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• 1 2022-03-11T22:00:36+00:00 Leaflets distributed 64 plain 2024-02-24T00:11:10+00:00 The Young Liberators printed a one-page mimeographed leaflet in the early evening of March 19. Just where they distributed the leaflet was uncertain. "Some white youngsters were passing out handbills" when a reporter for the Afro-American arrived at 125th Street and 7th Avenue at 7:14 PM. Louise Thompson saw people with the leaflet on that corner just after 8:00 PM, suggesting a focus on 125th Street. “They were hurriedly passed put among the throngs of Negro idlers up and down teeming 125th Street,” according to the sensationalized story in Time magazine. The New York American claimed, “These papers received wide circulation throughout Harlem.” The leaflet was also pasted on building walls, according to the New York Evening Journal. Reading its text incited the crowds that had gathered on 125th Street, the police and District Attorney William Dodge claimed, making the Young Liberators, who they considered Communists, responsible for the disorder. The MCCH did not agree. Based on testimony from Louise Thompson that the leaflet did not appear on 125th Street until sometime between 7:30 PM and 8:00 PM, the MCCH's final report concluded that the Young Liberators “were not responsible for the disorder and attacks on property which were already in full swing.” By 7:30 PM, “Already a tabloid in screaming headlines was telling the city that a riot was going on in Harlem,” the MCCH report also noted. Louise Thompson identified that newspaper as the Daily Mirror. Later on March 19, the Communist Party distributed a leaflet, after the Young Liberators approached them, concerned about the growing disorder, according to James Ford’s testimony in a MCCH public hearing. He said that leaflet was “written and distributed” about “9 or 10 o’clock.” Leaflets were still in circulation on Harlem’s streets around 2:00 AM. Sgt. Samuel Battle told a public hearing of the MCCH he came into possession of two or three at that time, without specifying which of the two leaflets.
  
  
  
  Both leaflets identified Kress store staff as responsible for the violence against Rivera with only passing mention of police. That narrative focused protests on the store, and white businesses, Bosses, more generally, rather than police, or the white population. In terms of that framework, attacks on Kress’ store, and on other white businesses later in the disorder, appeared not straightforwardly as attacks on property and economic power, but also as retaliation against violence by those who owned and worked in those businesses
  
  A mimeographed page, the Young Liberators’ leaflet combined handwritten and typewritten text. At the top, the handwritten text read, “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman attacked by Boss and Cops = Child near DEATH.” The remaining typewritten text read:

  ONE HOUR AGO A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD NEGRO BOY WAS BRUTALLY BEATEN BY THE MANAGEMENT OF KRESS FIVE-AND-TEN-CENT STORE.
  THE BOY IS NEAR DEATH
  HE WAS MERCILESSLY BEATEN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT HE HAD ‘STOLEN’ A FIVE CENT KNIFE.
  A NEGRO WOMAN WHO SPRANG TO THE DEFENSE OF THE BOY HAD HER ARMS BROKEN BY THESE THUGS AND WAS THEN ARRESTED.
  WORKERS, NEGROES AND WHITE, PROTEST AGAINST THIS LYNCH ATTACK ON INNOCENT NEGRO PEOPLE. DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE BOY AND WOMAN.
  DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE ARREST OF THE MANAGER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LYNCH ATTACK.
  DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM.
  JOIN THE PICKET LINE
  ISSUED BY YOUNG LIBERATORS.

