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"Freed on Riot Charge," New York Amsterdam News, April 6, 1935, 14.
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2023-04-04T14:33:09+00:00
Completing the legal process (March 28-November)
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2023-06-22T15:51:18+00:00
A week after those arrested during the disorder began to appear in the Harlem and Washington Heights Magistrates court, the prosecutions of approximately sixty-four of those men and women had been completed. It would take almost eight months for judges and juries to come to decisions regarding the fate of the remaining forty-nine men and two women. Those proceedings went largely unreported. After the New York Times, New York Evening Journal, New York American and New York Amsterdam News published stories about cases in the Harlem court and Court of General Sessions on March 28, only four other trials were mentioned in the press. The Daily Worker published stories on the trials of Communist Party members or at least those represented by ILD lawyers: the only story about Joseph Moore and one of only two stories about the trial of Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators in the Court of Special Sessions. The involvement of ILD lawyers and the verdict in their favor made those trials an obvious vehicle for promoting the Communist Party. It is less clear why the other story about the later trial was published, in the Black newspaper the New York Amsterdam News, which also published the one story about the trial of Paul Boyett. Boyett was acquitted of assaulting a white man, suggesting that the Black newspaper was concerned to give attention to outcomes that discredited the idea that the disorder had been a race riot. The story mentioned only Boyett's defense, so literally kept the alleged assault out of the story. The New York Amsterdam News may have also published the story about the trial involving the Communists because the same publications and individuals who had sought to blame them had also cast the disorder as a race riot. The New York Times rather than either of those publications reported the one other case that attracted attention, the trial of James Hughes. Unaffiliated with the Communist Party and found guilty of throwing a rock that hit a police officer, that case did not align with the apparent agendas of those publications. Why the New York Times reported the trial is not clear; it was the only legal proceeding related to the disorder that the newspaper reported after March 28.
Unreported, the final eight of those arrested during the disorder trickled out of the Magistrates courts over the next three weeks as police completed investigations. Magistrate Ford disposed of the last of those arrested in the jurisdiction of the Washington Heights court on April 9, when Charles Alston was sufficiently recovered from injuries suffered fleeing police to appear and have the assault charges against him dismissed, the same outcome as the three men arrested with him. Magistrate Renaud did not dispose of the last case before him in the Harlem court for nearly two more weeks. The extended police investigation of that case likely was a result of the defendant, Frank Wells, having ties to the Communist Party. However, police did not produce evidence to support the allegation that Wells had broken the window of a store on 125th Street, resulting in the charge against him being reduced to disorderly conduct. On April 20, a month after the first of those arrested in the disorder appeared in his court, Renaud convicted Wells and sent him to the workhouse for 30 days.
The grand jury continued to vote for charges in all of the final twenty cases involving individuals arrested during the riot presented to them, as they had with almost all the previous cases, but those decisions did not signal that they had been presented evidence of serious/felonious acts. The grand jury sent only seventeen of those arrested in the disorder to the Court of General Sessions charged with felonies, and only one of the final twenty cases. All the remainder, and just over half of all the cases related to the disorder, the grand jury sent to be tried on lesser misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions. The last case involving an arrest during the disorder presented to the grand jury was the one case presented after March 27 for which the grand jury voted an indictment. On April 23 it charged Paul Boyett with assaulting a white man. The grand also twice heard evidence about the killing of sixteen-year-old Lloyd Hobbs by Patrolman John McInerney, first on April 10, and then again on June 10, after the MCCH found additional witnesses. On both occasions the all-white grand jury dismissed the case, finding the white officer justified in killing of the Black boy.
The combination of cases sent from the grand jury and those sent directly to the court by magistrates made trials in the Court of Special Sessions the proceeding in which most of the remaining cases were decided. Those trials received almost no attention from the press even as the panel of three magistrates who presided convicted three out of every four of those who appeared. Eight of the nine men not convicted appeared in the court in the weeks after March 27. A single trial, of the four Communists, produced half of those acquittals, two months after the disorder, on June 21. A further five months later, the final trial did result in a conviction, of the other white man arrested at the beginning of the disorder, Harry Gordon, for assaulting a police officer.
Convictions were almost as often the outcome for those those sent to the Court of General Sessions as for those sent to the Court of Special Sessions, but the process was different. All but one of those convicted accepted the plea bargains that prosecutors offered as a standard practice at this time, eight after March 27 following Carl Jones, Hezekiah Wright, Joseph Wade and Thomas Jackson earlier. They pled guilty to a lesser offense, which for all but one of those arrested was a misdemeanor, which effectively erased the distinction between being convicted in the Court of General Sessions and in the Court of Special Sessions. Two other men were released without trial, Milton Ackerman and Raymond Easley. All five of the men put on trial in this court appeared more than a week after the disorder, reflecting the multiple steps involved in prosecuting a felony. Only three had their guilt decided by a jury. The judge directed the acquittal of Joseph Moore, while Arnold Ford pled guilty during his trial. Just one man was convicted by a jury, James Hughes, but he too was found guilty of only a misdemeanor. Despite being charged with assaulting white men, both Isaac Daniels and Paul Boyett were acquitted. Boyett was the last of those arrested in the disorder to appear in the Court of General Sessions, on May 29. That left Edward Larry as the only individual convicted of a felony, having pled guilty to attempted grand larceny rather than face trial on a charge of robbery. While he was only person charged with that offense, his previous felony conviction had more to do with the outcome of this prosecution than what he allegedly had done in the disorder.
