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

In Harlem court on March 22 (18)

Only the stories in the New York Times and Daily News described the scene at the courtroom on March 22. Police searched several who entered courtroom for weapons, according to the former story, and turned away those who “bore indications of connection with the Young Liberators, the Communist organization which fomented the disorder” according to Daily News. Neither of those stories indicated that police had to control a crowd like that which had gathered two days earlier. However, the Daily Mirror reported that "several hundred Colored persons" "thronged" outside the court. That story was discounted given that reporters from other publications had noted the presence of crowds earlier in the week, so it was likely that they would have again on this day if they had been present.

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

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

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

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

The uneven coverage of these hearings is a further example of the incomplete and unreliable nature of newspaper stories about legal proceedings. That the mix of cases the stories reported included convictions and referrals of those charged with felonies but not any of those sent to the Court of Special Sessions suggests newspapers focused only on the more serious allegations. That focus is also evident in how the Home News emphasized the charges against Tai, Davis and Hunter, notwithstanding that the outcome of the prosecution and short sentence indicated that they had been involved in less serious acts. The story reported their arrest for "stealing groceries" and that they had been found guilty of disorderly conduct and sentenced to five and ten days in the Workhouse, before noting that the original charge of burglary had been reduced by the court without addressing the implications of that change.

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