Rivera was found. The New York American mentioned a "colored boy" and a "10-year-old Negro boy," the Daily News a 12-year old "colored boy," the New York Evening Journal a 15-year-old "Negro boy," the Daily Mirror a "little colored boy," the Home News a "young colored boy," and the New York Sun a "Negro boy." Early stories in some Black newspapers featured similar descriptions, a "small Negro boy" in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and a 10-year-old "colored boy" in the Indianapolis Recorder on March 23. Other stories in Black newspapers simply referred to the boy's age not his race: a 16 year old boy in the Atlanta World on March 21, a 12-year-old boy in the New York Age, a 14-year-old boy in the Chicago Defender, and a 16 year old boy in the Afro-American and Pittsburgh Courier on March 23. Newspapers published on March 20 after police found Rivera identified him as a 16-year-old Puerto Rican, in the New York Post and New York World-Telegram, or a "Puerto Rican youth" in the New York Herald Tribune and Times Union. The New York World-Telegram pointed to the differences between Rivera and the boy of the rumors by putting Negro in quotation marks when reporting the rumors and the text of the Young Liberators leaflet. By contrast, the New York Times referred to a 16-year-old "Negro boy" even after Rivera had been found, as did the New York Sun and New York Evening Journal. While the New York Times did eventually identify Rivera as Puerto Rican when he appeared in the Adolescents court after the disorder, the New York Evening Journal continued to describe Rivera as "Negro," while the New York Sun made no mention of his race. Those newspapers' persistent use of "Negro" may have been intended to convey that Rivera was dark-skinned; the New York American described him in those terms, as a "dark-skinned 16-year-old Porto Rican" in a story reporting an interview with the boy in his home, while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described him as a "Negro born in Porto Rico." Editions of the other newspapers published after Rivera was found, including the Black newspapers, simply switched to identify him as Puerto Rican. (Historian Lorrin Thomas argued that the New York Amsterdam News "failed to identify Rivera as Puerto Rican, referring to him instead as a 'young Negro boy,'" but did not provide a citation. The March 23 issue of that newspaper is missing the news sections, but the March 30 issue identified Rivera as a "16-year-old Puerto Rican youth.")

