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

Mayor La Guardia establishes an investigation

Bundles of posters measuring two feet by two and a half feet were delivered to the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street during the evening of March 20. Over the course of the night, police officers distributed those posters to stores throughout Harlem, instructing staff to display them prominently in windows. At least one store owner taped the poster to his store window; the New York Evening Journal published a photograph of several Black and white men and boys gathered around it on March 21. “In bold type” on each poster was an appeal from Mayor LaGuardia “To the People of New York City,” a statement he had released to the press that morning. Concerned to avoid a renewal of the disorder of the previous night, he urged “the law-abiding element of Harlem to carefully scrutinize any charge, rumor or gossip being made at this time,” as the “few irresponsible individuals” who had instigated that violence with “bold statements…in mimeographed handbills and placards” might attempt to “repeat this spreading of false gossip, of misinformation and distributed misrepresentation in handbills or other printed matter.” To counter those sources, the mayor promised to supply “details of everything that that occurred.” That information would come from City agencies, and from the grand jury that he had instructed District Attorney William Dodge to have investigate the disorder. He announced in addition that he was appointing “a committee of citizens to check all official reports and to make a thorough investigation of the causes of the disorder and a study of necessary plans to prevent a repetition of the spreading of malicious rumors, racial animosities and the inciting of disorder.”

If the role of rumors and the activities of the Communist Party mentioned in the poster spurred the mayor’s decision to investigate the events of the disorder, a concern that the disorder not be seen as a race riot contributed to the emphasis on underlying causes rather than events of the disorders in the scope of the investigation. In a draft version the sentence announcing the committee read, “…and a study of necessary DEFENSIVE plans to prevent a repetition of the spreading of malicious rumors and the instigation of RACIAL disorder,” with the word “racial” crossed out in pencil. In a second draft, “defensive” was also crossed out, “racial animosities” inserted, and “instigation of racial disorder” changed to “inciting of disorder” to produce the final text. The intent of those edits was made clear when a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune queried the mayor about the choice of the phrase “unfortunate occurrence” to describe the disorder asking, "You do not regard the trouble up there as a race riot?" "No," he replied, "you see, we have to be careful. We don't know yet what was the underlying cause of the trouble. We can't say on the basis of what we know that it was fundamentally racial. Certainly an outburst like that which happened Wednesday night doesn't go off unless there was smouldering some underlying feeling. What the causes of that were are what I want the fact-finding committee to find out. It may go back 100 years."

It is unclear what led La Guardia to conclude that the city government releasing information would not be enough to calm Harlem residents or prevent further disorder. The NAACP did send La Guardia a telegram on March 20 calling for “a biracial commission to make an independent investigation of riot in Harlem last night” that examined the “fundamental as well as immediate causes of trouble with right to examine witnesses and all pertinent records.” Although the organization would later issue a press release claiming that suggestion was responsible for the mayor deciding to set up an investigation, he likely was responding to more than that prompt.

As police distributed the posters displaying the mayor’s appeal, 7.5 miles to the south at City Hall La Guardia announced the names of the eleven individuals he had appointed to that committee. The press release provided a broader charge for them than his earlier statement: “the investigation of social and economic conditions in west Harlem,” “the ascertainment of the causes of the disturbances which occurred on the night of March 19,” and “recommendations for the betterment of conditions and the prevention of a repetition of disorder and violence.” La Guardia did give more attention to the events of the disorder when he later explained his approach to journalists. “The checking of violence through adequate policing and the arrest of ringleaders,” was one of the two lines along which he said the situation in Harlem had to be approached, alongside “the amelioration of condition which gave rise to the suppressed feeling of hostility by the Negro population which was let loose on Tuesday night.” However, that framing suggested that investigation of the events of the disorder was largely in the hands of the grand jury investigation that the mayor had asked District Attorney Dodge to undertake. La Guardia seemed to confirm that later when confronted by a reporter from the Daily Worker who claimed that Dodge’s investigation was at odds with the work he had assigned the Committee, insisting in response that “these are two separate and distinct functions.” However, the mayor did not follow the district attorney in rushing to blame Communists for the disorder. The printed statement did not mention the Young Liberators or Communists by name. When a journalist asked La Guardia about that omission, “He would not say whether he agreed with the police that the instigators were Communists.” That reticence did not stop publications at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the anti-Communist Hearst newspaper the New York Evening Journal and the Communist Daily Worker, from reporting that the statement did hold Communists responsible for the disorder even if it did not mention them by name.

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