Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935Main MenuREAD ME: Help Navigating This BookIntroductionOn the StreetsIn the CourtsUnder InvestigationThe Mayor's Commission on Conditions in HarlemOver TimeEventsSourcesStephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfStanford University Press
Eunice Carter to John E. Stevens, April 23, 1935, Mayor's Commission on Conditions in Harlem - Police Brutality - 1935, Departmental Correspondence, Box 35, Folder 1 (Roll 171), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
12023-06-26T18:34:13+00:00MCCH Meeting (April 26, 1935)14plain2023-12-17T03:44:50+00:00The only source for the MCCH meeting on April 26 are the minutes. The one topic recorded of Hays' report for the subcommittee on crime was their decision to have MCCH investigators work with a committee of the Harlem Lawyers' Association "for the hearing and investigation of individual cases of police brutality as far too many were being reported to be considered in open session." The organization contacted the MCCH on April 13 offering its assistance, and Eunice Carter had responded on April 23 that "we have a job for you," "to take testimony and make investigation" of cases of police brutality.
The questions about this plan included the lawyers on the committee and its relationship to the MCCH. The MCCH members decided to ask Alan Dingle, the president of the Harlem Lawyers' Association, to add two more members to the three already appointed "to have a well-balanced committee." (Without information on the membership, the significance of that decision is unclear.) The meeting was also concerned to maintain control over the information gathered by the committee, deciding they "should be thoroughly advised" that their reports should be sent only to the MCCH and "not issued as a matter of their own opinions of findings." No reports from this group survive in any of the collections of the MCCH records.
At Hays' suggestion, future meetings were moved from Friday to Tuesday, meaning that the next meeting would occur on April 30, not May 3.