Police found Rivera too late for his appearance to impact the disorder, although it may have contributed to the violence not continuing the next evening. However, the delays in locating him fed rumors that he was not in fact the boy grabbed in Kress’ store. Reflecting questions raised in hearings, the MCCH report noted that, “The final dramatic attempt on the part of police to placate the populace by having the unharmed Lino Rivera photographed with the Negro police lieutenant Samuel Battle only furnished the basis for the rumor that Rivera, who was on probation for having placed a slug in a subway turnstile, was being used as a substitute to deceive people.” After members of the MCCH met with Mayor La Guardia soon after their appointment, on March 22, the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun both reported that “some” of them said that many in Harlem did not believe that Lino Rivera was the boy who had been caught in the Kress store. (Stories about the meeting in the New York Times, New York Post, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Daily Worker included no mention of those comments.) An Afro-American journalist reported the rumors before the first hearing of the MCCH: “At the present time Harlem is divided into those who has been presented by the police as the boy in the case, is not the boy who was beaten in the store. They declare that Lino is being paid off to be the scapegoat and a camouflage....The AFRO reporter has run scores of tips about the boy who actually stole the knife, or a bag of jelly-beans, as it was first given out. Everything so far has run up a blind alley. One clue to the real boy is that all during the riot he was referred to as a 12-year-old boy, but became a 16-year-old one with the finding of Lino Riviera." The New York Age hinted at those rumors when it described Rivera as “believed to have been the cause of the whole affair.” Writing in The New Masses, Louise Thompson reported that a man and woman who had been in the store said Rivera was older and taller than the boy they saw. Other publications did not raise the issue. However, as the Afro-American journalist predicted, questions about Rivera were raised in a hearing of the MCCH. In the first hearing, Police Lieutenant Battle was asked, "Is there any evidence that would indicate that Rivera is not the boy? There has been such rumor." He simply answered, "No." L. F. Cole, a thirty-year-old Black clerk who had been in the Kress store, also testified that he had "no doubt" that Rivera was the boy he had seen taken away by police. The question was raised again at the third hearing on April 20. Mention that he had been on parole after being caught putting slugs in a subway turnstile prompted an interjection from "Mrs. Burrows": "My impression is that this boy is not the boy. We have testimony here that he got into trouble before March 19th, 1935. They had a boy under supervision. This is not the boy. They got a boy through these people and this is the boy they presented." Hays, chairing the hearing, pushed the ILD lawyers for evidence that another boy was beaten in the store. They had found none nor could they establish that Rivera had received lenient treatment. A month later, Jackson Smith, the store manager, confirmed in the subcommittee's final hearing that Rivera was the boy he saw from the office, with Donahue and again outside the grand jury room after the disorder. After listening to several questions trying to undermine the certainty of that identification, Hays announced "there is no question about it." Given the lack of evidence to the contrary, there is no reason to think Rivera was not person grabbed in the store. The shoppers who saw him in the store could have assumed he was younger, given his height. Similarly, seeing that he was dark-skinned, they could have assumed he was a Black rather than Puerto Rican.
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).
Hashi Mohammed arrested Officer Brown of the 40th Precinct arrested Hashi Mohammed, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, for inciting a riot and possession of a knife. Mohammed had allegedly smashed windows "along Lenox Avenue," according to a story in the Home News, the source of details of the charges made against him. Born in Abyssinia, according to the New York American and New York Evening Journal and Washington Heights Magistrate's Court docket book, he lived at 4 West 128th Street, a block east of an area of Lenox Avenue that saw extensive disorder from late on March 19 and into the early hours of March 20, and may have been drawn to join the crowds on that street at some point. The combination of charges suggest that after Mohammed's arrest, the police officer searched him and found the knife, "a large bread knife" according to Home News. Mohammed also appeared in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American as having "internal injuries." While he was listed among those "Less Seriously Injured" in the New York American and New York Evening Journal, he was also identified as in Harlem Hospital (however, he does not appear in any of the records the MCCH obtained from the hospital). It is possible that Brown or other police officers involved in his arrest may have been responsible for those injuries.

Mohammed was included in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide as charged with inciting a riot and "also charged with, violation of Sullivan law (possession of firearms)." When Mohammed appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court, he faced both charges, but the weapon he was recorded in the docket book as possessing was a knife not a gun.

Mohammed did not appear in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court until March 22, whereas most of those arrested in the disorder had been in court on March 20. That delay may have been the result of his injury. On the charge of carrying a dangerous weapon, Magistrate Ford held him on bail of $2,500 to appear in the Court of Special Sessions, significantly more than the typical bail of $500. Mohammed pled guilty, according to the docket book, but that must have been to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct, as the Magistrate could not adjudicate a charge of riot. Ford sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse. The only reports of Mohammed's court appearance were in the New York Times and Daily Worker, which mentioned only the sentence and misreported the charge against him as burglary, and the Home News, which reported he had been convicted, not pled guilty. (The New York Times story mentioned Mohammed in the context of hearings in the Harlem court not the Washington Heights court.) Three weeks later, on April 17, the Magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions acquitted Mohammed of possessing a weapon, an outcome that appears only in the records of the 32nd Precinct.

The sources differ in how they record Mohammed's name. In the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide he appears as Sashi Mohammed, as Hashi Mohammed in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American, as Hashi Mohamed in the Home News, and as Hashi Mohamid in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court docket book.The records of the 32nd Precinct record his name as "Koko Mohammed."
In Harlem court on March 22 (18) Only the stories in the New York Times and Daily News described the scene at the courtroom on March 22. Police searched several who entered courtroom for weapons, according to the former story, and turned away those who “bore indications of connection with the Young Liberators, the Communist organization which fomented the disorder” according to Daily News. Neither of those stories indicated that police had to control a crowd like that which had gathered two days earlier. However, the Daily Mirror reported that "several hundred Colored persons" "thronged" outside the court. That story was discounted given that reporters from other publications had noted the presence of crowds earlier in the week, so it was likely that they would have again on this day if they had been present.