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2020-02-25T17:02:17+00:00
Breaking windows in the courts (20)
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2023-10-25T03:32:01+00:00
Seventeen men and three women who were arrested for breaking windows appeared in court. Prosecutors did not charge seven of those individuals with the offense for which they had been arrested, but instead with disorderly conduct. An additional three men and one woman — David Terry, Julius Hightower, Warren Johnson, and Louise Brown — had the charge against them reduced to disorderly conduct after their initial appearance in court. The proportion of those arrested for breaking windows who faced that lesser charge (11 of 20, 55%) fell between that of those arrested for assault (8 of 13, 62%) and than of those arrested for looting (12 of 50, 20%) — although given that the basis for the arrest of sixteen of those charged with disorderly conduct (32%) is unknown that pattern has to be be considered uncertain. If the change in charge indicated police lacked evidence to charge those individuals with breaking windows, the decision to nonetheless proceed with their prosecution indicated some evidence that associated them with the disorder. The variety of acts encompassed by disorderly conduct 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. Possible scenarios might involve acting in a way that police interpreted as indicating an intention to participate in violence, amounting to "disorderly" conduct or behavior - most likely by being parts of crowds in the vicinity when store windows were broken. Magistrates found guilty all but one of those charged with disorderly conduct after being arrested for breaking windows. Viola Woods, one of the few defendants represented by a lawyer, "was freed for lack of evidence" according to a story in the New York Amsterdam News. Among those convicted was another Black woman, Louise Brown, and the one white man arrested for breaking windows, Leo Smith.
The charge brought against individuals who were prosecuted for breaking windows was malicious mischief. That offense punished unlawful and wilful destruction or injury to property. It was a felony if the damage amounted to more than $250. Magistrates transferred eight men and one woman who faced that charge to the Court of Special Sessions for trial; they sent no one charged with malicious mischief to the grand jury. Those outcomes reflected that the value of windows, particularly those of the scale found in the small businesses on Harlem's avenues, was far less than $250. In the case of William Jones, prosecutors had originally charged him with a felony, which was reduced to a misdemeanor after investigation.
Judges in the Court of Special Session convicted five of those charged with malicious mischief while acquitting only one, Henry Stewart (the outcome of the other three trials is unknown). While William Jones had his sentence suspended, the other three Black men, Charles Wright, William Norris, and David Bragg, received sentences of three months in the workhouse, among the longer sentences imposed on those arrested during the disorder. Rose Murrell received a shorter term of only one month in the workhouse. While her gender was the most obvious explanation for that difference, it may be that Murrell caused less damage than the men. No details of the cost of replacing the windows are provided in any of these cases.
In any case, Murrell was the only one of the three Black women arrested for breaking windows convicted of that offense. That Louise Brown was found guilty of disorderly conduct indicated only that the magistrate was convinced that she had been part of a crowd around an attack on a store, whereas the acquittal of Viola Woods removed her further from the violence, casting her as a bystander.
Similarly, the conviction of Leo Smith, the white man arrested for breaking windows, for disorderly conduct placed him at a distance from damage to a store, without explaining his presence in the crowds on the street. -
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2021-09-07T21:35:13+00:00
Viola Woods arrested
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2023-12-02T02:43:09+00:00
Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the window of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue with an umbrella sometime during the disorder. There was no information on when during the disorder the arrest took place. The most likely time would be around 10:00 PM, when the disorder intensified and many of those at the nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and 125th Street began to move up and down the avenue. Only a New York Amsterdam News story identified the store as vacant; a list in the New York American and stories in the Home News and New York Times provided only the address. The vacant store was in the block between 125th and 124th Streets, where four other stores had windows broken, including two other empty stores at 2320 8th Avenue and 2324 8th Avenue, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street. Those other damaged stores were all included in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked west along 125th Street and and up and down 8th Avenue a block north and south of the intersection on the day after the disorder. It was possible the store whose window Woods allegedly broke was not on that list because it suffered only minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded their list by noting they had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").
Woods name was misrecorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter as Viola Williams, a mistake repeated in the list of those arrested during the disorder published in in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal. The New York American misreported Woods' name as Loyola Williams. Another woman named Loyola Williams was arrested during the disorder and charged with burglary. Both women were recorded as being twenty-eight-years of age and living at 301 West 130th Street. While these overlapping details might indicate the reports refer to a single woman, both Loyola Williams and Viola Williams [Woods] appear in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, with Viola Williams [Woods] charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in the prosecution of those alleged to have broken windows during the disorder. That is the charge recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter, with a note reading "Broke window with umbrella." However, when that woman appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, the docket book and stories about her two appearances in court in the New York Amsterdam News, Home News, and New York Times recorded her name as Viola Woods.