  
  Predictably, the anti-Communist Hearst newspaper the New York Evening Journal gave the greatest space to the leaflet, publishing both the full text of the Young Liberators' leaflet and photographs of it (and the Communist Party leaflet and two placards carried by pickets, under the headline "Insidious Propaganda That Started Harlem Riot," and a front-page photograph of the men arrested protesting in front of Kress’ store). A portion of the Young Liberators' leaflet appeared in a combination of Associated Press photographs published in several newspapers. In addition to the New York Evening Journal, the Home News, New York World-Telegram, and the New Republic published the text of the leaflet. The New York Herald Tribune quoted only about half of the leaflet, stopping after the first use of “lynch attack.” None of those published versions of the circular included the final line, “JOIN THE PICKET.” That line did appear in the version published by the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the only Black publication in which the leaflets were reproduced. That line was in the photograph published in the New York Evening Journal, in the version of the leaflet in the MCCH’s final report, and was raised by Hays in the public hearing of the MCCH (James Taylor, the leader of the Young LIberators answered that he did not know to what it referred). The text published in the Home News omitted the line DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM and substituted instead “Demand the hiring of Negro workers in Harlem department stores. Boycott the store." That phrase transposed the call not to buy in the store into the terms of boycott of the campaigns of the previous year to effectively treat the tactic as having a single goal. The New York Post quoted only the handwritten headline of the leaflet, the characterization of the incident as “this lynch attack,” and the call for protest. Time quoted only the headline, and the Afro-American only the first two phrases from the headline and omitted “boss” so that the charge of violence was only against police. Quotations in the New York Sun were garbled versions of the actual leaflet text and included words and phrases that appeared but in the wrong form: "A Child Brutally Beaten." "A Twelve-Year-Old Child Was Brutally Beaten for Stealing a Knife from a Five and Ten Cent Store." "Workers Protest Against This Lynch Attack." The Daily News misreported the leaflet as making the more provocative charge that the boy had been beaten to death. Initial stories about the disorder published by the New York Times and New York American did not mention the leaflet but added them to their narrative the next day, March 21.
  
  The Communist Party leaflet, also a mimeographed page, similarly began with handwritten text that read, “FOR UNITY OF NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS! DON'T LET THE BOSSES START RACE RIOTS IN HARLEM!”. The typewritten portion went on:

  The brutal beating of the 12-year-old boy, Riviera, by Kress's special guard, for taking a piece of candy, again proves the increasing terror against the Negro people of Harlem. Bosses, who deny the most immediate necessities from workers' children, who throw workers out of employment, who pay not even enough to live on, are protecting their so-called property rights by brutal beatings, as in the case of the boy Riviera. They shoot both Negro and white workers in strikes all over the country. They lynch Negro people in the South on framed-up charges.
  The bosses and police are trying to bring the lynch spirit right here to Harlem. The bosses would welcome nothing more than a fight between the white and Negro workers of our community, so that they may be able to continue to rule over both the Negro and white workers.
  Our answer to the brutal beating of this boy, by one of the flunkies of Mr. Kress, must be an organized and determined resistance against the brutal attacks of the bosses and the police.
  WORKERS, NEGRO AND WHITE: DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE DISMISSAL AND ARREST AND PROSECUTION OF THE SPECIAL GUARD AND THE MANAGER OF THE STORE.
  DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS ARRESTED.
  DEMAND THE HIRING OF NEGRO WORKERS IN ALL DEPARTMENT STORES IN HARLEM
  DON'T LET BOSSES START ANY RACE RIOTS IN HARLEM.
  DON'T TRADE IN KRESSES.
  
  Issued by
  Communist Party
  Young Communist League

  
  The Daily Worker published the Communist Party leaflet text, while not publishing the Young Liberators' leaflet, perhaps because the public position of the Young Liberators was that the organization was not affiliated with the Communist Party. The handwritten headline of that leaflet appeared at the end of the story in the New York World-Telegram, after the full text of the Young Liberators' leaflet: “In another manifesto, signed by the Communist party and the Young Peoples’ League, a plea was made “for unity of Negro and white workers—don’t let the bosses start race riots in Harlem!” While the New York Evening Journal published a photograph of the leaflet, no other white newspapers reproduced the text, nor did it appear in the MCCH final report. The Norfolk Journal and Guide was the only Black publication in which the leaflet text was published.
  
