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Dodge's grand jury investigation
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 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.
Despite the broad accusations about Communist activity unrelated to the disorder and plans to target it that Dodge made outside the grand jury hearings, the indictments produced by the proceedings themselves 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 in those cases, Dodge had to walk back the indictments the day after they were voted and reduce the riot charges against the men from a felony to a 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 many indictments targeting Communists, only a handful were voted before he quietly ended the hearings. His preoccupations not only distorted the picture of the events of the disorder presented in the press but removed an opportunity to investigate the details of what had happened. The only effort to do so would come from the MCCH and be limited in scope by their focus on conditions in the neighborhood.
Events