The Daily Mirror story did provide a context for the day's proceedings, that "Magistrate Renaud began yesterday the work of cleaning his calendar of the remainder of 85 cases growing out of the Harlem riots." Only the New York Times explicitly offered a similar framing, that Renaud had "disposed of the cases of Negroes accused in the rioting and looting Tuesday night and Wednesday morning." The number of cases in the Daily Mirror story does not fit the legal records. No newspaper story identified all those who appeared in the court. The Home News, as it did on other dates, mentioned the largest number, ten of the seventeen. Its story described the charges against three of those convicted, Elizabeth Tai, Arthur Davis, and Herbert Hunter and reported testimony by the storeowner whose business Daughty Shavos and Clifford Mitchell had allegedly looted. Tai, Davis, and Hunter's convictions were the hearings reported most widely and in the most detail, also mentioned in the New York Evening Journal, Daily News, and Daily Worker. Mitchell and Shavos, appearing in the Magistrates Court for the first time and sent to the grand jury, were also mentioned in the New York Evening Journal, Daily News, and Daily Mirror.

The three men discharged and rearrested as they had been indicted by Dodge's grand jury, James Hughes, Charles Saunders, and Isaac Daniels, are identified in the Home News and are the only individuals whose appearance was reported by the New York Post. Only Hughes and Saunders are mentioned by the Daily Worker, which describes them simply as held for the grand jury, omitting any reference to their discharge. Of the five additional men Renaud sent to the grand jury, Amie Taylor and Arthur Merritt are mentioned in the Home News, New York Evening Journal Daily News, and Daily Worker. No newspaper mentioned the appearances of the other three men sent to the grand jury, James Williams, John Henry, and Oscar Leacock (although the Home News had reported that morning that Henry and Leacock would appear, they were not in its story on the hearings published the next day, March 23).

Nor did any publication mention the four men sent to the Court of Special Sessions, William Jones, Henry Goodwin, Frederick Harwell, and Jackie Ford. Ford, the third man to appear in court for the first time on March 22, with Shavos and Mitchell, was not mentioned in any of the stories on the day's hearings, although his arrest that day was reported by the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and La Prensa. Paul Boyett, remanded a second time, also did not appear in stories about the day's hearings.

According to stories in the Daily Mirror and the Home News, police also brought Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators to Harlem court on March 22. They did not appear before the magistrate, according to the Home News, because just before the hearing began, police found out that they had been indicted by Dodge's grand jury. The Daily Mirror reported only the consequence of that news, that they waited for a bench warrant to be served that would allow them to be discharged and rearrested as Hughes, Saunders, and Daniels had been. By the next day, March 23, several newspapers reported that process would occur at a later hearing, on March 25.

The uneven coverage of these hearings is a further example of the incomplete and unreliable nature of newspaper stories about legal proceedings. That the mix of cases the stories reported included convictions and referrals of those charged with felonies but not any of those sent to the Court of Special Sessions suggests newspapers focused only on the more serious allegations. That focus is also evident in how the Home News emphasized the charges against Tai, Davis, and Hunter, notwithstanding that the outcome of the prosecution and short sentence indicated that they had been involved in less serious acts. The story reported their arrest for "stealing groceries" and that they had been found guilty of disorderly conduct and sentenced to five and ten days in the Workhouse, before noting that the original charge of burglary had been reduced by the court without addressing the implications of that change.
In court on March 22 While Dodge had promised more dramatic action from the grand jury on its second day of hearings on the disorder, the number of indictments it voted failed to even match the results of the first session. After eight witnesses testified, the grand jury indicted just four individuals, all for burglary. Moreover, the seriousness of what Dodge had presented the previous day was undercut when he announced that the five men indicted for riot, including the four alleged Communists, would no longer be tried in the Court of General Sessions, but instead for lesser, misdemeanor offenses in the Court of Special Sessions. Dodge did return to the grand jury room in the afternoon with a typewriter and a mimeograph machine seized from the offices of organizations affiliated with the Communist Party, the ILD and Nurses and Hospital League, and two unnamed witnesses. He apparently claimed the equipment had been used to produce the leaflet circulated in the early hours of the disorder. No indictments resulted from that evidence; the grand jury instead adjourned for the weekend.