  Initial newspaper stories reported that police said that the leaflets were responsible for moving the crowds on 125th Street to violence. The sensationalized version of that story employed metaphors of fire that placed the leaflets at the start of the disorder: leaflets were the “match which ignited Harlem and pitted its teeming thousands against the police and white spectators and shopkeepers” in the Daily News, “inflammatory handbills, the spark that fired the tinder” in Newsweek, and "inflame the populace" in a New York Age editorial; and in the New York Sun and Daily Mirror leaflets fanned the crowd’s fury. The New York Evening Journal opted for a more racist image evoking slavery, in which the leaflet was “largely responsible for whipping the Negroes to a frenzy.” The New York Age columnist the "Flying Cavalier" described the leaflets as as an example of the Communist "technique in the making up of their messages which would incite a lamb to jump on a tiger—if the lamb didn’t think first." Other newspapers framed the leaflets in terms of rumors: as having started the rumor in the New York Herald Tribune, as “the chief agency which spread the rumor" in the Home News; and as having “helped spread resentment” in the New York Post. (The New York World-Telegram described the leaflet without giving it a specific role; the “tinder for the destructive conflict” was the rumor that a boy had been beaten and killed, “assiduously spread by Communists.”) Writing in the New Republic, white journalist Hamilton Basso devoted two paragraphs to weighing the role the leaflet played in the disorder. He concluded that it “helped to rouse the crowds to violence,” but rejected the idea that the leaflet’s purpose “was deliberately to provoke a race riot” as requiring belief in “the stupid Red Scare of the Hearst press.”
  
  The only direct evidence of when the Young Liberators' leaflet was distributed came from Louise Thompson. She told a public hearing of the MCCH that the leaflets were not in circulation when she left 125th Street around 7:30 PM. It was when Thompson returned around 8:00 PM that she “first saw the leaflet” in the hands of several people, but not anyone handing them out. Thompson was not a disinterested witness; as a member of the Communist Party, she would not have wanted to see them held responsible for the disorder. L. F. Cole, who like Thompson had been inside Kress’ store after Rivera was grabbed but was not a Communist, told the MCCH he saw pamphlets in the crowd around 8:00 PM (the number is smudged in the transcript so that time was uncertain). Inspector Di Martini’s report supported that timeline, locating the appearance of “a number of pamphlets under the heading of the YL and YCP” after the crowd that gathered the rear of Kress’ store around 7:00 PM had been dispersed. Presumably that timing was based on the statements of officers on 125th Street — but not Patrolman Moran, who told the MCCH he was on duty in front of Kress’ store from 6:00 PM throughout the night and did not see leaflets passed out. Copies of the leaflets were attached to the report. They may have been the copies that Lieutenant Battle told the MCCH public hearing that he had gathered near the end of the disorder, around 2:00 AM.
  
  Newspaper stories presented a different timeline that had the leaflet appear earlier, around 6:00 PM, for which there was no direct evidence. The New York Evening Journal and Home News, the New York Post the next day, and the New Republic, reported that the Young Liberators' leaflet appeared about an hour after Kress’ staff grabbed Rivera, which would have been around 3:30 PM. When District Attorney William Dodge spoke to reporters on March 20, the Daily News, New York World-Telegram, and New York American reported him as saying that the leaflets appeared within two hours of the incident in the store. No one at the scene described that timeline. It was likely based on the text of the leaflet, which read “One hour ago a twelve-year-old boy was brutally beaten by the management of Kress five-and-ten-cent store.” At that time, however, the Young Liberators were unaware of what had happened in the store. It was not until around 5:00 PM, as police were clearing people from Kress’ store, that a Black man brought news to the offices of the Young Liberators, James Taylor testified. Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, was asked about the timing referred to in the leaflet; he replied that he did not know whether that was correct. The New York Times story reporting Dodge’s comments had the “first of the Communist handbills” appear at 6:00 PM. That timeline was at least plausible; it would have been around an hour after the Young Liberators learned of an incident in Kress’ store. It was not, however, a timeframe that fitted with Di Martini’s report. The Daily News had the Young Liberators distributing the leaflets as they picketed Kress’ store at a time not specified in the story. However, that detail was part of the truncated timeline police provided that had all five alleged Communists that they arrested arriving at Kress’ store at the same time rather than separately over a period of forty-five minutes starting around 6:00 PM as testimony from those at the scene indicated. The pickets were the final protesters to arrive at Kress’ store at around 6:45 PM. Thompson saw them so would have seen leaflets had they been distributed at that time.
  
  William Ford’s testimony in a MCCH public hearing was the only evidence related to the origins and timing of the Communist Party pamphlet. The leaflet appeared after members of the Young Liberators visited Ford about an hour after distributing their leaflet, he testified. They “were very much disturbed” that “these leaflets had not been able to allay mass resentment in Harlem,” and instead “a rumor had got around that a race riot had started in Harlem.” The Communist Party immediately produced a leaflet intended “to stop race rioting,” Ford testified, and he went to Harlem around 8:00 PM. The leaflet arrived an hour or two later, about “9 or 10 o’clock.” The MCCH report stated that that Communist Party leaflet was issued “about the same time” as the Young Liberators’ leaflet. None of the newspapers mentioned the time that the leaflet was distributed.
  
