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

"Alien Squads Hunt Harlem Red Lairs," Daily Mirror, March 21, 1935 [clipping].

In the Daily Mirror

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Members of the MCCH (13) 129 plain 2024-02-14T18:09:26+00:00
Most newspapers reported in the same edition both the statement that Mayor La Guardia released on the morning of March 20 and had distributed in Harlem and his afternoon announcement of whom he had appointed to the Commission. Only the appointment of eleven committee members was reported in the Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, while their names were included in the Home News, New York World-Telegram, and Atlanta World. The New York Age published the names of only the six Black members, while the Afro-American only identified the office holders, Roberts, Villard, and Carter, and Hays. The names and the occupations provided in the mayor’s press statement were published in the Daily Mirror, New York American, New York Times, Daily Worker, and the New York Amsterdam News. The New York Post and the Norfolk Journal and Guide combined that occupational information with information on the political affiliations of each member. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun published more extended biographies of all eleven members.

La Guardia announced the members had been selected “because of their distinct contributions in their several fields,” according to a story in the New York Sun. He would later say that the appointments had been made "by advice,” according to the New York Age. There was no direct evidence of who offered La Guardia that advice. That it had not come from the leaders of Harlem’s social organizations was clear from the pointed request that James Hubert, the executive director of the Urban League, made to the mayor in a letter on March 26, “that in the future you will avail yourself of such assistance as is very easily obtained in Harlem and other Negro sections of the City to the end that whatever is undertaken may be accomplished as I know you desire the work to be done.” Instead, La Guardia appeared to have relied on those with whom he had political ties. Hubert Delany was likely one source of advice. La Guardia, who had appointed him tax commissioner, treated him “as an unofficial ombudsman for the black community” according to historian Thomas Kessner. (Delany was a member of the NAACP). The NAACP did send La Guardia a list of names on March 20 that included three of those appointed — Hays, Ernst, and Carter — but there is no evidence to confirm that the Mayor received that list before announcing the Commission members. Historian Stephen Carter argued that Eunice Hunton Carter may have been appointed in recognition of her willingness to run for a state assembly seat for La Guardia’s Republican-Fusion party the previous year. He noted that the party machine “had a tradition of finding places for candidates willing to run in tough cases against incumbents.” An Associated Negro Press story published in the Norfolk Journal and Guide attributed Carter’s subsequent appointment to Thomas Dewey’s team of special prosecutors going after the Mob to that obligation.

La Guardia subsequently added two additional members, a Black clergyman and a white clergyman. Only the New York Amsterdam News reported those appointments, suggesting that the mayor's office did not announce them in press statements. The appointment of Rev. John W. Robinson, the retired pastor of St. Mark's, the city's largest AME church, was foreshadowed in newspaper stories about the mayor's visit to the Interdenominational Preachers Meeting of Greater New York and Vicinity on March 25. Robinson led that group. After their complainants about La Guardia's failure to appoint a minister, the mayor indicated he would consider appointing a nominee of the meeting. Stories in the Home News, New York Times, and New York World-Telegram and in the New York Amsterdam News and New York Age reported that the meeting chose Robinson. Evidence of an indirect political connection that may have made La Guardia receptive to that suggestion appeared in a New York Amsterdam News story on the couple's wedding: Robinson’s second wife, pharmacist Dr. Julia Coleman, was active in the Republican Party in Harlem.

That La Guardia told the Interdenominational Preachers Meeting that he would also appoint a second clergyman “chosen from a denomination not included in the Alliance” was reported only in the New York Age. It took until April 4, almost a week after Robinson's appointment, for the mayor to finalize that choice: Father McCann of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church on West 141st Street. The New York Amsterdam News made McCann's appointment the headline of the story it published on April 6 about the MCCH hearing. McCann had appeared in earlier newspaper stories as a result of a pastoral letter he made public on March 23 blaming Communists for the disorder and calling for a movement to keep them out of Harlem. The priest's anti-communism offered La Guardia a way to address those who had criticized those he had appointed as all liberals. However, La Guardia had clearly also decided the second clergyman on the committee should be Catholic as he had sought the advice of Edmund B. Butler, a prominent Catholic lawyer who was secretary of the city’s Emergency Relief Bureau, about whom to appoint immediately after he met with the Black ministers. Butler wrote to him the next day, to give him McCann’s name, which he had been unable to think of at that time: “He has always been very much interested in Negroes and volunteered for the work….I think that the appointment of him would be excellent.” A note on the letter recorded, “Father McCann is white,” likely another criteria for his selection given that the committee had two more Black members than white members after Robinson’s appointment. Several days later, on April 1, Butler spoke to La Guardia about McCann, after which he told the clergyman that La Guardia was going to appoint him. On April 4, La Guardia wrote to notify Roberts that he had appointed Father McCann. Even after the Communist Party wrote to both the MCCH and the Mayor to complain about McCann's appointment on April 25, the Daily Worker did not report it.

In the historical literature, only Lindsey Lupo identified all thirteen the members of the MCCH, in a chart that described their occupations in two or three words. Cheryl Greenberg named Delaney, Randolph, and, inexplicably, Cullen as examples of the "impressive range of experts" that La Guardia had appointed, also mistakenly including Frazier as a member of the commission. Naison only identified the number of "representative citizens" appointed, which he stated was eleven, neglecting the later appointments of Robinson and McCann. Johnson also mistakenly identified the MCCH as an eleven-member commission, without identifying any of the members. Kessner mentioned only Roberts, the chair, as did Watson.