As the anti-Communist investigation lost momentum, Magistrates Renaud and Ford continued to move those arrested in the disorder through the legal process. Four men, three arrested after the disorder, appeared in court for the first time, one in the Washington Heights court, three in the Harlem court, joined there by fourteen others returning after being investigated. Although additional police were stationed at the Harlem court, around forty officers the Daily News and New York Times reported, those hearings did not draw the crowds who attended on March 20 even as reporters again filled the courtroom. Nonetheless, police searched several of those who entered the courtroom for weapons, and turned away those who “bore indications of connection with the Young Liberators, the Communist organization which fomented the disorder” according to the Daily News.

The outcomes of the hearings were mixed, revealing again both the varied nature of the events of the disorder and how few of those responsible for the violence had been apprehended by police in their indiscriminate response to the disorder. The three men appearing for the first time in the Harlem court had been arrested after the disorder, Daughty Shavos and Clifford Mitchell the previous evening, and Jackie Ford the same day. Police arrested Shavos and Mitchell in their homes on West 119th Street and on Lenox Avenue, respectively, with merchandise allegedly taken from Louis Levy’s store and charged them with burglary. Just how police knew to go to the men’s home was not mentioned. Merchants had called for police to search for stolen merchandise, but these were the only arrests of this kind made after the disorder. In 1943, when the legal response to disorder in Harlem was more narrowly focused on looting than in 1935, one in five of the individuals arrested would be charged with receiving stolen goods. Renaud sent Mitchell and Shavos to the grand jury. Jackie Ford’s arrest came after Julia Cureti identified him as one of those who broke windows in her restaurant, although there is no evidence of where the identification or arrest occurred. Unlike those men, Hashi Mohammed, the only person arrested in the disorder who appeared in the Washington Heights court on March 22, had been arrested on March 20. He had been treated for “internal injuries” so likely had been in Harlem Hospital until this time. Mohammed was one of only four men charged with possession of a weapon but given that he would later be acquitted of that charge, police may have made that allegation to justify the violence that led to his injuries. Police had allegedly found either a knife or a gun after arresting Mohammed for breaking windows. They could not substantiate that second charge, as on March 22 he was instead charged with disorderly conduct. Magistrate Ford found Mohammed guilty, as he had nineteen others arrested during the disorder two days earlier.

Magistrate Renaud also convicted three of those returned to his court, Elizabeth Tai, Arthur Davis, and Herbert Hunter, of disorderly conduct. The three had been arrested by the same police detective for allegedly breaking into a grocery store on Lenox Avenue and taking merchandise. Evidence to substantiate that allegation had clearly not been found as the charge against all three was reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change effectively removed Tai, Davis, and Hunter from those who had acted to target property and returned them to the crowds on the street. Police offered some evidence that the three had not simply been spectators, as Renaud convicted them all, but there is no indication of just what they did that fell within the "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior" the law encompassed. Renaud did not judge it to be very serious, as he sentenced Tai and Hunter to only five days in the Workhouse and Hunter to ten days.

Two other men charged with burglary, Henry Goodwin and Frederick Harwell, also had the charges against them reduced, but to petit larceny, not disorderly conduct. In their case police were able to produce evidence they had taken merchandise, if not broken into a store to do so. However, what they had taken did not have a value of $100 or more so did not warrant a felony charge. Renaud consequently sent Goodwin and Harwell for trial in the Court of Special Sessions, joining Jackie Ford and another man who allegedly broke windows, William Jones. By contrast, police presented sufficient evidence against five other men arrested for looting and charged with burglary, John Henry, Oscar Leacock, James Williams, Arthur Merritt, and Amie Taylor, for Renaud to send their cases sent to the grand jury along with those of Shavos and Mitchell. Nonetheless, police investigations had failed to find enough support to sustain the charges of burglary they had made against half of those who appeared in court on this date.