  District Attorney William Dodge and Police Commissioner Valentine both amplified the police narrative when they spoke to reporters on March 20 after Dodge's appearance before the grand jury to seek indictments against alleged participants in the disorder. Valentine summarized Di Martini’s “departmental report on the cause of the rioting” as detailing “that a Negro youth had been caught stealing, that a woman had screamed, that the 'Young Liberators' had met, that they had thereafter disseminated 'untruthful deceptive and inflammatory literature' and that all these events had been climaxed by the appearance of a hearse in the vicinity,” the New York Sun reported, a chronology also reported in the New York American, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. (The hearse was not the final element in Di Martini’s report; it was mentioned before the Young Liberators). Two days later, Dodge showed the grand jury a typewriter and mimeograph machine. The fruits of police raids on the offices of several organizations affiliated with the Communist Party, the machines were used to produce the Young Liberators’ leaflet, he told the grand jury, according to stories in New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, New York American, Daily News, and New York Times. (The mimeograph machine was taken from the Nurses and Hospital Workers League, the organization which employed one of the men arrested for trying to speak in front of Kress’ store, Daniel Miller, the New York Post and New York American reported.) According to the Daily News, after the grand jury examined that material, “Dodge said arrests might be expected momentarily.” There were no reports of any arrests related to the leaflets.
  
  Mayor La Guardia did not echo the district attorney and police commissioner in directly blaming Communists for the disorder. While his statement distributed and displayed in Harlem the evening after the disorder followed the same police narrative, and mentioned the leaflets, it did not present them as triggering the disorder. Instead, he used them to characterize those responsible: “The maliciousness and viciousness of the instigators are betrayed by the false statements contained in mimeographed handbills and placards.” That statement indirectly implicated the Young Liberators and Communist Party, who had signed the leaflets. However, the circular presented the disorder as “instigated and artificially stimulated by a few irresponsible individuals” who went unnamed. Questioned by journalists, La Guardia "would not say whether he agreed with the police that the instigators were Communists," the New York Herald Tribune reported.
  
  Newspaper stories about the MCCH public hearing treated the testimony regarding the time at which the leaflets appeared in a variety of ways. The New York Herald Tribune and an editorial in the New York Amsterdam News highlighted how that testimony undermined what police said in the aftermath of the disorder. “Reds' Handbills Are Cleared As 'Chief Cause' of Harlem Riot” was the headline of the New York Herald Tribune story, which reported that “The committee learned that the circulars did not appear on the streets until 8:30 PM, fully two hours after the worst of the rioting was over. Therefore, the committee was asked by Communist lawyers to conclude that the literature could not have been a cause of much loss of property or life.” The New York Amsterdam News editorial, “The Road is Clear,” described the testimony that “The much-publicized Young Liberator pamphlets, carrying the false reports, did not appear on the streets until two hours after the worst rioting was over” as “one important fact” established by the MCCH. “With the red herring out of the way,” the editorial went on, “the investigating body can set out to probe the basic factors which really precipitated the riots - the discrimination, exploitation and oppression of 204,000 American citizens in the most liberal city in America. The New York Age, Home News and New York Times reported the testimony on when the leaflets appeared without addressing the implications of that evidence for the police narrative of the disorder. The New York American and Daily News mentioned other aspects of Taylor’s testimony about the leaflet but not when it was distributed, with the Daily News continuing to describe the leaflet as having "brought the riot into being." No mention of testimony about the leaflet appeared in stories about the hearing in the New York World-Telegram, Times Union, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal. In other words, the anti-Communist Hearst newspapers that had given the most attention to the leaflets did not respond to the testimony at odds with their narrative.
   