Information on the attendance of the MCCH members at their meetings and public hearings was collated by their staff. The MCCH included its own appraisal of each members contribution to its work in the foreword of the version of its report it submitted to Mayor La Guardia. Who signed, and thereby endorsed the report of the subcommittee on crime and the MCCH's final report, was documented in the MCCH records.
Black members:
Eunice Hunton Carter
- Press statement: “social worker and lawyer"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Lawyer and social worker, holds degrees from Smith College and Columbia and Fordham Universities, Republican-Fusion candidate for Assembly from 19th Manhattan District in 1934"
- New York Post: “lawyer and social worker and Fusion political leader”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a social worker, lawyer and leader in every important progressive movement in the community, who knows Harlem in its gladness and sorrow"
- Meeting Attendance: 17
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (missed May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Countee Cullen
- Press statement: "author"
- New York Herald Tribune: "poet, graduate of New York University; contributor to magazines and newspapers and winner of several poetry awards"
- New York Post: “the poet”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a young Negro pedagogue and poet, brought to the commission the point of view of the youth"
- Meeting Attendance: 11
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (missed May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Hubert T. Delany
- Press statement: "Tax Commissioner of the City of New York"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Negro, lawyer, graduate of the College of the City of New York and New York University Law School, Assistant United States Attorney under former United States Attorney Charles H. Tuttle, Republican candidate for House of Representatives from 21st Manhattan District in 1920. Commissioner of Board of Taxes and Assessments by appointment of Mayor LaGuardia in February 1934."
- New York Post: “lawyer and Republican leader"
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "Commissioner of Taxes and Assessments of the City of New York, was well-qualified to anlayze the employment situation in Harlem. Mr Delany, a lawyer and former public official, was well-equipped to analyze the problem of unemployment with as little intellectual bias as anyone in the community."
- Meeting Attendance: 12
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed May 4, May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
A. Philip Randolph
- Press statement: "Natl. President, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters"
- New York Herald Tribune: "general organizer and president of National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, attended College of City of New York, founder of a magazine, 'The Messenger'"
- New York Post: “president of the National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a great leader in the labor movement displayed his keen sense of understanding as President of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Mr Randolph brought to the Commission a greater understanding of labor problems as they affect the Negroes than any other man that could be found in the community. Harlem respects and admires A. Philip Randolph."
- Meeting Attendance: 7
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
- Reports signed: MCCH report (not in New York when the Subcommittee report was submitted)
Charles Roberts
- Press statement: "dentist"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Negro, dentist, graduate of Lincoln University, Republican candidate for House of Representatives from 21st District in 1924, member of Board of Aldermen, 1931-1933"
- New York Post: “dentist, Republican leader and former Alderman”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "selected for the reason that he has lived in the community of Harlem for over a quarter of a century. His life has been devoted to the development of the social, economic and cultural advancement of the community, both as a former public official and as a professional man. His unquestioned interest and knowledge of the community needs make him an outstanding representative of Harlem."
- Meeting Attendance: 20
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Rev. John Robinson
- No press statement or newspaper stories about his appointment
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a representative of the Interdenominational Ministers Alliance, symbolizes the opinion of Negro clergymen of Harlem. It is useless to state the churches of Harlem exercise the most vitalizing influence that can be found in this area."
- Meeting Attendance: 13
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Charles Toney
- Press statement: "Municipal Court"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Justice of Municipal Court; graduate of Syracuse University, Tammany Democrat"
- New York Post: "justice of the Municipal Court and Democratic political leader”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a Justice of the Municipal Court of the City of New York, was of great assistance in that by reason of his experience in what is known as the poor man's court, brought a legal understanding to the commission that was valuable."
- Meeting Attendance: 13
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 1 (missed April 6, April 20, May 4, May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
White members:
Morris L. Ernst
- Press statement: "lawyer;" “writer and publisher” in the Daily Mirror and New York American
- New York Herald Tribune: "lawyer, graduate of Columbia University, member of American Civil Liberties Union, counsel in many liberal causes, represented Mrs. Margaret Sanger, birth-control advocate; mediator in recent taxicab strike by appointment of Mayor LaGuardia"
- New York Post: "of the Civil Liberties Union,” and grouped with Hays
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "an eminent attorney, did yeoman service relative to the housing situation"
- Meeting Attendance: 6
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 2 (missed April 20, May 4, May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime
John J. Grimley
- Press statement: "doctor"
- New York Herald Tribune: "physician, lieutenant-colonel of 369th Infantry, National Guard of New York, crack Negro regiment"
- New York Post: “lieutenant-colonel of the Negro 369th Infantry, National Guard”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "brought to the Commission intimate contact with the manhood of Harlem through his experience as commanding officer of the 369th Infantry. Col. Grimley also rendered technical advice relative to the problem of health, having spent years as superintendent and director of various hospitals."
- Meeting Attendance: 5
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (recorded as missing May 18, but was referred to as present in transcript)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime
Arthur Garfield Hays
- Press statement: "lawyer"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Lawyer, graduate of Columbia University, counsel to American Civil Liberties Union, appeared as defense counsel in many cases involving civil liberties - coal strike in Pennsylvania, 1922; Scopes evolution trial in Tennessee, 1925; Countess Cathcart immigration case; Sacco-Vanzetti case in 1927, and most recently in defense of John Strachey, English lecturer threatened with deportation"
- New York Post: “of the Civil Liberties Union,” and grouped with Ernst
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a champion of civil liberties, conducted with astuteness and patience the public hearings concerning the police and their treatment of Harlem. The information so adduced was of invaluable worth to the study."
- Meeting Attendance: 12
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5 (chair)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Father McCann
- No press statement or newspaper stories about his appointment
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "represented the Catholic opinion of the community"
- Meeting Attendance: 5
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed March 30 [not appointed at that time], May 18)
- Reports signed: Neither
William J. Schieffelin
- Press statement: "Trustee of the Tuskegee Institute”
- New York Herald Tribune: "Chemist, graduate of Columbia School of Mines and University of Munich, chairman of Citizens Union, trustee of Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute, schools for the education of Negroes"
- New York Post: “chairman of the Citizen's Union and of Tuskegee Institute, the Negro university”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a trustee of Tuskegee Institute, a contributor and benefactor of the Negro race, a director of the Citizen's Union, and an exponent of social justice, contributed calm understanding of the perplexing problems that this committee dealt with."
- Meeting Attendance: 9
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed May 4, May 18)
- Reports signed: MCCH report (not in New York when the subcommittee report was submitted)
Oswald Garrison Villard
- Press statement: "publisher"
- New York Herald Tribune: "owner of 'The Nation'; graduate of Harvard University, liberal crusader, grandson of William Lloyd Garrison, founder of 'The Liberator,' and apostle of abolition of slavery"
- New York Post: “editor of the Nation”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "former editor and owner of a metropolitan daily, former professor at Harvard University and contributing editor to the Nation, a member of the NAACP, writer and lecturer, a keen student of American social problem, not excepting the oftern referred to Negro problem, brought a wealth of understanding and experience. It has been said of Mr Villard that his merciless scrutiny and analysis make him one of the foremost social philosophers of America."
- Meeting Attendance: 12
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Harry Gordon arrested Around 6:30 PM, Patrolman Irwin Young arrested Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white student, on the north sidewalk of West 125th Street near 7th Avenue. Gordon had climbed a lamppost to speak to the crowd that police had pushed east, away from the Kress store; Young pulled him down. The patrolman alleged that Gordon then grabbed his nightstick and hit him with it; Gordon denied doing anything. He told a public hearing of the MCCH that Young and other officers dragged him thirty feet to a police radio car and drove him to the police station on West 123rd Street. Louise Thompson had seen Gordon "get on the mailbox to speak and...dragged down by a policeman," after which "a cop kicked him, another knocked him over the head with his billy and another slapped him in the face and punched him in the ribs." Although Thompson was affiliated with the Communist Party and thus not an entirely objective witness, her account of the police violence was not disputed.

As soon as the radio car reached 7th Avenue, out of sight of the crowd on 125th Street, Gordon told the MCCH hearing that the police officer driving said “Go ahead and hit him" to the officer next to him, and both men “poked him in the ribs and kicked him.” When the car got to the station, Young pushed him up against the wall of the station and clubbed him in the stomach. Police officers continued to beat and kick Gordon when he was put in a cell, taken upstairs for questioning, and fingerprinted. As a result of these attacks, Gordon testified, “I had two black eyes. Had bumps on my head. My shins were bruised.” When he was bailed and released forty-eight hours after being arrested, his lawyer described Gordon’s face as “entirely discolored,” so much so that he took Gordon to his home so his mother would not see his injuries, he told the public hearing. The man identified as Gordon has no visible injuries in photographs taken a few seconds apart published in the Daily News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal that purported to show him and the three other white men police arrested in front of Kress’ store on their way to the Harlem Magistrates Court. However, one of the men was only partly visible, behind the other three, and could be injured. The caption to the Daily News photo suggests otherwise, labeling all the men "unmarked by the race riots."

Gordon was among the group of around ninety-six of those arrested put in a line-up and questioned by detectives in front of reporters downtown at Police Headquarters on the morning of March 20, before being loaded into patrol wagons and taken back uptown to the Harlem and Washington Heights Magistrates Courts. Gordon was brought to the platform together with Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators arrested at other times protesting in front of Kress' store, a New York Herald Tribune story noted, with police presenting the group as acting and arrested together. However, Gordon's actions overshadowed the larger group in stories about the line-up. While Gordon stood on the "klieg-lit platform," Captain Edward Dillon questioned him about his role in the disorder in an exchange reported in three newspapers. The briefest mention appeared in the Daily Mirror, which reported the details of the setting, but only that "under the grilling conducted by Acting Capt. Edward Dillon" Gordon declared "I am a student at City College of New York" and "refused to answer further questions." The reporter described Gordon's manner as "defiant." Other reporters conveyed a similar judgment in their portrayals of Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune described him as "a tall, lanky youth [who] thrust one hand in his pocket and struck an orator's attitude" during the questioning; the New York Sun described his pose as "Napoleonic." Neither of those stories mention Gordon identifying himself as a student; they instead quoted him as refusing to answer questions until he saw a lawyer. The Daily Mirror concluded that Gordon, in responding as he did, "had practically declared himself the inciter of the night's rioting" and the leader of the four other men arrested at the beginning of the disorder. Gordon himself, testifying at the MCCH hearing, set himself apart, as a passerby who had attempted to urge the crowd to go to the police for information. Inquiries by reporters from the New York Evening Journal found no evidence that Gordon was a City College Student, with the New York Herald Tribune reporting Dean Morton Gottschall did not find him in college records. The New York Evening Journal did confirm that he lived in the Bronx, at 699 Prospect Avenue.

Gordon did not appear in the MCCH transcription of the 28th Precinct blotter, nor did Miller and the two white Young Liberators arrested in front of Kress’ store. 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, did 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.

Gordon appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, shortly after Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators with whom police had grouped him. The charge recorded in the Magistrates Court Docket book was assault, which was the charge reported by New York American, New York Evening Journal, New York Times, and New York Herald Tribune. A second list in the New York Evening Journal, a later story in the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Amsterdam News, Daily Mirror, and New York Sun reported Gordon had been charged with both assault and riot. The Home News, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, New York Age, and the list published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, reported the charge against Gordon as inciting a riot.

The mistaken information about the charge could result from police continuing to group Gordon with the Miller and the three Young Liberators when he appeared in court. 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, in stories on the court appearances. However, while the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, 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 arraigned separately from Miller and the other three men. That separation was likely because he was charged with assault, the other men with riot, and the officer listed as arresting Gordon was Patrolman Irwin Young not Patrolman Shannon, the arresting officer recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book for Miller and the three other men.

The Daily Mirror claimed Gordon was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers. While being held, Gordon testified, he had not been not allowed to contact a lawyer or his family and was not fed until he had been in custody for more than twenty-four hours and had been arraigned in the Magistrate's Court. In the courthouse on March 20, Gordon was able to make contact with an ILD lawyer, Isidore Englander. The attorney testified that while he was speaking with Frank Wells, who he had learned had been arrested, he saw Gordon, who he claimed not to know, and spoke with him after his arraignment. Gordon asked him to communicate with Edward Kuntz, another ILD lawyer, whose son Gordon testified was a friend. Kuntz would represent him in subsequent court appearances. After Gordon was taken away, Englander heard him scream, the result, Gordon claimed, of being beaten again by police officer. The attorney made no mention of the visible injuries on Gordon’s face that Gordon and Kuntz described in their testimony.