Paul Boyett was alone among those who appeared in not having his case decided. The need for continued investigation likely resulted from the efforts to find witnesses to confirm Patrolman Conn’s claim that Boyett had been one of those who assaulted Timothy Murphy rather than being among the spectators drawn to the attack on the white man as he claimed. Even with fewer cases, the press reported only some of those appearances, as had happened on March 20, with no mentions of Boyett, those sent to the Court of Special Sessions, and three of those sent to the grand jury.

Dodge’s investigation intersected with the regular legal process both in the Harlem Magistrates Court and in the grand jury. Police served warrants for the arrest of three of the men who returned to the court, James Hughes, Charles Saunders, and Isaac Daniels, as they had already been indicted by the grand jury. In doing so they identified the three as among the unnamed individuals whose indictment Dodge had announced over the previous two days, Hughes and Daniels the two men indicted for assault and Saunders one of the five indicted for burglary. Renaud discharged the men, and police then took them into custody. (Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators may also have been brought back to the court as the Home News and Daily Mirror both reported the men were present but did not appear as police awaited warrants based on their indictments.) In the grand jury, out of the public eye, cases referred by the magistrates on March 20 began to be heard alongside those based on witnesses gathered by Dodge. The grand jury indicted all six of the men referred by magistrates, voting charges of burglary against Arnold Ford, Joseph Moore, Robert Tanner, Joseph Wade, and Hezekiah Wright.

The first of those arrested during the disorder appeared in the Court of Special Sessions for trial. Both the men, Earl Davis, sent by Magistrate Ford from the Washington Heights court, and Thomas Babbitt, sent by Magistrate Renaud from the Harlem court, faced a charge of petit larceny. While the magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions convicted both men, they sentenced them to only ten days in the Workhouse — the same short term that Renaud gave to those he convicted of disorderly conduct on the same day. For all the willingness of police to shoot at looters, those sentences showed that judges treated small scale looting — two cases of soap in Babbitt’s case, unspecified merchandise from a tailor in Davis’ case — no more punitively than being part of crowds in the streets. Neither proceeding was mentioned in the press.
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).
Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted (Part 2) 11 plain 2024-01-28T01:16:31+00:00
Until police found Rivera, newspapers described the boy caught shoplifting as a younger Black child, in line with the rumors and leaflets circulating in Harlem. Louise Thompson heard from the women she spoke to in Kress' store that a "colored boy" aged ten to twelve years had been beaten. The signs carried by the Young Liberators who picketed the store an hour or so later referred to a "Negro child," while the leaflets their organization distributed another hour later later described a "12 year old Negro boy." The first newspaper stories repeated those descriptions. The New York American mentioned a "colored boy" and a "10-year-old Negro boy," the Daily News a 12-year-old "colored boy," the New York Evening Journal a 15-year-old "Negro boy," the Daily Mirror a "little colored boy," the Home News a "young colored boy," and the New York Sun a "Negro boy." Early stories in some Black newspapers featured similar descriptions, a "small Negro boy" in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and a 10-year-old "colored boy" in the Indianapolis Recorder on March 23, or simply referred to the boy's age, not his race, a 16-year-old boy in the Atlanta World on March 21, a 12-year-old boy in the New York Age, a 14-year-old boy in the Chicago Defender, and a 16-year-old boy in the Afro-American and Pittsburgh Courier on March 23. Newspapers published on March 20 after police found Rivera identified him as a 16-year-old Puerto Rican, in the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle or a "Puerto Rican youth" in the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, and Brooklyn Citizen (although later in that story Rivera was referred to as a "Negro"). (The New York World-Telegram also pointed to the differences between Rivera and the boy of the rumors by putting Negro in quotation marks when reporting the rumors and the text of the Young Liberators leaflet.) By contrast, the New York Times referred to a 16-year-old "Negro boy" even after Rivera had been found, as did the New York Sun and New York Evening Journal. While the New York Times did eventually identify Rivera as Puerto Rican when he appeared in the Adolescents court after the disorder, the New York Evening Journal continued to describe Rivera as "Negro," while the New York Sun made no mention of his race. Those newspapers' persistent use of "Negro" may have been intended to convey that Rivera was dark-skinned; the New York American described him in those terms, as a "dark-skinned 16-year-old Porto Rican" in a story reporting an interview with the boy in his home, while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described him as a "Negro born in Porto Rico." Editions of the other newspapers published after Rivera was found, including the Black newspapers, simply switched to identify him as Puerto Rican. (Historian Lorrin Thomas argued that the New York Amsterdam News "failed to identify Rivera as Puerto Rican, referring to him instead as a 'young Negro boy,'" but did not provide a citation. The March 23 issue of that newspaper is missing the news sections, but the March 30 issue identified Rivera as a "16-year-old Puerto Rican youth.")