• 1 2022-11-11T16:55:54+00:00 The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (March 30) 47 plain 1985 2024-05-31T19:07:15+00:00 At 10:00 AM on Saturday, March 30, the members of the Mayors Commission on Conditions in Harlem took their seats at the front of a courtroom in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on West 151st Street. While formally it was the subcommittee on crime that was holding the public hearing, with Arthur Garfield Hays serving as chairman, all twelve members chose to attend (Father McCann would not join the committee until the next week). An audience of around 400 people filled the courtroom, monitored by around thirty police officers. Among the crowd of Black residents were enough white men and women for observers to describe the audience as racially mixed. Most, if not all, of the white audience members were connected with the Communist Party (CP), present to place blame on the staff of Kress’ store and police, rather than the party. Thanks to Hays offering those in attendance the opportunity to question witnesses, the Communist International Legal Defense lawyers and others in the audience would be active participants in the hearing.
  
  The event ran from 10:00 AM to 6:30 PM, interrupted only by an hour-long break for lunch. During that time eleven people testified; all witnessed the events of the disorder other than an assistant district attorney, who briefly described the progress of the investigation District Attorney William Dodge was conducting in the grand jury. In addition to Lino Rivera, the MCCH heard the testimony of two Black witnesses who had been in Kress’ store, when Rivera was taken to the basement in the case of L. F. Cole, and after he had been released in the case of Louise Thompson. Four police officers testified: Patrolman Donahue, the white officer who arrested and released Rivera; two senior officers who were at the store after disorder broke out on 125th Street, Inspector Di Martini and Captain Rothengast; and the senior Black officer in the police department, Lieutenant Samuel Battle, who was not on Harlem’s streets until the final hours of the disorder. The hearing also heard from the leaders of the Young Liberators and the Harlem Communist Party, Joe Taylor and James Ford, about the activities of their organizations and their own experiences in the hours after the Kress store was closed. The briefest testimony was provided by Russell Hobbs, whose older brother Lloyd had been shot by police. Several of those on the list of eyewitnesses the MCCH staff prepared for Hays did not testify, apparently because there was not sufficient time. Hays planned to have at least five of those witnesses appear at the next hearing, scheduled for April 6, writing a list of “Witnesses who didn’t testify last week:” "Mrs Jackson, Mrs Ida Hengain, Mrs. Effie Diton, Mr Campbell, Mr Irving Kirshaw.”
  
  Lino Rivera was the first of those witnesses to testify, taking a seat next to the members of the MCCH. Questioned by Hays, he described being grabbed by store staff after he put a pocketknife in his pocket but insisted that although they had threatened to beat him, he had not been hit. His testimony, which confirmed what newspapers had reported immediately after the disorder, unsurprisingly appeared in all the stories about the hearing. MCCH members and ILD lawyers asked Rivera series of questions about exactly how the store staff had taken hold of him, probing for evidence that he had been subject to any violence. Rivera continued to deny he had been injured in any way. He also rejected suggestions that police had told him what to say. When he left the stand, Rivera took a seat in the front of the audience, next to Alfred Eldridge, the Crime Prevention Officer who had been given responsibility for him. Over the course of the day, the pair was photographed several times listening and reacting to testimony. The MCCH heard from one other witnesses to Rivera being apprehended, L. F. Cole. He had seen the boy being taken to the front of the store, the ambulance arrive and later Rivera being taken to the basement. While he apparently remained in the area, he did not stay in the store.
  
  Patrolman Donahue and Louise Thompson testified about subsequent events inside the store. The police officer described seeing staff struggling with a boy outside Kress’ store, who he found out had stolen a knife and bitten the men. He called an ambulance for the staff members. Asked why he then took Rivera back into the store, he explained that he wanted to avoid a crowd gathering on the street. Donahue gave the same explanation for releasing Rivera through the rear basement. That testimony was the most widely reported of the hearing. While the Home News, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Associated Negro Press reported Donahue had admitted that releasing the boy out of sight of shoppers was a mistake, the transcript did not record such a statement. Instead, it was Edward Kuntz, one of the ILD lawyers in the audience, who offered that assessment while questioning the patrolman. Rather than Donahue or Kuntz, it was unnamed “witnesses” to whom the New York Times and Afro-American attributed evidence that had there been “no mystery” about what happened to Rivera there would have been no rioting. (Both those stories, and the New York Amsterdam News, also attributed a similar statement to Inspector Di Martini, that “he would have released the boy where all could see,” that is not what the transcript recorded him as saying.)
  