Magistrate Renaud remanded Gordon to reappear on the March 25, on a bond of $1,000; the magistrate also remanded the other four alleged Communists, but for them set the maximum bail of $2,500. Around forty-eight hours after Gordon’s arrest, at 1 AM, Kuntz told a public hearing that he secured bail for Gordon, who was released from prison.

Gordon returned to court on March 25, at the same time as Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators, but there his treatment further diverged from them. While Renaud discharged the other four men as the grand jury had already sent them for trial in the Court of Special Sessions, in response to evidence presented by District Attorney Dodge as part of his investigation of the disorder, the magistrate again remanded Gordon, to appear on March 27, with the New York American and Home News reporting that police were planning to submit evidence to the grand jury seeking to have him indicted. (The only other newspaper to report this appearance was the New York World-Telegram.) That effort was unsuccessful. When Gordon appeared again in the Magistrates Court, the ADA reduced the charge against him from felony assault to misdemeanor assault; in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book a clerk struck out Fel[ony] Ass[ault] and wrote "Red[uced] to Simple Assault misd[emeanor]." Kuntz claimed credit for the reduced charge when he questioned Gordon about this legal proceeding in a public hearing of the MCCH. While Gordon testified that the ADA had said he was doing Gordon a “favor” by withdrawing the assault charges, Kuntz drew out that his cross examination of Patrolman Young established that the officer did not go to a doctor or a hospital, so did not suffer injuries justifying a felony charge, or even simple assault. He also testified that a new charge of unlawful assembly, the misdemeanor form of riot, had been made against him at that hearing, information not mentioned in any other sources. Magistrate Renaud transferred Gordon to the Court of Special Sessions for trial on the reduced charge, a decision reported only in the New York Amsterdam News, New York Times, and New York Herald Tribune.

For some reason, the trial did not take place for almost eight months. Sometime in early November the judges convicted Gordon and sentenced him on November 15. Arthur Garfield Hays, who had chaired the MCCH hearing at which Gordon testified, wrote to the Chief Judge of the Court of Special Sessions on November 13 after hearing of the conviction, the only evidence of that outcome. Expressing surprise that Gordon had been convicted, Hays urged that he be given a suspended sentence as he was "certainly not a criminal and was exercising what he deemed to be his right of free speech." Judge William Walling responded, telling Hays that he "did not have all the facts." As far as the judge was concerned, "There was not the slightest doubt but that Gordon assaulted the officer who was in uniform. Thereafter, of course, the officer hit back and subdued Gordon." That assessment made it unlikely Walling and his colleagues would have imposed the suspended sentence Hays favored. However, what sentence they imposed on Gordon is unknown.
Sam Jameson, Murray Samuels, and Claudio Viabolo arrested Shortly after 6:45 PM, Patrolman Timothy Shannon and other officers arrested two nineteen-year-old white men, Sam Jameson and Murray Samuels, and Claudio Viabolo, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man, who were picketing in front of Kress’ store at 256 West 125th Street. The three men had arrived a few minutes earlier, likely from 262 Lenox Avenue, the offices of the organization to which they belonged, the Young Liberators. The placards they carried read “Kress Brutally Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child and Negro Women. Negro and White Don’t Buy Here” and “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child.” An officer “told or asked [the men] to stop marching in front of Kress'," Patrolman Moran told a public hearing of the MCCH and when they did not leave “after about five minutes," police arrested them for unlawful assembly. Jackson Smith, the store manager, watched the arrest from inside the store. “The police took the placards and pushed the people carrying them into the vestibule,” he told a later public hearing. Around thirty minutes earlier, Patrolman Shannon had arrested another man in front of the store, twenty-year-old white man, Daniel Miller, pulling him down from a stepladder when he tried to speak to a crowd. A few minutes later, around 6:30 PM, other officers, including Patrolman Irwin Young, arrested a second white man, Harry Gordon, when tried to speak to the crowd by climbing a lamppost on 125th Street east of Kress’ store.

The testimony of Moran and Smith in the public hearings provided the only details of the arrests of Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo. The men themselves did not testify. Patrolman Shannon did testify, but was not asked about any of the arrests he made. Newspaper stories on the arrests grouped the men with Miller, and in some cases, Gordon, reflecting information from police that they had acted together to create the disorder. Two Hearst newspapers, the New York American and New York Evening Journal, published stories that described the arrest, but they included details that testimony in the public hearings indicate did not happen: Jameson and Samuels arrived with Miller and Gordon, not after them, in the newspaper narrative, picketed before Miller spoke, and with Harry Gordon came to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, battling Shannon and two other patrolmen before also being arrested. Viabolo was not on the picket line in those stories, but in the New York American was a member of the crowd who joined in efforts to prevent Miller’s arrest. Although the newspapers said their information came from police, the elements that did not happen seem to be a product of the anti-Communist stance and sensational style of the Hearst newspapers. The New York Times and, somewhat surprisingly, the Daily Worker, also published narratives in which the men picketed before Miller spoke, but without details of their arrest. The New York Times simply reported that the arrest of Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo, and Miller, came “later,” after Miller spoke. The Daily Worker did not report specific arrests, but rather that “police broke up the picket line, arresting the leaders.”

Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo all appeared in 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, among those charged with inciting a riot. However, the white men, Jameson and Samuels, as well as Miller and Gordon, are not in the transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter in the MCCH records. Viabolo did appear, with Margaret Mitchell, the Black woman arrested inside Kress' store. 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. It may be that the charges against those men were not recorded as riot. The charge against Viabolo in the blotter is disorderly conduct, with the note that he was “Disorderly in Kress’ 5 & 10c store,” the same description recorded for Margaret Mitchell.

In a line-up on the morning of March 20 that included ninety-six of those arrested disorder, police put Jameson, Samuels and Viabolo in a group with Miller and Gordon, a New York Herald Tribune story noted. Police described the men 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, in the Daily Mirror and New York Sun. An unnamed Black man, presumably Viabolo, was quoted in the New York Sun “giving his version of the start of the trouble:” "We were picketing in front of the store. I heard that a child had been killed inside. I thought it ought to be called to the attention of the public, about the child being killed.” The man then told the officer questioning him that he “and his companions took turns on a soap box “informing the public.”” That last detail was not part of any other description of the picketing. The two other newspaper stories on the line-up did not include Viabolo’s comments, but focused, as the New York Sun did, on Harry Gordon’s exchange with police, in which he refused to answer questions until he saw his lawyer.

The Daily News, New York American, 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 as Harry Gordon, looking at the ground. On the right of the image 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 is unmentioned 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 Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo with Miller and Gordon when they 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 arraigned separately from the three Young Liberators and Miller. 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."

When the court clerk called the names of Jameson, Samuels, Viabolo, and Miller, 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. 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 the 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, asked that the men be held for a hearing on Friday on the maximum bail of $2,500. The men's lawyers protested that sum. Others arrested during the disorder charged with felonies had their bail set at $1,000, 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 Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo returned to the Harlem Magistrates Court with Miller, Magistrate Ford dismissed the charges against the group because their cases had already been decided by Dodge's grand jury. The Magistrates Court docket book recorded the deposition of the men's cases as "Dism[issed], def[endant] indicted." Stories in the Home News, Daily Mirror, and New York Amsterdam News also reported that 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, not an indictment, and to the Court of Special Sessions, not the Court of General Sessions. Other newspaper 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. If the men were being prosecuted for the form of the crime defined as a misdemeanor, unlawful assembly, their crime was being treated as 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 Jamison, Samuels, and Viabolo, or Miller. 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 Defense lawyers again represented the men, but not the same attorneys as 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' prior to the men arriving, they moved to have the charges dismissed. The judges agreed, and freed Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo, as well as Miller.

Claudio Viabolo lived in Harlem, at 202 West 132nd Street; the two white men did not. Sam Jameson lived at 967 East 178th Street in Washington Heights, north of the Black neighborhood, although when a reporter from the New York Evening Journal went to the address, the tenants denied knowing him. Murray Samuels lived at 8621 Twentieth Avenue, Brooklyn. However, he was not a student at City College, as the New York Evening Journal reported on March 21. A week later the New York Evening Journal acknowledged that the Murray Samuels a reporter had identified as attending evening classes was not the man arrested during the disorder, in a story headlined, "Far From Red, and Riot! Says C. C. N. Y. Man."

Claudio Viabolo’s name was spelled in a variety of ways in these sources. Viabolo is used here as it was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories about his appearances in the Harlem Magistrates Court published in the Afro-American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, New York American, and New York Age. The name was spelled Diabolo in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and stories in New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal. In the edition the New York Age rushed to print on March 23, the name was Bilo. In the Daily Worker on March 21, the name was Viano. Sam Jameson's name was also misspelled, but was not corrected over time as Viabolo's name was. Jameson is used here as it was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories published in New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and stories about court appearances published in the Home News and New York Sun. The name was spelled Jamieson in the Daily News, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Guide, and New York American.
Two men speak to a crowd & Patrolman Irwin Young assaulted Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white man in his senior year at City College, was walking along West 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues about 6:00 PM, he told a public hearing of the MCCH, when he noticed groups of “excited” people “milling around the street.” While Gordon claimed to have been simply passing by, it seems likely he was one of the Communist Party members who came to Kress’ store in response to rumors a boy had been attacked. He did identify himself at the hearing as a member of the New York Students League, a Communist-led organization. Gordon gave his address as 699 Prospect Avenue in the Bronx.

