This page was created by Anonymous. 

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

Dodge grand jury hearing (March 22)

Despite Dodge’s statements that the grand jury investigation of the disorder would be as extensive on March 22 as it had been the previous day, it heard only eight witnesses give evidence, less than a third of the number who had appeared then. Neither Dodge nor Price presented those witnesses, leaving the task to a group of ADAs, a further suggestion that their evidence did not relate to the DA’s claim of Communist responsibility. The three indictments charging four people voted by the GJ were for the offense of burglary, looting in the context of the disorder, not for the incitement of riot and violence which Dodge had invoked the previous day. In addition, Dodge had to announce that he had sent the men indicted for inciting riot the previous day for trial on lesser misdemeanor charges not they felony offense with which they had initially been charged. In the afternoon, Dodge returned to the grand jury to present evidence seized that day in raids on the offices of organizations affiliated with the Communist Party, the ILD and Nurses and Hospital League. He took a typewriter and a mimeograph machine into the grand jury room, together with two unnamed witnesses. No indictments resulted from that evidence; the grand jury instead adjourned for the weekend.

Only the NYS and TU reported the number of witnesses, while the DM mentioned that most were police officers. The Assistant District Attorneys presenting the witnesses were also identified by the NYS and TU, while the NYP and NYT gave their number. The number of indictments, the number of people charged in them and the offense with which they were charged were widely reported, in the NYEJ, NYS, TU, Am, NYT, NYHT, WT, DN, DM. Only the HN, NYP and NYHT did not report the indictments. That Dodge had to reduce the inciting riot charges the grand jury voted the previous day was only mentioned in the WT, NYS, and TU, none of which commented on that decision.

The grand jury voted those indictments in the morning, before adjourning for lunch. Reporters from most newspapers appeared not to have returned in the afternoon. Only the Am, WT, and New York Herald Tribune included the typewriter taken from the ILD offices at 415 Lenox Avenue and the mimeograph machine from the offices of the Nurses and Hospital League at 780 Broadway in their stories. The WT led with those details, that the typewriter had “type faces which seemed to correspond with those of allegedly inflammatory circulars distributed before the Harlem riot Tuesday night.” It attributed that information to police, who likely also provided the information that one of the two unnamed witnesses who appeared before the grand jury after the machines had to be threatened with removal to the House of Detention, reported in both the WT and Am. The NYHT quoted Dodge as saying “experts would testify” that the circulars had been produced on the machines. The New York Post mentioned only that the typewriter was believed to be in the District Attorney's possession (it did not report the grand jury hearings).

This page has tags:

This page references: