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

Completing the legal process

A week after those arrested during the disorder began to appear in the Harlem and Washington Heights Magistrates court, the prosecutions of 77 of those men and women had been completed. It would take almost eight months for judges and juries to come to decisions regarding the fate of the remaining 49 men and two women. Those proceedings went largely unreported. After the NYT, NYEJ, NY American and AN published stories about cases in the Harlem court and Court of General Sessions on March 28, only four other trials were mentioned in the press. The Daily Worker published stories on the trials of Communist Party members or at least those represented by ILD lawyers: the only story about Moore and one of only two stories about the trial of Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators in the Court of Special Sessions. [Three months after the disorder, after even the MCCH hearings had finished, and in a court that was rarely reported. In fact, this was the only proceeding in the Court of Special Sessions after the riot mentioned in a newspaper. The involvement of ILD lawyers and the verdict in their favor made it an obvious vehicle for promoting the Communist Party. It is less clear why the other story about that trial was published, in the Black newspaper the New York Amsterdam News, which also published the one story about the trial of Paul Boyett. Boyett was acquitted of assaulting a white man, suggesting the the Black newspaper was concerned to give attention to outcomes that discredited the idea that the disorder had been a race riot. The story mentioned only Boyett's defense, so literally kept the alleged assault out of the story. The New York Amsterdam News may havea lso  published the story about the trial involving the Communists because the same publications and individuals who had sought to blame them had also cast the disorder as a race riot. The New York Times rather than either of those publications reported the one other case that attracted attention, the trial of James Hughes. Unaffiliated with the Communist Party and found guilty of throwing a rock that hit a police officer, that case did not align with the apparent agendas of those publications. Why the New York Times reported the trial is not clear; it was the only legal proceeding related to the disorder that newspaper reported after March 28.

Unreported, [summary of Mag Ct, then GJ, then SS, then CGS]

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