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

Dominic J. Capeci and Martha F. Wilkerson, Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943 (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1991), 34.

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In the Courts By daybreak on March 20, the cells in Harlem’s two police precincts and hospitals held 125 men and women arrested during the disorder. Another two men would be arrested later that day, and one more two days later. The story of the prosecutions of those individuals reveals how the legal process produced a picture of the disorder that distorted its features and diminished its violence. At the same time, the legal process showed the indiscriminate and often ineffectual nature of the police response. Thirteen of those arrested, twelve men and one woman, were released without being prosecuted. Many of those released had likely been spectators rather than participants in the disorder, arrested when police dispersed crowds, a practice that would also be evident in later disorders in Detroit and Harlem in 1943. One in every four who appeared in court went free. Only seventy-seven of 103 of those arrested whose fate is known would be found guilty, and just over half of those would not be convicted of the offenses for which they had been arrested but instead for disorderly conduct, a minor charge that likely indicated that police could only prove that they had been members of crowds on streets, not participants in attacks on stores or assaults (the outcomes of the prosecution of the remaining twelve is unknown). That such a high proportion of prosecutions ended with that outcome highlights how indiscriminately police made arrests during the disorder.

The alleged offenses of the individuals prosecuted did not reflect the events of the previous night. The twenty-nine alleged assaults on white men and women resulted in at most seven arrests, with an additional six men arrested for alleged assaults on police. None of the six men shot and wounded, likely by police, appeared in any legal proceeding or police hearing. They, and likely others among the injured who were victims of police violence, are not recorded as having reported what happened to them, perhaps because they knew such complaints generally came to nothing in Harlem. As a result, interracial violence formed a smaller part of the picture of the disorder presented in the legal system. Difficulties gathering evidence had similarly kept violence out of legal proceedings after the race riots in Chicago in 1919, and would also do so after disorders in Detroit and Harlem in 1943. The attacks on stores that had dominated the early evening of the previous day were also largely absent from the courts. Only twenty of the arrests were for allegedly breaking windows. An additional fifteen men were arrested for inciting crowds and one man for possession of a weapon. The bulk of those arrested, fifty-seven men and three women, had allegedly been looting, causing the theft of property that characterized the final hours of the disorder to overshadow its other elements. At the same time, prosecutions for looting did not predominate to the extent they would after the disorder in Harlem in 1943, when they made up just over three-quarters of the total (424 of 554), including 109 arrested for receiving stolen goods.

The nature of the legal process further diminished the violence of the disorder. While the breadth of the violence, across the neighborhood and throughout the night, made the disorder greater than the sum of its parts, the courts fragmented it into the individual alleged acts of those being prosecuted. Isolated from the larger context, the offenses with which police and prosecutors charged individuals were relatively minor. Those offenses became even less serious as they moved through the legal process, with the charges made by police reduced by prosecutors, magistrates, and the men serving on the grand jury, and numbers of those arrested discharged. The outcomes of the prosecutions reduced the severity of the disorder still further. Just under half of the prosecutions were adjudicated in the Magistrates courts, treated as the offense of disorderly conduct. Magistrates and the grand jury decided that the alleged offenses of most of the others arrested only amounted to misdemeanors, sending defendants to the Court of Special Sessions for trial rather than charging them with the more serious felony offenses tried in the Court of General Sessions. Those men and women found guilty were given short sentences by magistrates and judges, with a term of more than one year imposed on only one man and more than half imprisoned for ten days or less, fined, or put on probation with a suspended sentence. At the same time, the grand jury kept police violence during the disorder out of the courts, twice declining to indict Patrolman John McInerney for fatally shooting Lloyd Hobbs despite seven witnesses contradicting the officer's claim that the boy had been looting a store and that he had called on him to halt before firing his pistol. In this case, unlike the prosecutions of those arrested during the disorder, the all white grand jury had been presented with a white defendant and a Black victim and the testimony of Black witnesses.