Stories in the New York Evening Journal, Home News, La Prensa, and Daily Worker misidentified Hurley and Urban as store detectives. None mentioned the store detective, Smith, perhaps because he was not bitten and therefore not identified in any official records. He may also have been confused with Jackson Smith, the store manager. Many stories gave the manager a larger role than he played, involved in grabbing Rivera and making the decision to release him with Rivera in this office. That expanded role came at the expense not only of the store detective but also the police. Only the Daily News, and a vague statement in the New York Post story of what Rivera said mentioned that officers were at the store. The Daily News included only Eldridge, misidentifying him as the officer who released Rivera. Rivera said “two policeman came in” after he bit the men, the New York Post reported. The New York Evening Journal, Daily News, Atlanta World, and Philadelphia Tribune stories quoting Rivera omitted that statement.

Several newspaper stories included a Black woman interceding or screaming when the store staff grabbed Rivera, which some accounts claimed precipitated broader disorder. The statements of those on the scene suggest any outcry came when Donahue and Urban took Rivera into the basement. Rivera testified in the public hearing that a woman screamed “They’re going to take him down the cellar and beat him up!” While Hurley made no mention of that scream, L. F. Cole, a thirty-year-old Black clerk, did testify that when he saw Donahue and Urban taking Rivera to the basement “a woman made a statement that the boy had been struck.” Cole's choice not to describe the woman as screaming suggests the possibility that the woman simply called out, with the gendered language of the press rendering any shouting by a woman as a scream. "They're beating that boy! They're killing him!" were the “screams” reported by the New York Evening Journal. Speeding up events, the New York American, New York Post, and Atlanta World, and the New Republic, describe the woman as running into the street, screaming "Kress beat a colored boy! Kress Beat a colored boy!" according to the New York American. The New York Sun made this response collective: “Emotional Negro women shouted that the boy was being beaten and this information was quickly relayed to the curious crowds which had gathered in front of the store.” Rather than reacting, the woman intervened in the narrative presented in Home News and La Prensa, and was pushed aside by Hurley, after which she screamed.

Margaret Mitchell was identified as the woman who reacted to Rivera being grabbed in the New York Evening Journal, Home News, Philadelphia Tribune, and La Prensa (and later in stories about those arrested in the New York Amsterdam News, Afro-American, New York Post, and New York Times). Here journalists with a truncated timeline of events were assuming that as she was arrested in Kress’ store it must have been when Rivera was grabbed. However, Donahue told the public hearing he had not made an arrest, and none of the store staff mentioned an arrest at this time. The circumstances of Mitchell's arrest recorded by police, the testimony of Louise Thompson, and the New York Sun story suggest that it took place after the store was closed, as police tried to clear out the women who remained inside, with an officer named Johnson making the arrest. Similarly, in describing customers struggling with Hurley and Urban or attacking displays as Rivera was taken away, the narratives of the New York Sun, La Prensa, and the Home News collapsed together events that took place at different times. Testimony in the public hearings identified that struggle as coming later, when Kress’ manager decided to close the store and police cleared out those inside.