Gordon testified that he asked several people on the street what was happening, but he “couldn’t get anything at all from them.” He then saw a Black man, James Parton, set up a ladder in front of Kress' store and briefly speak to the crowd before Daniel Miller stepped up to speak. A window then smashed and police officers immediately seized Miller. Other officers chased Gordon and other people who had been listening to Miller across West 125th Street to the opposite sidewalk and then pushed them away from the store, east toward 7th Avenue. About 300 feet from Kress’ store, Gordon estimated, Parton climbed a lamppost and again spoke to those on the street, saying “that a boy had been killed and that a crowd should gather in protest,” according to Gordon’s testimony. Then he climbed the lamppost, intending, he told a public hearing, “to get a committee from the crowd” “to go to the police to find out if a child was killed.” He was only able to say “Friends” before Patrolman Irwin Young pulled him down from the lamppost. Gordon’s alleged assault on Young came when he “grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer,” according to a story in the New York Times. That story was the only source that mentioned the nature of the assault in reporting Gordon’s second appearance in the Magistrates Court. After arresting Gordon, Young and other officers dragged him to a police radio car and drove him to the police station on West 123rd Street.

Lists of the injured variously described the injuries Young suffered as “cuts on hands,” in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal, “lacerations of right hand” in the New York Herald Tribune, and "bruised on the hand" in the New York American. No version represented a sufficient injury to constitute a felony assault, which was the charge police initially made against Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune reported Young received medical treatment at the scene, but when Gordon’s lawyer cross-examined him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, Young testified that he did not go to a doctor or the hospital, Gordon told the public hearing. Young did not appear in the hospital records, as the other police officers injured around this time did, confirmation of those statements. Moreover, Young was back on the streets by 10:10 PM, when he arrested Leroy Gillard at 200 West 128th Street, allegedly for looting. He was the first police officer allegedly assaulted in the disorder; five others would be assaulted around 125th Street before 10:30 PM, after which time the crowds had moved to other parts of the neighborhood.

Gordon denied he assaulted Young. He was grabbed from behind, he testified in a public hearing of the MCCH, and then “a rain of blows descended on me such that I have never experienced before" against which he could do nothing. Louise Thompson, part of the crowd on 125th Street, offered a more detailed account, although as a member of the Communist Party, she was not an entirely disinterested observer. She described to a public hearing of the MCCH how “a cop kicked him, another knocked him over the head with his billy and another slapped him in the face and punched him in the ribs.” Thompson more clearly stated that Gordon did not assault Young when interviewed earlier by a reporter for the Daily Worker for a story published on the same day she testified in the public hearing: "I was standing a few feet from Harry Gordon when he was arrested. He did not strike any policeman. He did nothing.” In the same story in the Daily Worker, Gordon denied committing assault, implying that Young made the charge to justify his violence: “I did not strike any policeman. He struck me over the head with his club before I even saw him. He said, 'So you'll hit a cop, will you?' as he struck me.”

As was the case with events inside Kress’ store, testimony in the public hearings of the MCCH provided the most detailed evidence of the events outside the store in the early evening of March 19. Louise Thompson testified on March 30 and Harry Gordon on May 4. (Thompson only mentioned the first speaker, Miller, in her article in New Masses.) The MCCH subcommittee report and final report both describe a second person trying to speak in front of Kress who was arrested, without naming that person, but make no mention of his alleged assault on a police officer. More striking, Inspector Di Martini’s report names Gordon without mentioning an alleged assault on one of his officers. That report has no reference to Daniel Miller, presenting Gordon as the only person to speak in front of the store: “At about 7PM, one Harry Gordon, #699 Prospect Avenue arrived in front of Kress’ Store with a number of others carrying placards and made a speech to a group which was attracted and incited a number of colored persons to break windows of the store. He was immediately arrested by Ptl. Young #3203, 32nd Precinct.”

No newspaper stories explicitly reported the narrative in the MCCH hearings and reports, as they truncated events outside the store and presented Gordon, Daniel Miller, and the three Young Liberators who picketed the store as a single group arriving and acting together. Only some described Gordon as speaking, and only three of the initial stories about the disorder describe him as assaulting Young, in different circumstances that were both unlike what was described in the MCCH public hearings. Even later stories about Gordon’s first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court do not all mention the assault charge, and several describe him as picketing Kress’ store, not trying to speak to the crowd. When Gordon testified in a public hearing of the MCCH, newspaper stories described him speaking, and being arrested by Young, but omitted the context he provided for those events as coming after Miller had tried to speak and been arrested.

Only some newspapers described Gordon as speaking in front of the store. The New York Age accurately captured the event, if not its context: “Harry Gordon, white Communist, was arrested when Patrolman Young of the 123rd Street police station found him addressing a group. He was taken to the station house charged with inciting a riot.” The New York Post more briefly described Gordon, Miller, and the two other white men as having been arrested for “haranguing crowds, urging them to fight.” The Daily Mirror identified Gordon as a speaker, describing him as “a 'Red' orator,” but with no details of circumstances of his speaking or arrest. The New York World-Telegram included Gordon in a group obliquely described as being arrested for being “Communist agitators.”

Only three of the initial stories about the disorder described Gordon assaulting Young, in different circumstances that were unlike what was described in the MCCH public hearings. Gordon came to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, joined by the three Young Liberators, and battled Patrolman Shannon and two other officers before also being arrested, according to the New York American and New York Evening Journal. That story also mistakenly had Gordon picketing the store. The New York Times relocated the encounter between Gordon and Young to the rear of Kress’ store on West 124th Street. In the struggle between police and a crowd that took place there, the story reported, Young “was cut on the right hand by a rock” thrown by Gordon. That clash occurred around thirty minutes after Gordon was arrested, and involved officers other than Young being injured.

Later stories about Gordon’s first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court did not all mention the assault charge, and several described him as picketing Kress’ store, not trying to speak to the crowd. Gordon was described as charged with assault in the New York Sun, in a story about a line-up of those arrested, and in the New York American and New York Amsterdam News, which had him picketing the store. Four other papers did not mention the assault charge: the Daily Mirror described Gordon and the others grouped with him as “curb-stone orators who had deliberately incited the 125th St. mobs;” in the Home News, the charge was inciting a riot, for “making a speech in front of Kress’ store;” in the Daily News it was an unspecified “separate charge” from that made against the other men, which was inciting riot; and in the New York Evening Journal Gordon and three others were charged with “circulating false placards to the effect that a Negro boy had been beaten to death.” Gordon’s subsequent appearances in the Harlem Magistrates courts were generally not reported. Only the New York World-Telegram, Home News, and New York American mentioned his appearance on March 25, with no details of his alleged offense. The New York Times story of Gordon’s appearance on May 27 provided the only details of the assault, that he “grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer.” The New York Herald Tribune story on the same hearing not only made no mention of those details, but omitted the assault entirely and instead made Gordon only indirectly responsible for Young’s injuries: his speech telling the crowd “that a Negro boy had been killed in the store… so excited the neighborhood that Patrolman Irving Young, of the West 123d Street station, and several others were hurt in the ensuing riot.”

Stories about Gordon’s testimony in the MCCH public hearing on May 4 published in the New York Times, New York Age, and Associated Negro Press described him speaking, and being arrested by Young, but omitted the context he provided for those events as coming after Miller had tried to speak and been arrested. The New York American and Afro-American had an even narrower focus, mentioning only that Gordon alleged he had been beaten by police, with no description of the circumstances of his arrest. The only story about Gordon’s allegation published before the hearing was in the Daily Worker on March 30, reflecting his association with the Communist Party. Reporters for the New York Evening Journal had been unable to locate him. When the Daily Worker’s journalist spoke to Gordon, “his left eye [was] still black from the police beating more than a week ago.” However, in a Daily News photograph published on March 20 captioned as showing Gordon and the other men grouped with him by police, none of the men have visible injuries. As there are only three men, the image may be of the Miller and the Young Liberators without Gordon, perhaps around the time he was arraigned separately.

Harry Gordon did not appear in the MCCH's transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter; Claudio Viabolo, the Black Young Liberator, is the only one of the five speakers and picketers in that record. Gordon appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, shortly after the other white men arrested at the start of the disorder. Magistrate Renaud remanded him to reappear on March 25, and then again on March 27. While Miller and the three Young Liberators that police grouped with Gordon as the instigators of the riot were sent by the grand jury to the Court of Special Sessions, the ADA reduced the charge against Gordon to misdemeanor assault in the Magistrates Court, with his ILD lawyers claiming credit in the public hearing of the MCCH, as they had elicited testimony from Young that he had not needed medical treatment for his injury. Magistrate Renaud then transferred Gordon to the Court of Special Sessions. For some reason, the trial did not take place until November, when the judges convicted him.