When Woods appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against her was disorderly conduct. The change from malicious mischief indicated police did not have evidence that she had broken the window, but only that she had been in the crowds in the area of the attack. Disorderly conduct was a charge that the magistrate could adjudicate, unlike misdemeanor and felony charges that required referral to other courts. Magistrate Renaud ordered Woods held on bail of $100, a court appearance reported in the Home News. Unusually, she was represented by a lawyer, future alderman Eustace Dench of 207 West 125th Street. Dench was one of several prominent members of the Harlem Lawyers Association who represented those arrested during the disorder. When Woods returned to the court on March 28, Magistrate Ford discharged her. The New York Amsterdam News reported that she "was freed for lack of evidence." The New York Times story simply reported that she had been discharged, the outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter. That outcome suggests Woods was not part of a crowd that clashed with police but likely simply a bystander.
The woman arrested may be the woman named Viola Woods a census enumerator found at 123 West 133rd Street on April 16, 1940. She was the same age and had been in Harlem in 1935. Born in South Carolina, in Hilton Head, she gave birth to a son, William, in 1923, and a second son, Samuel, in 1925, according to their draft registrations. At that time her last name was Bligen. She arrived in Harlem sometime between 1925 and 1930, when she was recorded in the census living at 255 West 143rd Street, with a cousin, working as a domestic servant (both her sons are recorded as living with their father, William Bligen and his wife in Hilton Head until at least 1940). In 1931, she married Chester Woods, a West Indian longshoreman. At the time of the 1940 census, they had four children, aged between ten and two years. When her sons William and Samuel registered for the draft in 1942, Viola Woods was living at 49 West 133rd Street. -
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2021-09-07T21:04:31+00:00
Loyola Williams arrested
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2023-11-28T01:45:42+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, Loyola Williams, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman who lived at 301 West 130th Street, was arrested and charged with burglary. Williams' name appeared among those charged with burglary in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide and the list in the New York Evening Journal, which also included her age, race, and address. However, Williams did not appear in 28th Precinct police blotter, the 32nd Precinct police reports, or the docket book of either Magistrates court or any newspaper stories, and there was no evidence of the location of the business that she allegedly looted. That was also the case with nine men who appeared only in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. Their failure to appear in court could mean that police questioned and released them the next day.
In the case of Loyola Williams, it was also possible that whoever compiled the list had confused her with another Black woman arrested during the disorder, Viola Woods, who was identified as Viola Williams in several sources. Both women were recorded as being twenty-eight-years of age and living at 301 West 130th Street. However, both Loyola Williams and Viola Williams appeared in the list published in Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, with Viola Williams charged with malicious mischief. Viola Williams also appeared in the 28th Precinct police blotter with the same age and address, and a note that recorded her alleged offense as using her umbrella to break a store window. However, when that woman appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, the docket book and stories about her two appearances in court in the New York Amsterdam News, Home News, and New York Times recorded her name as Viola Woods. -
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2021-11-15T20:12:49+00:00
Vacant store windows broken (2314 8th Avenue)
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2023-12-02T02:45:40+00:00
The windows of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue were broken sometime during the disorder, perhaps in the first hours of the disorder, when crowds around Kress' store on West 125th Street moved down 8th Avenue to 124th Street, to the rear of the store. The vacant store was in the block between 125th and 124th Streets, where four other stores had windows broken, including two other empty stores at 2320 8th Avenue and 2324 8th Avenue, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue, and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street. Those other damaged stores were all included in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked west along 125th Street and up and down 8th Avenue a block north and south of the intersection on the day after the disorder. It is possible this store was not on that list because it suffered only minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded their list by noting they had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").
Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the store window with an umbrella. There is no information on when during the disorder the arrest took place. Only a New York Amsterdam News story identified the store as vacant; a list in the New York American and stories in the Home News and New York Times provided only the address. After being charged with disorderly conduct in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Woods was ordered held on bail of $100 by Magistrate Renaud. When she was returned to the court on March 28, Magistrate Ford discharged her, the New York Amsterdam News reporting that she "was freed for lack of evidence."
By the second half of 1935, when the MCCH business survey was conducted, a white-owned restaurant was located at 2314 8th Avenue. The Tax Department photograph shows a one-story building constructed after 1935. - 1 2023-04-06T16:25:50+00:00 In Harlem court on March 28 (2) 6 plain 2023-10-23T21:29:30+00:00 The New York Amsterdam News published a brief story about Viola Woods' return to the Harlem Magistrates court, under the headline, "Freed on Riot Charge." The story noted that her discharge was due to "lack of evidence." Such an explanation of a decision by a magistrate to release an individual arrested during the disorder was not part of stories about other cases. Woods was also mentioned in a New York Times story that covered legal proceedings involving individuals arrested in the disorder in the grand jury, the Court of General Sessions, and the Harlem court. The story noted her discharge on a charge of disorderly conduct without any explanation. It made no mention of Louis Tonick's case being continued or William Cobb's case being continued in the Washington Heights court.