The legal process after the disorder differed from the race riots of the early twentieth century in not being centered on a special grand jury. William Dodge, the district attorney, did convene one, but focused it on the pursuit of Communists. While his efforts to hold them responsible for the violence quickly came to nothing, his preoccupations distorted the picture of events presented in the press and removed an opportunity to investigate their details. Dodge largely left prosecutions of those arrested during the disorder to regular proceedings. The extended duration of those proceedings saw prosecutions drop from public view before they delivered outcomes, as the press stopped reporting cases as they were distributed across the courts and spread over a period of more than two months. Investigations of other racial disorders provided an overall picture of resulting legal proceedings that filled gaps in what appeared in newspaper stories. The Mayor's Commission on Conditions in Harlem did not. Its report included no details of the disorder's legal aftermath or of the events highlighted by those prosecutions.

Only later, in claims for damages brought against the city and litigated in the civil courts, did legal proceedings reveal some of the scale of the violence against property and of the ineffectiveness of police. One hundred and six store owners sued the city seeking compensation for the damage done to their businesses. Their claims described the total damage done rather than the result of a single attack or theft on which criminal prosecutions focused. The medium cost of the damage done to those businesses was $733; several store owners reported well over $1,000 in damages. By contrast, the value of the alleged damage and thefts for which individuals were prosecuted was rarely more than $100, and in some cases less than $1. However, as only a handful of those cases went to trial, the legal process provided only glimpses of that violence. While the press reported a claim by Mayor La Guardia that the total amount of damages could reach $1 million, ultimately the city likely paid only about one-tenth of that sum. Whatever the payout, the suits brought into focus how the disorder challenged white economic and political power and the racial order that they imposed on Harlem.

The legal aftermath of the disorder can be explored by following the chronological narrative in the pathway at the bottom of the page, which highlights the unfolding of the legal process, looking in detail at the first week when the press focused attention on the court. The work of the different courts and the legal treatment of different types of events can be explored using the tags or the list of links on the right side of the page.
Released (27) Twenty-seven of those prosecuted were released at some point in the legal process, just over one in four of those whose for whom the outcome is known. An additional man, Hashi Mohammed, was released on one of the charges made against him but convicted on a second charge. An additional three individuals were released without being taken to court, as likely were another ten arrested for looting whose police records record an unknown disposition. (Not included in this total is Patrolman John McInerney, who the grand jury twice decided not to charge for shooting and killing Lloyd Hobbs).

Individuals released by the police rather than by the courts had likely been spectators rather than participants in the disorder, arrested when police dispersed crowds, a practice that would also be evident in later disorders in Detroit and Harlem in 1943. So too likely were all but one of those discharged in the magistrates courts. While arrested for a cross-section of types of violence that characterized the disorder, assault, breaking windows and looting, as well as unknown activities, they were all charged with disorderly conduct in court. The variety of acts encompassed by that charge fell between being a bystander and a participant in acts of violence and theft, including "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," acting to "annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others," refusing "to move on when ordered by the police," and causing a crowd to collect. If the change in charge indicated police lacked evidence to charge them with the offense for which they had been arrested, the decision to nonetheless proceed with their prosecution indicated some evidence they had been more than bystanders. Or it could be that police asserted that just being in the crowds around acts of violence indicated an intention to participate in violence, amounting to "disorderly" conduct or behavior.

The release of individuals charged with disorderly conduct could result from police having grabbed members of a crowd who they could not associate at all with acts for which they had been arrested, as appeared to be the case with Viola Woods, who the magistrate released because of a "lack of evidence" according to a report in the New York Amsterdam News. He was likely encouraged in that decision by a lawyer representing Woods, one of a small number of recorded as representing those arrested in the disorder. (She was the only one of the six Black women prosecuted to be acquitted.) While there were no newspaper reports of the other discharges — in fact the white press generally only mentioned convictions or the progress of prosecutions to superior courts —another of those released, Aubrey Patterson, also had a lawyer. However, most of these released had been arrested in two groups, suggesting that the alleged incidents in those cases might not have happened at all. One set of arrests occurred after what several newspapers initially reported as a sniper attack on police, which led officers to target a group of Black men standing in a doorway. They did try to avoid being taken into custody, going into the building, on to the roof, and in one case unsuccessfully trying to jump to a neighboring rooftop. However, no weapons were recovered from the four arrested men, Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper, and Ernest Johnson, and no evidence was found of any gun shots. A note in the docket book that the form of disorderly conduct charged was acting to "annoy" suggests that police nonetheless alleged the men were responsible for the noise to which officers reacted. Their discharge indicated that Magistrate Ford was unconvinced. Police arrested three other men, Jacob Bonaparte, Oscar Austin, and Sam Nicholas, for allegedly looting the same store store. While it is possible that police could have apprehended multiple members of a crowd at the scene without any of those men being associated with either damaging the store or taking merchandise, it seems more likely that the attack on the store did not take place at the time when the men were arrested.