In the narratives of historians Mark Naison, Cheryl Greenberg, Marilynn Johnson, Lorrin Thomas, and Nicole Watson, Gordon and Miller are grouped together as “speakers” pulled down by police. Historian Thomas Kessner named Miller in his narrative as the only speaker in front of the store. None of those historians mention Gordon's alleged assault of Young. They all follow the narrative provided by police that presents the speakers as part of a single group protesting in front of Kress’ store, stepping up to speak to the crowd after picketing of the store had begun. That framing implicitly introduces the idea that the disorder was orchestrated by those men, while offering no details of how the crowds of women and men around them acted to weigh against that evidence. Weight is added to that implication by the failure to fully identify the men involved in the protests. While Greenberg and Thomas do not identify the men, Naison, Kessner, Johnson, and Watson describe them as members of the Young Liberators. None of those historians mention that four of the five, and both the speakers arrested, were white men. Naison did describe the Young Liberators as an interracial group; so too did Watson, however she did not identify the men in front of the store as members of the Young Liberators. Neglecting their race makes those men appear more representative of the crowd than they were, particularly in Greenberg and Watson’s narratives, which do not identify them as Young Liberators. Naison, Kessner, Greenberg, Thomas, Johnson, and Watson all follow the chronology that has the picketing begin before the speakers were arrested. Grouping the men places an organized Communist protest at the center of the outbreak of disorder, and makes the window being broken and the men’s arrest a response to the feeling they built in the crowd. Recognizing that the protests occurred in a less coordinated way highlights that police responded immediately to any sign of protest, not just to a window being broken. They may also have acted so quickly because they recognized the men as Communists; the men’s language and appeals would have given them away. Communist protest in Harlem, and across the city, drew violent responses from police in the months prior to the disorder. Recognition of the fragmented nature of the protests and the identity of those involved directs attention away from those events to the crowds of Black men and women around them. Crowd members gathered in groups, talked amongst themselves, sought answers from police about what had happened to the boy, and responded to police efforts to clear the street. Rather than organized or orchestrated by the Young Liberators, those behaviors appear more spontaneous, in line with the interpretation offered in the MCCH’s final report.
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.
In Harlem court on March 20 (76) Seventy-six of those arrested in the 28th Precinct, south of West 130th Street, during the disorder appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud decided just over half of those prosecutions. He rendered verdicts in only nine cases, convicting five men and one woman and discharging three men. That was far fewer cases than Magistrate Ford decided in the Washington Heights Court that day in large part because those arraigned in Harlem faced more serious charges. Renaud sent twelve others for trial on misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions and eighteen more charged with felonies to the grand jury. The remaining thirty-seven people he remanded in custody on bail. Those hearings were reported in all of Harlem’s white newspapers, but not in Black newspapers, which did not report the disorder until March 30, when they reported later court appearances. The newspaper stories varied in detail, with most only offering general accounts.

Descriptions of the scene at the court emphasized the number of police present and how they kept onlookers at a distance. The Home News put the number of police at fifty, the New York Post at sixty-five. The New York Times reported “Heavy police guards composed of men on foot, mounted and on motorcycles, surrounded the courts,” the Home News reported “cordons," and later that “Heavy police guards surrounded the courts and held back many colored persons who attempted to enter the buildings,” the New York Sun “lines of policemen formed in the street” that stopped anyone from going “west of Third Avenue or east of Sylvan Place," the Daily News that “Spectators were kept a block away from the buildings," and the New York American that the court was "heavily guarded,” with the "crowd gathered in the vicinity but was not permitted near the courthouse.” Only the Daily News noted the police presence in the crowd itself, that “plainclothesmen prowled through the crowds.”

The New York Sun also reported an additional 25 officers in the court building, ten on the stairs leading up to the courtroom and 15 in the courtroom itself, the Daily News more generally that “police lined the corridors of the courts.” Despite police restricting access to the courthouse, newspaper stories did mention the presence of spectators in the courtroom. That crowd had arrived early according to the New York Post, which reported that by 9:30 AM the space had become so crowded that the doors were closed. The Times Union described those present as Black, while the New York Evening Journal said the courtroom was crowded with participants in the disorder, prisoners awaiting arraignment.

Newspapers offered only slightly more details about the crowd outside the courthouse. Only the New York American put a number on those present, 1,500 people, which is likely an exaggeration given the sensational style of that publication. The New York Post described the crowd as lining the curbs outside the courthouse rather than giving its size. The New York Sun, New York Times, and Daily News mentioned crowds without describing their size. Those stories focused on the composition and behavior of the people, about which they offered contradictory pictures. Most of the spectators, inside and out, were Negroes, according to the New York Post, while the New York Times described them as “Negro friends of the prisoners assembled to attend the arraignments.” To the contrary, the Daily News portrayed them as “evenly distributed between white and colored.” Descriptions of how they behaved ran the gamut, with the New York Post portraying them as showing “clearly that they were there just to see the sights," to the Daily News insisting that they were “entirely orderly,” and the New York Sun and New York Times highlighting moments of anger, “a storm of boos and jeers from the crowd” as a wagon loaded with prisoners drove by in the New York Sun, and “considerable grumbling, some shouting of threats, but no violence” recounted in the New York Times.

Two photographs published in the Daily News captured the arrival of prisoners at the Harlem courthouse. In a photograph that appeared on the front page on March 21, shot from street level, a crowd can be seen in the background, held back by a uniformed patrolman, the elevated railway line indicating that they were on 3rd Avenue. An injured man is visible in the photograph; unlike the photograph published in the same newspaper of men being loaded into a wagon at the 28th Precinct, the caption to that image made no mention of the man’s injury. However, a second photograph published in the Daily News of a different group of men exiting a wagon and entering the court, shot from above, did draw attention to prisoners’ injuries, in both the headline and caption attached to it. “Casualties of Race War,” was the headline given to the image, which was captioned, “Prisoners of War! Wounded in the battle of Harlem, these prisoners arrive at Harlem Court in police wagon.” (It is difficult to determine which of the men shown in the photograph are injured as the only available image is scanned from microfilm and is of poor quality. One of the men in the foreground may have a bandaged head.) A third photograph of prisoners arriving at the courthouse, found in the Getty Images collection, is not attributed to a newspaper or agency and did not appear in any of the publications examined for this study. Taken from a similar elevated angle to the first of the Daily News images, it showed a different group of prisoners being taken into the courthouse. The different arrangement of vehicles indicates that the photographs are of two different groups of prisoners. None of the men in that image have visible injuries, nor did the caption reference any. It simply noted, “Members of the press as well as police officers watch as police vans escort the arrested to the courthouse the day after rioting in the Harlem neighbourhood in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, 20th March 1935.”
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As was the case in reports of the police line-up, several newspaper stories included incidental mentions of the visible injuries of many of those under arrest. The New York World-Telegram merely noted “many battered and sore” among the prisoners. The Daily News mentioned that “numerous minor defendants appeared in court with bandaged and plastered heads” but only to contrast them with the group of alleged Communists, none of whom was “hurt.” Alone among the mentions of injured prisoners, the New York Sun story explicitly stated what would have been widely understood to be the source of their injuries, describing “Groups of prisoners battered and bruised after their furious battles with the police.” The implicit acceptance of police violence against Black New Yorkers by the white press stood in stark contrast to the attention and criticism it attracted in the Black press.

Only the New York Evening Journal and Home News published lists of those being arraigned, neither of which was complete. The Home News identified thirty-seven of the seventy-six individuals, including their name, address, charge, the magistrate’s decision, the amount he set for bail, and also brief descriptions of their alleged offense. (In several cases those descriptions provide the only details of those events.) Three of those omitted were discharged; those discharged were also omitted from the publication's list of those arraigned in the Washington Heights court. There is no obvious reason why the other thirty-six were not listed. As discussed below, the New York Post, Daily News, and Daily Worker did note the speed with which cases were processed, which might have made it difficult for reporters to hear or otherwise gather information about them. The list in the New York Evening Journal also included the name, address, charge, the magistrate’s decision, and the amount he set for bail, without any information on the alleged offense. (My copy of this story is incomplete, so I do not know how many of those arraigned the newspaper identified; sixteen names are visible, but there were more in the list.)

The appearances of the four alleged Communists, Daniel Miller, Murray Samuels, Sam Jamison, and Claudio Viabolo, and in some cases Harry Gordon, also arrested at the beginning of the disorder were the only widely reported arraignments, with the Daily News, New York American and New York Evening Journal, also publishing photographs of the men leaving the 28th Precinct station for court. 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. And the New York Sun mentioned four white men but identified only Gordon. That difference appears to have resulted from Gordon being arraigned separately from the three Young Liberators and Miller. That separation would have resulted from Gordon being arrested by a different police officer. The Daily News claimed Gordon "was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers." The New York World-Telegram simply reported that “The fifth [man] was to be arraigned later in Harlem Court.”

