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

Dodge's grand jury investigation

Special grand juries had been part of the response to earlier racial disorders in Chicago, East St. Louis, and Springfield. The decision to use those bodies had largely been in response to the scale of the disorder. Mayor La Guardia appeared to have different motives when he telephoned District Attorney William Dodge on the night of the disorder to ask him to convene the grand jury. It was one prong of the response the mayor outlined in a statement distributed in Harlem the morning after the disorder, with the goal of providing “details of everything that that occurred" to counter the rumors and material being distributed by groups affiliated with the Communist Party. Investigation of the broader causes of the disorder La Guardia assigned to a committee of citizens who would name themselves the Mayor's Commission on Conditions in Harlem (MCCH).

Dodge made clear from the outset that he saw the grand jury as an opportunity to investigate Communists, echoing the anticommunism of the Heart newspapers, particularly the New York Evening Journal and New York American. La Guardia was more reticent about assigning blame for the disorder to Communists. Avoiding the disorder being labeled a race riot was of more concern to him. Police Commissioner Valentine was also unwilling to embrace the DA's full-throated focus on holding white radicals responsible for the disorder.

While outside the grand jury hearings Dodge made broad accusations about Communist activity unrelated to the disorder and plans to target it, the indictments which resulted did not charge anyone with ties to the Communist Party other than Harry Gordon, Daniel Miller, and the three Young Liberators arrested on West 125th Street at the very beginning of the disorder. Even then, Dodge had to walk back those indictments the day after they were voted and reduce the riot charges against the men from felony to misdemeanor, undercutting his claims about their leading role in provoking violence. Most of the indictments charged men with looting and breaking windows, the same offenses and in most cases the same men being charged in the Magistrates Court. Despite Dodge's public statements promising more indictments targeting Communists, only a handful more were voted before he quietly ended the hearings. His preoccupations not only distorted the picture of events presented in the press but removed an opportunity to investigate their details. The only effort to do so would come from the MCCH and be limited in scope by their focus on conditions in the neighborhood.
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