  The most extensive testimony about what happened in the store came from Louise Thompson, although she did not arrive until around an hour after Donahue had released Rivera and left. She described the groups of concerned Black women who remained in the store, the arrival of additional police, and their efforts to clear the store while refusing to answer questions about what had become of Rivera that resulted in a woman screaming and displays being knocked over. Thompson stood out among those who appeared at the hearing in offering extended narratives of what she had witnessed rather than having all that information drawn out by questions. Her delivery of that testimony “In a steady voice, as if she were reciting a poem or play” also stood out, at least to the journalist from the New York Age. The woman screaming was reported in the New York World-Telegram and Times Union, and as an ”outburst” in the New York Age, while the New York Amsterdam News referred more generally to “the first violence on the part of indignant women.” The later story blamed the failure of police to provide “proper explanations of the incident” for the women’s behavior. Those police efforts to mollify the women in the store were the testimony the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Worker chose to report. The Home News and Chicago Defender reported no details, only that Thompson had criticized police.
  
  Thompson also testified about events on 125th Street after the Kress store closed and she and the other women inside were pushed out. She described crowds on the street and the corners at each end of the block, the arrests of Daniel Miller and Harry Gordon, and windows being broken. After leaving around 7:30 PM, she returned around thirty minutes later to find police violently keeping people at the corners of 125th Street away from the Kress store. It was only then, around 8:00 PM that she saw the leaflets distributed by the Young Liberators that much of the press had reported were responsible for inciting the disorder. The New York Herald Tribune made that testimony the headline of its story about the hearing: “Reds' Handbills Are Cleared As 'Chief Cause' of Harlem Riot - Came Out Two Hours After Peak of Fighting, Mayor's Board Learns at Outset.” The New York Times, New York Amsterdam News and, unsurprisingly, the Communist publication the Daily Worker also reported the testimony, with the New York Amsterdam News further highlighting its implications in an editorial: “Disappointing as this testimony must be to District Attorney William C. Dodge and Mr. Randolph Hearst, who have attempted to use the Harlem outbreak as an excuse for a citywide Red-baiting campaign, it is well that this issue was settled at the outset by the committee. Now, with the red herring out of the way, the investigating body can set out to probe the basic factors which really precipitated the riots - the discrimination, exploitation and oppression of 204,000 American citizens in the most liberal city in America.” None of those publications identified Thompson as the witness. The only other element of Thompson’s testimony that journalists reported was the arrest of Daniel Miller, in the New York Times, New York World-Telegram, and Times Union, together with the breaking of the store window, and the spread of rumors among the crowd, in the New York Age. Surprisingly, the Daily Worker was among the publications that made no mention of her descriptions of police violence on 125th Street.
  
  Testimony about the source of the leaflets occupied more of the hearing than when they appeared. Joe Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, testified that his organization produced the leaflet, while he was on the street seeking information about what had happened in the Kress store. The information on which it was based came from Black men who brought news to the organization’s offices. James Ford, the head of the Harlem branch of the CP, said his organization was responsible for a second leaflet. The Young Liberators (YL) had approached them for help as they worried that protests at the store would turn into a riot. The CP leaflet was not distributed until after 9:00PM. That the YL and CP produced the leaflets was reported without the evidence that they appeared too late have caused the violence as the press had claimed in the Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Age, Afro-American, and Chicago Defender.
  
  The MCCH also heard from senior police officers about what happened in the streets. Inspector Di Martini was at the Kress store after it closed, Captain Rothengast arrived on 125th Street around 8:30 PM, and Lieutenant Battle was in the neighborhood after 2:00 AM. Di Martini testified that he spoke to the store staff and heard that Rivera had not been assaulted. He tried without success to convince the people outside the store that the boy had not been harmed, both then and when he returned around 7:15 PM. Di Martini also described the crowds on streets as numbering only a few hundred, mostly young people, and looting of stores with broken windows, which led him to call for police reinforcements. Rothengast described the crowds as small in number, like Di Martini, but made up not simply of young people but “hoodlums,” and as targeting police with rocks more often than they did store windows. He also insisted that most of those on the street were not angry about the rumors that a boy had been beaten or killed, but “yelling and laughing.” MCCH members (and audience) also questioned him about deaths and shootings during the disorder, and what role police played in that violence. By the time Lieutenant Battle went on to Harlem’s streets, the disorder was largely over. He described finding “no excitement” on the streets, only some small groups and looted and damaged stores. Asked by Hays about whether the crowd had spared Black businesses, Battle insisted they had not. He also agreed with Hays that the disorder was “not a race riot.” This testimony about events proved to be of little interest to journalists. While Battle featured in most newspaper stories about the hearing, his testimony about what he saw on the streets was mentioned only in New York Age, with the New York Post, New York American, Home News, and Chicago Defender reporting his statement that there had not been a race riot. Similarly, only the Home News and Chicago Defender reported Di Martini’s testimony about his efforts to persuade people on the street, while the Daily Mirror and Daily Worker made fun of his statements that people in Harlem loved him, and for taking credit for Rivera being photographed, which was the only part of his testimony reported in the New York Herald Tribune and New York American. Rothengast’s testimony received even less attention. The New York Age reported it in detail, but the only other mentions were just of his description of participants as hoodlums in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, and in the New York American, which used “troublemakers” in place of hoodlums. Information about damage to stores and looting was not reported.
  