These men drew reporters’ attention at least in part because police identified them as the instigators of the disorder, a claim that the Daily Worker reported that ADA Carey also made during the men’s arraignment. 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. The Daily Mirror elaborated that description in more sensational terms, describing them as “the curb-stone orators who had deliberately incited the 125th St. mobs to looting frenzy,” while the Daily News and New York World-Telegram used less sensational variations, with the Daily News describing them as those “whose propaganda is blamed for the riot” and the New York World-Telegram describing them as “accused of store picketing activities alleged to have been the direct causes of the riot.”

The stories also labeled the men Communists, with the New York World-Telegram and New York Sun directly attributing that information to police. The Daily Worker obliquely confirmed that source, reporting “Authorities declared that they 'would prove they were Reds.'” The anti-Communist Daily Mirror claimed the men identified themselves, that they were “all admitted Communists.” While the other stories did not explicitly label the men Communists, they identified the lawyers who represented them, details which would have conveyed to their readers that they were Communists. The Home News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily News all described the lawyers as from the ILD, well known in the 1930s as the legal arm of the Communist Party. 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 the Daily News named only Aronsky, and the 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.)

The other element of the men’s arraignment that drew attention was the bail of $2,500 that Magistrate Renaud set for Miller and the three Young Liberators (but not for Gordon). While the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, New York World-Telegram, Home News, and New York Times simply noted the amount of the bail, the Daily Mirror noted that sum was the “maximum bonds,” and was requested by the prosecutor, Carey. Without noting the high level of the bail, the Daily News reported that the men’s ILD lawyers “protested vehemently against the amount of bail.” That story also reported that one of those lawyers, Aronsky also complained that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest," a detail that only the Daily Worker also reported. Magistrate Renaud responded to that complaint with a “retort,” the Daily News reported obliquely, and by saying “that he had no responsibility in the matter,” according to the Daily Worker.

Newspapers reported the other arraignments with summary statements (The Daily Mirror and New York Herald Tribune reported only the arraignments of the alleged Communists). That most cases were not decided but instead held over for further hearings, was noted by the New York American, New York Times, Home News, and Daily Worker. The New York Post and Daily News specified that it was defendants facing the “more serious charges” that were held on bail, with the New York Post identifying those charges as burglary and inciting to riot. The New York Sun merely noted that “The more serious cases were brought before Magistrate Renaud in the Harlem Court.” Only the New York Post, New York Times, and Daily News also noted that Renaud did decide some cases. Where the New York Times simply reported that “several were sentenced immediately,” the Daily News specified that “In the cases of those charged with misdemeanors he invariably found them guilty and held them either without bail for investigation or in bail of $500 for sentence Friday" and the New York Post add the detail that these were “The relatively unimportant charges, disorderly conduct, simple assault and so on” in which “Small fines with alternative jail sentences were administered, with most of the prisoners taking the jail terms.” The summary details offered by the Daily News and New York Post mask the small number of cases Renaud decided: he convicted only five men and one woman, and actually acquitted three other men, of the total of seventy-six who appeared before him. He also did not sentence any of those he convicted, instead ordering them investigated and returned to court for sentencing three days later, on March 23. What the New York Post described happened in the Washington Heights court, not the Harlem court.

The other feature of the hearings noted in those stories was the speed, the short time taken on each case. An early edition of the New York Post reported that “cases were handled with almost unprecedented speed.” A later edition elaborated that minor charges were “handled at a speed of ten minutes or less to a case” and more serious charges “also were jammed through rapidly.” The Daily Worker, which cast the work of the “capitalist courts” as “frame-up cases and grinding out convictions,” had case handled even faster: “30 cases of Negroes were disposed of in almost as many minutes.” The Daily News described the speed in terms of the activities involved rather than time: “As rapidly as overtaxed court clerks could draw the necessary papers Renaud heard defendants.”

Newspaper stories had little to say about how those in the courtroom reacted to the proceedings. What they did mention suggested a wariness that the Black community might see racial discrimination at work that could prompt further disorder. Only the Daily News reported that Magistrate Renaud expressed such concerns at the beginning of the hearing, announcing that at his request Assistant District Attorney Richard E. Carey, who was Black, had been assigned to prosecute the accused rioters so that "there can be no charge of discrimination." Only the Brooklyn Daily Eagle also explicitly linked Carey’s role to racial tensions, pointed to him being the prosecutor in the Harlem Court to claim “it could hardly be said there was racial discrimination against the Negro Prisoners.” That story did not mention that Renaud had requested Carey. The Daily Mirror did note that Carey, whom the story described as “a colored attache of District attorney Dodge’s office,” was specially assigned at the demand of Renard without providing his explanation for that request. The New York Post and Daily Worker simply noted Carey’s involvement in the prosecutions. On at least one occasion, Carey’s involvement produced the racial tensions Renaud had sought to prevent, according to stories in the Daily News and Times Union. The fullest account was provided by the Daily News: “…when a white attorney, who refused to give his name to reporters, sought to inject a question of race while a colored patrolman was testifying against Leo Smith, 18, of 305 E. 118th St., who is white, Renaud denounced the attorney. 'The patrolman in this case happens to be colored, the Judge happens to be white and the prosecutor is colored.' said Renaud. 'We recognize no race, color or creed here. We are looking for justice and law and order.'" Missing from that story was the reaction in the courtroom, which is what the Times Union reported: “The tenseness lingering from the night was apparent in Harlem Court, where Negroes in the jammed room muttered disapprovingly as a lawyer for a white defendant hinted the trouble was started by Negroes and was racial in origin. Magistrate Renaud quickly reprimanded the attorney.” (Strikingly, that account, and mention of Margaret Mitchell’s reaction to be charged — that she "denied hysterically she participated in the rioting. She stood up from the witness chair screaming, then collapsed" — are the only references to the court proceedings in the Times Union story). Neither story made clear just what Smith’s lawyer had said. The Black officer who testifed against Smith was one of four Black patrolmen, together with a Black detective, that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle story referenced alongside Carey to refute the possibility of racial discrimination in the courts. The New York Herald Tribune was the only other newspaper to note that “Among the arresting officers were five Negro patrolmen and detectives.”
Before court on March 20 For eighty-six of the Black men, six of the white men, and four of the Black women police arrested during the disorder, the legal process began with a trip in police wagons from Harlem to Police Headquarters downtown at 240 Center Street for a line-up. At least at the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, where most of those arrested were held, they were led out on the front doors on to the street to be loaded into the wagons. On that walk the men and women had to pass by a gauntlet of white press photographers and cameramen. Many of those under arrest showed signs of police violence during the disorder, bandages over wounds to their heads and hands, visible bruises, and torn clothing. The attention these men drew from reporters indicated that there were many more injured than the five arrested men identified in newspaper stories and medical records. Some of the twenty-nine men and women who had been arrested missing from the line-up had more serious injuries that kept them in Harlem's hospitals. Police officials were clearly still trying to establish exactly how many arrests had been made as they gave different totals to reporters, ranging from 113 reported by the New York Post to 121 reported by the Home News and 127 reported by the New York American. Three of those arrested during the disorder had already appeared in the Night Court the previous evening; Magistrate Capshaw had found Claudius Jones guilty of disorderly conduct for "refusing to obey police order to move away from a Harlem corner" and given him a suspended sentence, remanded James Smitten, charged with assault, and held Leo Smith on bail to appear in the Harlem court.

While the morning line-up was part of police practice, the number of prisoners coming from Harlem made it anything but routine. Police diverted traffic and cleared parked cars from the blocks surrounding the headquarters building to ensure access for the collection of patrol wagons. Even after crowding the prisoners disembarking those wagons into cells, there was not space for all those brought to police headquarters. Most were instead put in the photographic gallery.

Police then took groups of three to five prisoners to a floodlit stage, where detectives questioned them. "Did you throw that stone," a detective asked Isaac Daniels, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man arrested for allegedly throwing a stone that smashed glass in the window of Herman Young's hardware store and went on to hit Young . "No sir, I didn't have any," Young replied. The detective then changed tack and asked Daniels, "Are you working now?" That question may have been for the benefit of representatives of the Department of Public Welfare and the Aldermanic Welfare Committee, who attended the line-up and took notes. Daniels answered, yes, for the C.W.A. Twenty-one others in the line-up identified themselves as unemployed and on public relief, with three more on relief until recently, circumstances that reporters for the New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun and Daily Mirror highlighted, implying that they thought it helped explain their alleged offenses.

The detective then returned to the circumstances of Daniels' arrest. "What were you doing around there?" "I was coming home," Daniels replied. That was all the explanation Daniels was allowed to offer at this point in the legal process. The detective moved on to establishing Daniels' identity. "How long in New York?" "Since 1928." "Are you married?" "Yes Sir." "Where did you come from?" "Georgia." With that information, which likely helped police find his criminal record, the detective moved on to the next person in the line-up. Aubrey Patterson answered somewhat more effusively when asked to identify himself. In response to being asked if he was a citizen, the twenty-one year-old Black man said "I am a citizen of this great metropolis. I was born in this metropolis in 132nd Street." "What do you do for a living?" "I do laboring in the daytime and I go to school at nighttime." In extending beyond the brief, deferential answers offered by Daniels, Patterson's statements drew the ire of some of white reporter from the New York Sun observing the line-up. They described him as having "assumed a pompous air" and that he "gave off oratory to reply to most of the questions."