The release of a proportion of those police charged with disorderly conduct was not out of the ordinary; after the disorder, however, the proportion released appeared to be different. In the prior week, magistrates released forty-four of the eighty men and women charged with disorderly conduct in the Harlem court, including a group of thirty on March 15 and another group of nine on March 18, suggesting a police practice of arresting members of crowds to get them off the street. In comparison, those released after the disorder having been charged with disorderly conduct represented a smaller proportion, ten of forty-nine men and women. Perhaps unsurprisingly, magistrates appeared to be more willing to consider those on Harlem's streets to be disorderly rather than spectators (even as the sentences imposed in all levels of the courts indicated that judges saw only a limited amount of violence in the actions of those convicted).

The very small proportion of the cases sent to the grand jury that it voted to dismiss, only two of forty-five, suggested a similar willingness to treat those arrested as contributing to the disorder even if police lacked evidence to support the initial charges made against them, particularly when put alongside the high proportion of misdemeanor rather than felony charges for which they voted. A misdemeanor charge was not what prosecutors sought when they sent a case to the grand jury. Individuals could be sent for trial on misdemeanor charges direct from the magistrates court: twenty of those arrested in the disorder were dealt with in that way. In not charging twenty-two individuals referred to them with a felony, the grand jury determined that police had not gathered evidence to support the initial charge. But rather then dismiss the charges entirely and release those individuals, they instead reduced the charges, sending them to the Court of Special Sessions for prosecution as nonetheless involved in the disorder. One case that the grand jury did dismiss involved a form of evidence unusual in the prosecutions after the disorder. Clifford Mitchell had been arrested the evening after the disorder, in his home, for looting. While there was no mention of how police came to make the arrest, items found in Mitchell's home that Louis Levy identified as coming from his store were identified in the legal record as evidence against him. There is no mention of what those items were and how police established that they had not been obtained at a time other than the disorder. (Daughty Shavos, arrested in similar circumstances, was sent to the Court of Special Sessions). Such arrests would be a significant part of the police response to the racial disorder in Harlem in 1943, when 109 individuals, twenty percent of those arrested, were charged with receiving stolen goods. The second case dismissed by the grand jury involved Bernard Smith, charged with riot. Given that an additional charge of breaking windows had been reduced to disorderly conduct and punished by a sentence of only five days in the Workhouse or a fine of $25, it seems likely that police did not have compelling evidence that Smith had not been responsible for crowds breaking windows as they alleged.

The ten individuals released in the Court of Special Sessions had been arrested for inciting riot, looting, or possession of a weapon. The first group were atypical of those arrested in the disorder, the Young Liberators Daniel Miller, Sam Jameson, Murray Samuels, and Claudio Viabolo, three white men, and one Black man, alleged by the District Attorney Dodge and the Hearst newspapers to have started the disorder. ILD lawyers represented the four men. By the time they went to trial, represented by ILD lawyers, witnesses in the public hearings of the MCCH had debunked the claims they were responsible. The four men acquitted of looting included one about who there are no details and one apprehended in a crowd around a store who police likely could not link to its looting. The two remaining men, like Mitchell, police arrested away from the businesses they allegedly looted, although during the disorder not the next day. James Williams had been represented by a lawyer in the Magistrates court, so may have had a better defense than most arrested during the disorder; the other, Jean Jacquelin, was a white man. While five white men in all were released, almost two-thirds of those arrested, that the three Communists are included in that group weighs against that indicating that the courts showed leniency towards white defendants. Hashi Mohammed's release after being charged with possession of a weapon, a knife, came after he had been convicted of disorderly conduct in the Washington Heights Magistrates court having been arrested for breaking windows. He was injured, likely by police during his arrest, and the weapon possession charge may have been made to justify that violence.