  The MCCH heard testimony about one other event, the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs, from his younger brother Russell. His testimony, or at least as recorded by the stenographer, was a somewhat garbled version of what he had told his parents. He talked of stopping on 125th Street, not 7th Avenue, and the patrolmen running up on the pavement on a horse, not in a patrol car. Few white newspapers' stories about the hearing mentioned Russell's testimony, even as they reported Lloyd's death later that night. The New York Times, Daily News, and Daily Worker, together with the New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and Afro-American reported that Russell’s testimony contradicted the police account.
  
  More attention was given to police actions in the disorder during the hearing than in the MCCH’s planned program thanks to the intervention of the audience. At this hearing, it was those who questioned witnesses that shaped the information presented, with a lesser role played by the reactions of the audience to the testimony than would be the case in later hearings. James Tauber and Edward Kuntz, lawyers from the ILD, and Communist Party official Robert Minor took the lead and drew the attention of journalists, with Charles Romney playing a lesser role. Just how many of the questions posed to witnesses came from those men and other members of the audience was difficult to establish. Both the stenographer recording the transcript and the journalists in attendance appeared to have had difficulty determining who was speaking, causing some of the statements made by audience members to be attributed to MCCH members (as happened in regard to who stated that Patrolman Donahue’s decision about where to release Lino Rivera was a mistake).
  
  At this hearing, MCCH members objected to the substance of the audience’s question to police. While Oscar Villard and Eunice Carter questioned Captain Rothengast about the shootings and deaths that had occurred during the disorder and what role police had played in them, Hays, chair of the hearing, objected when Robert Minor asked him further questions about police violence. “We are not here to investigate the police.” Many in the audience, however, were seeking to do just that, prompting several other objections from MCCH members to questions that they judged to be “police baiting” that would not be permitted. Those interventions were sufficient in number to be reported in general terms in the New York American. Robert Minor’s questioning of Lieutenant Battle seemed to prompt that objection from Hays, who the transcript recorded simply as interjecting. The Home News and Chicago Defender attributed a charge of police baiting to William J. Schieffelin in response to Charles Romney’s questioning of Battle (while the New York Herald Tribune had Schieffelin accusing Minor in the exchange where the transcript recorded Hays admonition). Hays labelled questioning of Patrolman Donahue as police baiting according to the New York Herald Tribune. Surprisingly, the Daily Mirror did not use the term police baiting, reporting more blandly that a highlight of the day was Schieffelin warning Tauber to "treat witnesses with politeness." Whatever the particular incidents, it was clear what the New York Herald Tribune characterized as “heated exchanges” amplified the issues raised by the questions from lawyers and others affiliated with the CP shaped the hearing, producing what the Daily News described as “a field day for Communist exponents and cop-baiting attorneys for the International Labor Defense.”
  
  By the end of the day, audience reactions also played a role. "The undercurrent of the antagonism against the police, noticeable throughout the day in the audience," the New York Age reported, "surged to its height during Rothengast's stay on the stand, culminating in numerous audible taunts and cat-calls just before the hearing ended for the day." In the coming hearings, such reactions would succeed in directing the attention of the MCCH to the role of police in the events of the disorder, with MCCH members limiting their objections to the tone of their questions and reactions rather than their substance.