This page was created by Anonymous.
La Guardia's "representative citizens"
However, the mayor did not seek advice from Harlem’s leaders in selecting the Black members, provoking more criticism from the community than he likely expected. Instead, La Guardia turned to political allies. One of those he named to the investigation, Hubert Delany, likely provided advice on who the other Black members should be. La Guardia had appointed Delany as Tax Commissioner and treated him as his representative to the Black community. Dentist Charles Roberts was also prominent in the Republican party, as a candidate for the House of Representative and more recently an alderman. Eunice Hunton Carter, a lawyer and former social worker, had run for a state assembly seat for La Guardia’s Republican-Fusion party the previous year. Appointing her would have also met the party’s obligation to find her a position in city government in recognition for taking on that tough race against an incumbent. (Her name was also on a list submitted by the NAACP, the only one of the Black members on that list).
The other three Black members did not have obvious ties to La Guardia. To the contrary, Judge Charles Ellis Toney was a leading figure in the Democratic Party; however, as a justice of the Municipal Court, he was aligned with the city government. A. Philip Randolph, a founder of the Black union the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was a socialist. Perhaps more important to La Guardia, however, he was also a critic of the Communist Party, so likely to take a critical view of their role in the disorder and criticisms of the mayor’s administration. Just what qualified poet Countee Cullen, employed as a high school teacher at the time, for a role in the investigation is not clear. While white anti-Communist groups would criticize his appointment on the grounds that his writings were “quoted regularly and enthusiastically by Communist publications,” he was not prominent in any organizations engaged with conditions in Harlem. It may in fact have been that lack of involvement which made him attractive to La Guardia as indicating that he was unlikely to take a radical position in the investigation. The foreword to the MCCH’s final report described him as having “brought to the Commission the point of view of youth in the community.”
In addition to the six Black members, the initial group announced on March 20 included five white liberals. It would be Arthur Garfield Hays who would most influence the investigation of the events of the disorder, chairing the subcommittee given the task of gathering information on that topic and writing their preliminary report. An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), he appeared in many of the most prominent civil liberties cases of the 1920s and 1930s — he was in Chicago defending John Strachey, an English Communist sympathizer, at the time the mayor appointed him, agreeing to serve on the committee by telegram. La Guardia also appointed Hays’ co-general counsel at the ACLU, Morris Ernst. Other white members brought connections with the Black community. Oscar Villard, who had been the publisher of both the New York Evening Post and the Nation, had ties to the NAACP, of which he had been a founding member. He would work with Hays on the preliminary report on the events of March 19. Chemist William J. Schieffelin was also an NAACP member as well as a trustee of both the Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute, leading institutions of Black higher education, and involved in the efforts to defend the Scottsboro boys. He worked with a range of religious organizations, from the American Bible Society to the YMCA. Physician and Army colonel John Grimley had commanded the 369th Infantry Regiment, the Black National Guard unit based in Harlem, since 1933, having previously served for ten years as its medical officer.