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• 1 2023-07-02T17:39:37+00:00 The MCCH and Frazier's report 45 plain 2024-02-13T14:39:18+00:00 Just one of Frazier’s changes and additions to the narrative of the events of the disorder offered in the report of the Subcommittee on Crime provoked a reaction from MCCH members. On January 6, Oscar Villard wrote to Eunice Carter that, “I must record my astonishment at the treatment given to the Communists therein.” Arthur Garfield Hays shared a similar reaction with Eunice Carter, who agreed that “Mr. Frazier’s opening chapters contain misstatements as to the findings of the Commission and create a totally incorrect impression of the results of the Communist activities in the events of March 19.” Walter White of the NAACP, with whom Judge Toney had shared the chapters, also took exception to Frazier’s “singling out of the Communists for credit” as “too sweeping” and indicating a “less than judicial appraisal of the New York scene” and “lack of knowledge of or inability to interpret properly the historical background.” White was hardly an objective observer in regard to the Communist Party. The NAACP was already resentful of the praise the Communist Party’s response to the case of the Scottsboro boys had received in Black communities.
  
  Carter thought the Commission should take “definite action” on Frazier’s comments about Communists and told Hays she had suggested to Charles Roberts that he call a “full commission meeting” to discuss them. However, Roberts found it “very difficult to get the Commission members together.” (Villard blamed Roberts for the lack of meetings, telling Walter White he had "been a very poor chairman.") A meeting on February 4 was attended by just Roberts, Hays, Villard, Toney, and Delany and discussed only what would happen after the MCCH completed its work. In the following days, the specific concerns about Frazier’s account of the events of the disorder were pulled into efforts to complete the MCCH’s work by the anniversary of the disorder, March 19. Roberts told the New York Amsterdam News that the "Mayor will have report in his hands before the anniversary." He notified MCCH members that the meeting called for February 14 was “probably the last meeting of the Commission,” as Frazier was “coming up from Washington for the last time and the complete report will be ready for approval of the Commission, together with a letter to the Mayor and the Foreword.” A week before that meeting, Frazier wrote to Roberts that he still had three chapters to complete, so it was unlikely MCCH members had read the complete report at the time of the meeting.
  
  When the MCCH members met on February 14, there was some discussion of eliminating the statement that Communists were not responsible for what happened as they did not distribute their leaflets until after the disorder started, a position which echoed the Subcommittee’s conclusion. Rev. Robinson raised making that change; Hays rejected it (there may have been further discussion before that exchange; the first page of the meeting minutes was missing). Hays, however, was in favor of cutting the section giving credit to Communists for preventing a race riot, as well as praise for the role that Communists played in the MCCH’s public hearings in the report’s second chapter. So too was Judge Toney, perhaps following the position taken by Walter White. Robinson also insisted that Communists in the hearing had done nothing more than spread propaganda. Those two passages, on the events and the hearings, are likely what Villard had in mind when he moved that “all information on the CP be struck from the report,” a motion seconded by William Schiefflin. (A. Philip Randolph, too ill to attend the meeting, may not have reacted to these passages in the same way as his colleagues. On February 6, he wrote to Carter that he had read the first two chapters and found them "quite discerning and well done." Father McCann, who was also absent, would certainly have supported Villard's motion.)
  
  The MCCH members also debated how to review Frazier’s report more generally. Morris Ernst proposed letting each subcommittee examine the section covering their responsibility and “revise it.” Carter countered that she did not think that they should make any other report than this and not “chop up” Frazier’s text. Toney proposed an alternative, that a committee of two go over the whole report. The meeting adopted that approach and chose Hays and Villard for the task. With the report still to be approved, the MCCH adjourned until March 6.
  
  On March 3, Hays sent Villard a version of the complete report with suggested changes and cuts, including the two passages discussed on February 14. He reported to Villard that he had been "particularly careful in cutting out the parts - not many of them - that referred to the capitalist system, communism, socialism, etc or that used words like 'mass action', and others of the kind." That marked up copy of the report did not survive, but the sections Hays cut were identified by a correspondent in 1938. Hays later wrote that “there was a rather heated discussion during which I insisted that the eliminations be made which were marked on my copy.” All the assessment of the Communists' role in the hearings was cut in the complete version of the report sent to MCCH members, as was the sentence that attributed the economic status of Black workers to "the operation of our competitive capitalistic system," the statement that the ills of Harlem were too deeply rooted in the economic and social system to "be cured by an administration under our present political and civic institutions," and a mention of "mass action" against police as the result of the unifying effect of police brutality. Two other phrases were changed. "Mass action" became "organized action" and "black proletariat" became "angry crowd." Strikingly, the passage giving credit to Communists for preventing a race riot remained. It was not a position for which any member of the MCCH expressed support in their discussions, but it did serve to emphasize that the disorder was not a race riot. Judge Toney had expressed a desire to have the report "say some of the acts proved it was not a race riot" at the meeting on February 14, the view promoted by many of Harlem’s Black leaders. Concern to have explicit support for that position may have outweighed hostility toward the Communists.
  
  It is likely the MCCH discussed those changes when it met on March 6, although there are no surviving records of that meeting. Hays was absent from the subsequent meeting on March 11 meeting, for which there are also no records. According to Carter, the March 11 meeting, and another on March 20, worked on the recommendations. Although the record of the March 20 meeting referred to "certain changes [being] made that were found necessary by the members," it was only revised recommendations that Carter sent to members after the meeting, on March 23. She wrote that they had had the complete report for some time.
  
  Morris Ernst responded to the recommendations Carter sent on March 23 with changes, which were not included in the report submitted to La Guardia. Carter later evasively explained that “evidently it did not seem expedient at that time to incorporate them in the report. That was a matter not within my jurisdiction, but within the jurisdiction of the Committee as a whole and of Mr. Frazier.” As his changes had not been adopted, Ernst did not sign the report submitted to the mayor.
  
  John Grimley and Father McCann joined Ernst in not signing the report. Neither appeared to have attended any of the meetings that discussed the drafts. In fact, all three had rarely attended meetings, with Grimley and McCann at the fewest, five of the twenty meetings, and Ernst at only six meetings. Grimley gave no reason for his refusal when contacted by MCCH staff. McCann never responded at all. While the report’s foreword nonetheless acknowledged Grimley as having contributed “intimate knowledge of the manhood of Harlem” and “technical advice relative to the problem of health,” it credited McCann only as having “represented the Catholic opinion of the community.” Hubert Delany came close to joining Ernst, Grimley and McCann, perhaps unsurprisingly given that he was part of the city government the report criticized and close to La Guardia. He stalled for several days before signing at the last possible moment on March 31. With his signature, all seven Black members of the MCCH endorsed the report, joined by only three of the six white members.
  
  While the changes the MCCH made to the report were not extensive, and left intact Frazier's picture of the role of Communists in events, they did represent an assertion of the members' control of the report. So too did the front matter the MCCH added to the document when they submitted it to the mayor. In the letter to the mayor that accompanied the report, Roberts described Frazier as having directed the research. The report’s foreword referred to him only as the MCCH’s technical expert, while detailing the expertise and contribution of the MCCH members at greater length. The report itself contained no indication of Frazier's authorship.
  
  Ironically, the report edited by the MCCH members was not the version of the report that would be read by the public and studied by historians. The published document would be Frazier’s unedited text. Moreover, the front matter, which celebrated the MCCH members, would not be published. The story that accompanied the published report would describe Frazier as “director of the studies and surveys on which the commission based its reports.” However, the caption to a photo of Frazier accompanying the report would add, “He is reported to have had a large hand in the wording of the completed report.”