Those charged with looting faced questions about items found in their possession when they were arrested, which in some cases they were carrying at the line-up. Several insisted they had found goods ranging from toothbrushes and shirts to cigarettes and bottles of milk lying in the street, denying that they had reached through broken windows to take them from stores. White reporters at the line-up dismissed those statements, reporting them either as simply an admission of having stolen the items or defenses that lacked credibility

Aubrey Patterson declined to answer questions about the looting with which he was charged. One white reporter made fun of the explanation he offered, claiming that it drew laughter from some of those observing the line-up: "I don't want to extricate myself from any guilt." Patterson may have misspoken; those in the room may also have misheard him, especially as the question posed to him about his citizenship suggests that he had an accent, likely West Indian. Either way, making fun of Patterson served to present him, and the others arrested during the disorder, as less threatening.

At least one other prisoner also declined to answer questions. In his case, those in the room reacted differently. Harry Gordon was one of the white men arrested outside the Kress store at the very beginning of the disorder. He was grouped on the line-up stage with the three other white men and the Black man identified as members of Communist Party organizations arrested around the same time: Daniel Miller and Murray Samuels, Sam Jamison, and Claudio Viabolo. Gordon identified himself as "a student at City College of New York," and then refused to answer any further question. Standing with one hand in his pocket, he announced, "I have no comment to make until I see my lawyer. I understand that anything I might say would be used against me." Captain Edward Dillon tried again, asking "If you are not guilty why do you want to see a lawyer?" "I know all that, but I won't talk until I see my lawyer," Gordon responded with a wave of his hand. Journalists in the room described Gordon as "defiant," his stance as a "Napoleonic pose," his statement marking him out to Daily Mirror's reporter as "the inciter of the night's rioting." As was the case with the city's then stridently anti-Communist Hearst newspapers, that publication was far more interested in the radicals arrested during the disorder than the Black residents. The four avowed Communists did not appear to respond in the same way. Viabolo, at least, offered an answer to what he had been doing before his arrest: "We were picketing in front of the store. I heard that a child had been killed inside. I thought it ought to be called to the attention of the public, about the child being killed."

After the line-up, the arrested men and women were loaded back into police wagons. Once again they encountered press photographers. Cameras followed them even into the wagons, capturing images of at least two groups not simply in police custody but contained in a cell-like space that conveyed that order had been restored in Harlem.
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Escorted by police motorcycles, the wagons transported those under arrest uptown to be arraigned in the two courts whose jurisdictions encompassed the disorder, the Harlem court at 170 East 121st Street and the Washington Heights court at 455 West 151st Street.
Line-up at Police Headquarters (96) On the morning of March 20, police transported most of those arrested during the disorder from Harlem’s two police stations downtown to police headquarters for a line-up prior to their arraignment in the Magistrates courts. Only four white newspapers reported details of that line-up. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun devoted the most space to those events; the Daily Mirror offered an overview and a brief account of an exchange between Harry Gordon, one of the white men arrested in front of the Kress store at the beginning of the disorder, and Captain Dillon, one of the officers questioning prisoners. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle included a series of snippets in a list of “Highlights on the Harlem Front.” The Daily News, Daily Mirror, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle published photographs of prisoners being taken to the line-up and waiting in police headquarters.

The stories presented those arrested as a group, emphasizing the scale of the disorder, in contrast with subsequent stories about the appearance of those prisoners in court, which named multiple individuals. The focus of the stories was those charged with looting and on Harry Gordon. No mention was made of those charged with assault. The only suggestion of violence by those arrested came in a photograph published on the front page of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of prisoners after the line-up in the back of a police wagon that would take them back uptown to the Magistrates courts. One of several images of the prisoners being transported, in this photograph, as the caption described it, “in the left foreground a policeman is holding a long knife taken from one of the rioters.” There was no reference to that weapon in the newspaper’s story. However, many of those arrested were injured, described as having “battered heads and hands” in the New York Herald Tribune and “bruised and beaten and their clothing was torn” according to the New York Sun. Prisoners with those injuries appeared in images taken by press photographers as they were being transported to police headquarters. A Black man in the foreground of a Daily News image of prisoners being led into the back of a police wagon in front of the 28th Precinct had a large bandage around his head. The caption to that image was the only one to draw attention to the injuries of those arrested in the disorder, noting "First man in line was badly banged up." The same man also appeared in a second Daily News photograph exiting a wagon at the Harlem court. Two other men with bandages around their heads appeared among a half dozen prisoners photographed sitting in the rear of a wagon, in an Acme agency photograph that has been insightfully analyzed by Sara Blair. The newspaper stories offered no comment on those injuries, which almost certainly indicated that the men had been subject to violence by police.
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Photographs of those being transported to and from police headquarters likewise offered images of groups of prisoners, albeit of only part of the large group referenced in the stories. The Daily News published multiple photographs of prisoners being transported to police headquarters: two views of a group being loaded into police wagons in front of the 28th Precinct, one from across the street showing the crowd of press around the entrance and a newsreel crew filming from the top of a van and another from next to the wagon (discussed above). Both showed approximately half a dozen men. The Daily Mirror also published a similar close-up photograph of men being loaded into a police wagon, likely taken at the same time and place, although the details are difficult to make out in the microfilm copy. Two photographs of men in the back of police wagons, one published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the other an Acme agency photograph, showed eight to ten men.

The New York Herald Tribune reported ninety-six prisoners were involved in the line-up, while the New York Sun and Daily Mirror reported only eighty-nine. As the New York Herald Tribune used its number in a headline, it is treated as the more reliable. All three stories agreed that there were six white men and four black women in the group; the remainder were Black men. They also agreed that twenty-one of those questioned by police were on relief, three had been until recently, and one was a CWA worker. That information was likely obtained for the benefit of “a representative of the Department of Public Welfare and a representative of the Aldermanic Welfare Committee,” who attended the line-up according to the New York Herald Tribune. “Both took notes, presumably in checking the number of prisoners on the home relief rolls.” However many prisoners were brought to police headquarters, the number was more than the building’s cells could accommodate, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Post. The former reported, “There weren't enough cells to go around for the Harlem visitors at headquarters and many were herded in the photographic gallery,” with the later specifying that "All prisoners were placed together in the photograph gallery as the cell block at Headquarters only has capacity for thirty." A photograph published in the Daily Mirror seemed to confirm the overcrowding, showing prisoners packed together behind bars. Not all of those arrested during the disorder were in the line-up. One hundred and six people would appear in court on March 20. None of the stories mentioned that some of those arrested were missing. A passing mention in the New York Post provided a possible explanation, noting that during the disorder "prisoners were herded in police stations when they did not require hospital treatment, and were sent to Headquarters this morning." Some of those arrested could still have been in the hospital at the time of the line-up or at least had not been transported back to a police station.

Police led groups of three to five men and women on to a narrow, flood-lit stand to be questioned by detectives, according to both the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Mirror. A transcript of the exchange between a police officer and Isaac Daniels in the line-up contained in his district attorney's case file indicated the questions asked of those in the line-up: about an individual’s alleged offense, which elicited explanations; about details of that explanation; and about their identity in terms of time in New York City, marital status, and birthplace. Unfortunately, there are no records of the questioning of others police arrested during the disorder

Other than the injuries suffered by many prisoners, the other detail that attracted the attention of the reporters was the goods that many of those in the line-up carried with them. The New York Herald Tribune simply reported that “Many admitted they had stolen articles such as clothing, groceries and toothbrushes in their possession when apprehended.” While the New York Herald Tribune simply presented those individuals as guilty of looting, the New York Sun added a sense of the answers they gave that complicated that picture: “Many admitted thefts from the stores damaged during the riot, stealing everything from toothbrushes to shirts and groceries, but all denied breaking the store windows, insisting that they had picked the articles up from the street after others had thrown them out of the stores.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle also reported such responses only to make fun of them: “Many in the lineup still carried things they admitted picking up in the street but denied reaching into broken shop windows to secure. Cigarettes were the favorite item 'found.' One Negro woman still had in her possession five milk bottles. Police were doubtful that she drank as much milk as all that.”

