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

Appointing the Commission

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 who had appointed to the Commission. Only the appointment of the Committee members was reported in the NYDN, NYEJ, and BDE, while their names were included in the HN and NYWT, together with their occupations in the DM, Am, NYT, DW (3/22) and the AW (3/27) and AN (3/30). The NYA published the names of only the six Black members. The Mayor’s press statement included brief biographical information reproduced in the NYP, and in the AA and NJG; extended biographies were provided in the NYHT and NYS.

Hubert T. Delany
- "Tax Commissioner of the City of New York" in the Press statement, DM and Am
- "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." in the New York Herald Tribune
- “lawyer and Republican leader" in the NYP
A. Philip Randolph - Negro, general organizer and president of National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, attended College of City of New York, founder of a magazine, "The Messenger." [abbreviated as “president of the National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters” in the NYP, DM and Am]
Charles Roberts - Negro, dentist, graduate of Lincoln University, Republican candidate for House of Representatives from 21st District in 1924, member of Board of Aldermen, 1931-1933. [abbreviated as “dentist, Republican leader and former Alderman” in the NYP]
Charles Toney - Negro, Justice of Municipal Court; graduate of Syracuse University, Tammany Democrat. [abbreviated as” justice of the Municipal Court and Democratic political leader” in the NYP and “dentist” in the DM and Am]
Eunice Hunton Carter - Negro, 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. [abbreviated as “lawyer and social worker and Fusion political leader” in the NYP and “social worker and lawyer” in the DM and Am]
Countee Cullen - Negro, poet, graduate of New York University; contributor to magazines and newspapers and winner of several poetry awards. [abbreviated as “the poet” in the NYP and “author” in the DM and Am]
Arthur Garfield Hays - 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. [abbreviated as “of the Civil Liberties Union,” and grouped with Ernst in the NYP, and “lawyer” in the DM and Am]
William J. Schieffelin, 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. [abbreviated as “chairman of the Citizen's Union and of Tuskegee Institute, the Negro university” in the NYP and “trustee of the Tuskegee Institute” in the DM and Am]
Morris L. Ernst, 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. [abbreviated as “of the Civil Liberties Union,” and grouped with Hays in the NYP and as “lawyer” in the DM and Am]
Oswald Garrison Villard, 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. [abbreviated as “editor of the Nation” in the NYP and “writer and publisher” in the DM and Am]
John J. Grimley, physician, lieutenant-colonel of 369th Infantry, National Guard of New York, crack Negro regiment. [abbreviated as “lieutenant-colonel of the Negro 369th Infantry, National Guard” in the NYP, and “doctor” in the DM and Am]

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 [3/21, 21]. He would later say that the appointments had been made "by advice.” <NYA, 3/30, 1> There is no indication of who offered La Guardia that advice. [It does not appear to have come from the leaders of Harlem’s social organizations based on the pointed request that James Hubert, the Executive Director of the Urban League, made to LaG 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.” <2 Urban League to LaG, 26 March 1935> Instead, La Guardia appeared to have relied on those with who he had political ties. Hubert Delany is a likely candidate. La Guardia, who had appointed him Tax Commissioner, treated him “as an unofficial ombudsman for the black community” according to historian Thomas Kessner. <371> (Delany was a member of NAACP, holding a position responsible for “Legal Redress and Legislation” – letterhead of Butler letter). The NAACP did send La Guardia a list of names on March 20 that included three of those appointed – Hays, Ernst, and Carter, and Johnson – but there is no evidence to confirm that the Mayor received that list before announcing the Commission members. <NAACP 0267-4> 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. Historian Stephen Carter noted that the party machine “had a tradition of finding places for candidates willing to run in tough cases against incumbents.” <105> 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. <cited in Carter, 105>. Roberts also shared an affiliation with the Republican Party with La Guardia. Judge Toney did not; as a Tammany Democrat he was politically at odds with La Guardia

Even as he announced the committee, La Guardia had Charles Roberts reach out to Harlem’s clergy, apparently anticipating criticism that none had been appointed. The mayor’s subsequent meeting with the Interdominational Preachers Meeting of Greater New York and Vicinity on March 25 led him to reconsider and add two clergymen to the Commission, bringing it to thirteen members. Leaving that meeting he had indicated he would consider appointing a nominee of the meeting. Unsurprisingly the group chose its leader, Rev. John W. Robinson. [Former pastor of St Mark’s, the largwst AME church in the city, the sixty-four-year-old Robinson had retired in 193? (due to ill health?), before recovering sufficiently to lead Christ Community Church. He was an active campaigner for better schools in Harlem. An indirect political connection may have made La Guardia receptive to that suggestion: Robinson’s second wife, pharmacist ? Coleman, was active in the Republican Party in Harlem <AN story on wedding>. The mayor informed the MCCH he was appointing Robinson to the Committee several days later, on March 29. He attended their meeting that day. At La Guardia’s request, he was added to the subcommittee investigating “the disturbances of March 19.” Only the AN reported Robinson’s appointment.

La Guardia said the second clergyman would be “chosen from a denomination not included in the Alliance.” He did not make that choice until April 4, when he wrote to notify Roberts that he had added Father McCann of St. Charles Borromeo on West 141st Street. It is not clear if McCann attended the Committee meeting on April 5 as no attendance was recorded in minutes, but he was present at the subcommittee hearing on April 6. The priest was an outspoken anti-Communist whose appointment was likely intended to address those critics. A pastoral letter he made public on March 30 blaming Communists for the disorder and calling for a movement to keep them out of Harlem had been reported prominently in the anti-Communist newspapers the HN, Am and NYJ, and in the NYP and the AN (3/30). La Guardia had clearly decided the second clergyman on the committee should be Catholic, a denomination which in Harlem had white leaders. He had sought the advice of Edmund B. Butler, a prominent Catholic lawyer who was secretary of the city’s Emergency Relief Bureau about who 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. <<ADD SOMETHING ON MCCANN’S WORK IN HARLEM – LARGE NUMBERS OF CONVERTS AFTER ARRIVED IN 1933 – CHECK CATHOLICS IN HARLEM ARTICLE>> 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. [Again, only the AN appears to have reported McCann’s appointment. Not even the DW mentioned his appointment, even after the CP wrote to both the MCCH and the Mayor to complain about it on April 25.]

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This page references:

"Mayor La Guardia announced the appointment of the Committee...," March 20, 1935, Mayor's Committee on Conditions in Harlem: Agendas, Box 32, Folder 6 (Roll 170), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).