Several newspapers also published statements by Rivera made either at the West 123rd Street station after Eldridge, awoken at 1:30 AM, had located him and brought him to a police station around 2:00 AM, or in his home the next day that provided more details of what happened before and when he was grabbed than the broad narratives. The New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Post, New York Sun, Atlanta World, and Philadelphia Tribune quoted Rivera at the police station describing biting the men and the threat to beat him that had precipitated that struggle. In an ANS agency photograph of Rivera standing with Lt. Battle taken at that time, journalists can be seen taking notes. It’s not clear if they questioned Rivera directly, or recorded answers he gave to police officers: the Daily News reported his statements as told to Deputy Chief Inspector Frances Kear, the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun reported he talked to Captain Richard Oliver, and the New York Herald Tribune quoted Eldridge rather than Rivera. The New York Evening Journal story also mentioned the reporter speaking with Rivera. The New York World-Telegram and New York Herald Tribune published stories quoting statements made by Rivera at this home later on March 20; a New York American story combined statements from the station and at his home. The Daily News simply published a photograph of Rivera flexing his biceps, presumably to demonstrate that he was unharmed. The information that before entering Kress', Rivera had gone to Brooklyn looking for work, having left high school six months earlier, that his mother needed help because his father was dead, was reported in the interviews published in the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. His father's death was also reported in La Prensa and the Brooklyn Citizen. Only the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, and New York Sun reported that Rivera went to a show after returning from Brooklyn. Only La Prensa reported that Rivera had a job when he first left school. That interview with Rivera in his home focused on emphasizing his lack of responsibility for the disorder and willingness to try to pacify the crowds had he been asked, and contained no details of what had happened in the store as he did not want to talk about them. That focus was in line with La Prensa's concern to distance Puerto Rican residents from the disorder. Rivera gave an account of what happened in the store again when he appeared in the Adolescents Court on March 23 for inserting slugs in a subway turnstile before the disorder, in answer to questions from the magistrate.

The MCCH public hearings elicited more details of the assault, with Rivera, the two police officers, and Hurley all testifying, together with Jackson Smith, the store manager. Provided in five separate hearings spread over nearly six weeks, that testimony described the roles of Officers Donahue and Eldridge, which were missing from the initial newspaper reports. Few newspapers included these new details in their stories about the hearings. The most extensively reported hearing was the first, on March 30, in which Donahue testified. A majority of newspapers highlighted Donahue’s decision to release Rivera through the rear of the store rather than in view of concerned customers as a mistake, with several reporting that Donahue had admitted that mistake. However, the hearing transcript did not include such a statement. Instead, it was Edward Kuntz, one of the ILD lawyers in the audience, who offered that assessment while questioning the officer. After Donahue testified that crowds on 125th Street caused him to take Rivera into the store, Kuntz commented, “If you had let the boy go at that time there would not have been any excitement.” Eldridge and Hurley did not testify until three weeks later, and Jackson Smith until two weeks after that, when they were not given any attention in the briefer newspaper stories about those hearings.
- Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted in secondary sources
- Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted (Part 1)
In Washington Heights court on March 22 (1) Only three newspapers mentioned hearings in the Washington Heights Court on this date. Both the Daily Worker and Home News included those hearings alongside those in the Harlem court. The Communist publication mentioned only that Mohammed had been convicted and sentenced to thirty days, on a charge that it misreported as burglary; the New York Times reported the same information without locating his appearance in the Washington Heights court. Mohammed was the only person who appeared in court named in the later story. The Home News, as was generally the case, included more detail, that Mohammed had allegedly broken windows, and that he had also been sent to the Court of Special Sessions for trial on the charge of possessing a weapon described as "a large bread knife." Both the Daily Worker and Home News also mentioned two others who appeared: a woman, Dorothy Paris in the Daily Worker, and Josephine Paris in the Home News, arrested on March 21 for breaking the window of a store on Lenox Avenue, and Arthur Heywood, convicted of breaking a window. While the Daily Worker did not specify the date of Heywood's alleged crime, the Home News reported he had been arrested during the disorder. However, he did not appear among those arrested during the disorder in any other sources, so he is not included in this study.