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle also made fun of some of the answers offered by Aubrey Patterson, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, statements also reported in the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun. "'I don't want to extricate myself from any guilt,' said Aubert Patterson, colored, of 83 E. 113th St. Manhattan,” according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “in explaining (amid laughter) why he didn't want to discuss the charge of burglary against him." The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun by contrast, quoted Patterson answering questions, although only the New York Sun reported the questions: "'Are you a citizen?' Capt. Dillon asked this prisoner, who had identified himself as Aubrey Patterson, of 83 East 113th Street. 'I am a citizen of this great metropolis,' replied Patterson. 'I was born in this metropolis on 132d Street.' 'What do you do for a living?' 'I do laboring in the daytime and I go to school at nighttime.'" The story framed that exchange by denigrating Patterson as having "assumed a pompous air when questioned by Acting Capt. Dillon and gave off oratory to reply to most of the questions." The New York Herald Tribune did not offer any similar judgement but did add that Patterson was "a light-skinned Negro"

The other prisoner that reporters selected for attention was Harry Gordon, whom the New York Herald Tribune reported was grouped with Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators in the line-up. Gordon’s response to being questioned was reported by the New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, and Daily Mirror. The briefest mention appeared in the Daily Mirror, which reported only that "under the grilling conducted by Acting Capt. Edward Dillon" he declared "I am a student at City College of New York" and "refused to answer further questions." The reporter described Gordon's manner as "defiant." The other stories conveyed a similar judgment in their portrayals of Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune described him as "a tall, lanky youth [who] thrust one hand in his pocket and struck an orator's attitude" during the questioning; the New York Sun described his pose as "Napoleonic." Neither of those stories mentioned Gordon identifying himself as a student; they instead quoted him as refusing to answer questions until he saw a lawyer. The New York Sun quoted the exchange at the greatest length:
"I have no comment to make until I see my lawyer. I understand that anything I might say would be used against me."

"If you are not guilty why do you want to see a lawyer?" he was asked.

"I know all that," he replied with a wave of his hand "But I won't talk until I see my lawyer."
The Daily Mirror concluded that Gordon, in responding as he did, "had practically declared himself the inciter of the night's rioting" and the leader of the four others arrested at the beginning of the disorder.

The New York Sun alone included the response of Claudio Viabolo, who was in the same group as Gordon. The story did not name him, instead identifying him as “Another Negro, giving his version of the start of the trouble:”
"We were picketing in front of the store. I heard that a child had been killed inside. I thought it ought to be called to the attention of the public, about the child being killed."

Whereupon this Negro and his companions took turns on a soap box "informing the public," Capt. Dillon was told.”
The inclusion of Viabolo’s answers was an unusual departure from reporting across the range of newspapers that consistently portrayed the Communists involved in the early part of the disorder as white. A striking example of that focus are the later photographs of this group taken in the 28th Precinct station house as they were being transported to the Harlem courthouse. Although Viabolo was visible in images published in the Daily News, New York American and New York Evening Journal, he was not identified as part of the group in the captions, and was cropped out of versions of the photograph published by several regional newspapers.
Events
In Washington Heights court on March 20 (30) Thirty of those arrested during the disorder appeared in the Washington Heights court on March 20. Magistrate Ford adjudicated over 80% of those prosecutions, twenty-five of the thirty. He rendered verdicts in most cases, convicting nineteen men and discharging four others. That was far more cases than Magistrate Renaud decided in the Harlem Court that day, in large part because those arraigned in the Washington Heights court faced less serious charges. That difference was also apparent in the small number of people Ford sent for trial on misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions, just two men, and the lack of anyone charged with a felony referred to the grand jury. The remaining four men and one woman he remanded in custody on bail. Those hearings were reported in all Harlem’s white newspapers, but not in Black newspapers, which did not report the disorder until March 30, when they reported later court appearances. The newspaper stories varied in detail, with most only offering general accounts in less detail than they reported the hearings in the Harlem court.

Only the New York Evening Journal, New York Sun, and New York Post provided specific descriptions of the scene at the court. All three noted the building was “heavily” guarded by police. The New York Sun added the details that “Policemen were stationed at all corners surrounding the building, in the corridors of the building and in the court. Forty were on duty.” Typically, the details published in the New York Evening Journal were more sensational as well as describing more police, "53 policemen, nightsticks in hand, patrolling the block," thirty more hidden in a nearby garage, three emergency wagons on hand, and a few policemen stationed on the courthouse roof. The Home News, Daily News, New York Times, New York Post, and New York American offered generalizations about the scene at both the Washington Heights and Harlem courts which described the presence of police keeping crowds away from the building. Given that the stories in which those descriptions appeared focused on events at the Harlem court, they are entirely reliable as evidence of the scene at the Washington Heights court.

No newspaper stories gave details about the crowd size. The only mention of the crowd’s behavior was the general statement in the New York Times — “There was considerable grumbling, some shouting of threats, but no violence” — that fitted other evidence of the crowd at the Harlem court. There were also no photographs published of prisoners arriving at the court, as there were of those scenes at the Harlem court.

Only the Home News and New York Herald Tribune published lists of those being arraigned, neither of which was complete (the list of those arraigned published in the New York Evening Journal appeared to include only those who appeared in the Harlem court, although the copy of this story examined for this study was incomplete). The list in the Home News was more complete than its list of those arraigned in the Harlem court, including twenty-five of those who appeared, omitting only one man remanded on bail and, as had the Harlem list, those the magistrate discharged. However, the list included details of alleged offenses for only five men and one woman, all those either remanded on bail or sent to the Court of Special Sessions included in the list. Only the name, age, and address of the nineteen men convicted was provided. The list in the New York Herald Tribune likewise provided only those details, for fifteen of the nineteen convicted, adding the length of their sentences. That story provided details of the alleged offenses of two additional men convicted by Magistrate Ford, the first two men who appeared in court. It omitted two of those convicted (Salathel Smith and Walter Jones) and made no mention of the cases on which the Home News focused attention, the men and women remanded or sent for trial, while following that publication in not mentioning the four men the magistrate discharged.

There were no cases in the Washington Heights court that attracted reporters as the arraignment of the five alleged Communists in the Harlem court did. The New York Post mentioned the details of one case in its summary account, a man “held in $1,000 bail for stealing a can of coffee from a windowless grocery store.” That man was likely Raymond Taylor, the only one of the three men who allegedly took goods from a grocery store arraigned in the court for whom Magistrate Ford set bail at $1,000 (although none of the other sources that mention Taylor specify that he took coffee). It is not clear why the reporter singled him out for mention.

The other detail that the New York Post reported was that “Up to noon, only four of the persons arraigned in both courts had been discharged. All four of these cases were at Washington Heights.” Those four men were the only prisoners Magistrate Ford discharged. That he discharged prisoners was also mentioned in the New York Sun. That story noted that “Of the first nine arraigned at this court, all charged with disorderly conduct, three were discharged; the others were found guilty and given the alternative of paying a fine of $25 or serving five days in jail.” The Washington Heights court docket book recorded the outcome of those prosecutions slightly differently: Ford discharged three men among the first nine arraigned, but convicted only five of the others. He sent the other man, Lamter Jackson, the eighth arraigned, for trial in the Court of Special Sessions. These were the only stories to mention that any of those arraigned had been discharged.

Those stories gave a misleading picture of the hearings as a whole. The focus on the number of men discharged, and on the first men arraigned, in those stories suggests that the reporters left the court before all those arrested in the disorder had been arraigned. The Daily News reporter likely remained longer, as the newspaper’s story identified that what distinguished the hearings in the Washington Heights court overall was that “Magistrate Michael A. Ford meted out punishment in a majority of cases brought before him.” Where Renaud convicted only 8% of those who appeared before him, Ford convicted almost two-thirds, 63%. That difference was the result of those arraigned in the Washington Heights court facing less serious charges. However, as those convictions were reported without details, just what those convicted had allegedly done is unknown. (Although the statement that “In most instances, the cases were set over for further hearings” in the New York American came directly after a reference to the Washington Heights court being heavily guarded, it likely referred to outcomes in the Harlem court.) The only other reference to arraignments in the Washington Heights court was in the Daily Mirror, which noted that “40 of the 89 arrested during the night were dealt with later in the day,” and “16 pleaded guilty of sabotage charges and received sentences of varying degrees.” None of those details align with the legal records: only thirty of those arrested appeared in the court; one hundred and six of those arrested appeared in court on March 20; no one pleaded guilty.
Dodge announces grand jury hearings, March 20 District Attorney William Dodge’s statement that he was having the grand jury investigate the disorder was reported widely:
The Mayor communicated with me last night and at his request I will immediately present to the Grand Jury the evidence I have procured in connection with the riot. My purpose in presenting the matter at once is to let the Communists know that they cannot come into this country and upset our laws. From my information, Communists distributed literature and took an active part in the rioting.

The three-sentence statement was quoted in full by the Home News and New York Herald Tribune. Three other papers, the New York American, New York Post, and New York Times paraphrased the mention of the mayor’s request and quoted the two sentences blaming Communists for the disorder. The New York Sun, Daily Mirror, New York Evening Journal, and New York World-Telegram, as well as the Daily Worker, quoted only the second sentence, Dodge’s statement about his purpose in starting the investigation was to send a message to Communists. The Times Union reported Dodge had begun an investigation without mention of his statement.

Only a small proportion of those publications reported any details of the proposed investigation. The New York Post and Times Union mentioned the number of subpoenaed witnesses. The Times Union explained the delayed start as the result of “the great number of suspects being questioned by police, wide-spread complaints and the mass of information confronting officials.” Another explanation was offered in the New York Post: “the detail involved was so great that the evidence could not be presented to the Grand Jury today.” The New York Sun reported that “the policemen and citizens needed as witnesses were unable to appear, being busy in other courts as the prisoners arrested during the riot were being arraigned.”