Five men were acquitted in the Court of General Sessions, three arrested for looting at the direction of the judge, and two arrested for assaulting white men by juries. Milton Ackerman and Raymond Easley had their indictments dismissed, suggesting a lack of evidence of the charges. Easley had been part of a crowd in front of a cigar store when the windows were smashed, one of two men arrested by police, and charged with taking cigars. The dismissal indicated police could not prove that theft. Few details exist of the charges against Ackerman other than that he had taken merchandise with little value. Joseph Moore, acquitted at the direction of the judge, was arrested on the Third Avenue bridge, on the way to the Bronx, with unspecified merchandise allegedly taken from a Harlem store. The likeliest cause of Moore's release was a lack of evidence that whatever was found in his possession had been stolen.

In acquitting Paul Boyett and Isaac Daniels, juries decided that police had arrested the wrong members of crowds on the streets. Boyett had been among those drawn to investigate the attack on Timothy Murphy, the most widely reported assault on a white man during the disorder, and he scattered with that crowd when a police car drove up. It was being hit by a bullet that Patrolman George Conn fired at the crowd that led to Boyett being singled out, pursued, and arrested. The prominent Black lawyer, William T. Andrews, representing Boyett clearly exposed the lack of evidence that he had been one of those who assaulted Murphy. In the case of Isaac Daniels, it appears to have been Herman Young, the storeowner injured when someone threw a rock that broke the glass in the door to his store, who was responsible for the wrong man being arrested. Daniels was arrested at Harlem Hospital, after Young saw him while being treated. However, Daniels wife said he was home at the time of the attack, having gone to the movies, and later went out to get cigarettes. None of the sources mention how he came by the injuries, contusions on his left arm, that he was having treated at Harlem Hospital when Young claimed to recognize him.
Arrested for looting & Unknown outcome (10) For ten individuals recorded as having been arrested and charged with petit larceny or burglary, no evidence was found indicating that those arrests resulted in prosecutions. Leo Cash and Loyola Williams appeared in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide and the list in the New York Evening Journal. Archie Niles and Albert Allen appeared only in the list in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. None of the four appeared in any police or court records.

The other six men, who also appeared only in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, were in the 32nd Precinct "Police Reports" gathered by the MCCH. Those index cards appeared to be transcribed from the police blotter. The outcome recorded on the cards was "Final Disposition ?."

Historians Dominic J. Capeci and Martha Wilkerson explained the larger proportion of those arrested in the later racial disorder in Detroit in 1943 who were not prosecuted (711 of 1893) as "revealing police strategy to disperse crowds by apprehending lawbreakers and spectators alike." That explanation seems likely to apply to these arrests in Harlem given that the charge reported in the press was petit larceny, indicating an allegation of participating in looting, which attracted crowds on the street. The reduced charge of disorderly conduct recorded in the police reports of six of those arrested suggests a lack of evidence of looting, likely not having any stolen merchandise on their possession. In those circumstances, which left no evidence that the the arrested men and women were participants in the disorder rather than spectators, police appear to have opted to release them — likely having held them overnight and thereby kept them off the streets.

Three additional men may also have been arrested and released without prosecution. They also appear in published lists of those arrested, charged with riot, and in the transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter, recorded as discharged. They do not, however, appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, as they would have had the Magistrate released them.
Arrested for unknown activities & Released before court (3) These three men appeared as arrested for riot in the list published in the Afro-American, Atlanta World, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. Their names were also in the transcript of the 28th Precinct police blotter, which records that they were discharged on March 20. They do not, however, appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book on that date. It is therefore likely that they were not prosecuted.

Historians Dominic J. Capeci and Martha Wilkerson explained the larger proportion of those arrested in the later racial disorder in Detroit in 1943 who were not prosecuted (711 of 1893) as "revealing police strategy to disperse crowds by apprehending lawbreakers and spectators alike." That explanation seems likely to apply to these arrests in Harlem given that the charge reported in the press was riot, a charge that likely indicated they had been among crowds on the street. In other cases, that charge was amended in court to either a more specific offense such as malicious mischief for breaking windows or burglary for looting or reduced to disorderly conduct when there was no evidence for such a charge. In these cases, given that police opted to release them rather than taking them to court, there appears to have been no evidence that these men had been anything other than spectators.

Ten additional men also appear to have been released without prosecution. They had also appeared in published lists of those arrested, in their case for petit larceny, indicating alleged looting, and in the 32nd Precinct "police reports" gathered by the MCCH, index cards apparently transcribed from the blotter. No document collecting those arrested during the disorder in that precinct was prepared by MCCH staff. In regards to these men, the outcome recorded on the cards was "Final Disposition ?."