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

"Girl Fined $10 as Riot Cause," New York World-Telegram, March 23, 1935, 2.

In the New York World-Telegram

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Margaret Mitchell arrested Officer Johnson of the 6th Division arrested Margaret Mitchell, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, inside Kress’ 5, 10 and 25c store, sometime around 5:00 PM on March 19. Police alleged that she was “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect,” according to Inspector Di Martini’s report on the disorder. Pots and pans and glasses were knocked off counters and women screamed, after the store was closed and police tried to clear out those inside, Jackson Smith, the store manager, Patrolman Timothy Shannon, and Louise Thompson all testified. Only Thompson described the circumstances that produced that noise, most fully in an article in New Masses. After a woman she could not see screamed, Thompson joined part of the crowd who rushed to where the noise came from, the rear of the store. Police there pushed that crowd back and refused to answer when women asked “if the boy was injured and where he is,” Thompson wrote. The officers also “began to get rough.” A woman with an umbrella retaliated; she either hit an officer, according to Thompson’s testimony, or “knocked over a pile of pots and pans,” according to her article. Many of those in the store left once the noise and struggles with police began, both Thompson and Smith testified. Thompson remained with the woman she described knocking over pots and pans, who was not arrested, but she was clearly not the only person who knocked over merchandise in efforts to remain in the store until they had information about Rivera. Mitchell could also have been the woman whose scream drew Thompson and others to the rear of the store.

Margaret Mitchell appeared in many newspaper stories about what happened in Kress’ store, but almost all truncated the extended standoff between the Black women and store staff and police into a rapid sequence of events, in the process mistaking what Mitchell was alleged to have done and when she was arrested. The Home News reported that Mitchell “attempted to take the Rivera boy from the department store detectives and cried out that the guards were beating the youth.” La Prensa also reported Mitchell trying to intervene. Although the Home News went on to claim that Mitchell was arrested at that time, neither Charles Hurley nor Patrolman Donahue mentioned a woman being part of their struggles with Rivera, and Donahue testified he did not arrest anyone while at Kress’ store. The Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, New York Evening Journal (and the New York Times on March 24) reported that Mitchell was arrested after she screamed when the boy was being beaten. However, the New York Times, Daily News, New York American, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily Worker did not specify when she screamed (or spread rumors in the New York Times story, or was “a leader of the disturbance” in the New York Herald Tribune story) — although the Daily News, New York American, and New York Post did elsewhere in their stories mention an unnamed woman running into street screaming at the time Rivera was grabbed. The New York Sun alone specified that Mitchell’s actions came later: “The woman whose cries that the boy had been murdered, rekindled the vandalism after the police had succeeded in quenching it earlier in the evening, is Margaret Mitchell, 18, of 283 West 150th street.” The next day, in reporting Mitchell’s arraignment in the Harlem Magistrate’s Court, the Home News combined its description of her trying to intervene when Rivera was grabbed with the later events mentioned in Di Martini’s report. While reiterating that she “attempted to take the Rivera boy from the department store detectives and cried out that the guards were beating the youth,” the story added that after Rivera had been taken to the basement, she was “urging other colored people in the store to demand the release of the boy, started throwing merchandise to the floor and upset many of the counter displays.” Inspector Di Martini's report, while containing few details of events in the store, did distinguish Mitchell from the woman who reacted to Rivera, whose actions he located slightly later than the newspaper stories, "upon the arrival of the ambulance [to treat Hurley and Urban]," when the "unknown female screamed that the boy had been seriously injured or killed and otherwise caused a commotion which attracted a large number of persons." Mitchell's arrest came later, after which "this commotion was soon quieted."

The more specific allegation of “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect” was recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter as “Disorderly in Kresses 5 & 10c Store.” That language echoed the offense with which the prosecutor charged Mitchell, disorderly conduct. She appeared in lists of those arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York Evening Journal, New York American and Daily News. Arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Mitchell was found guilty by Magistrate Renaud, who remanded her until March 23 for investigation and sentencing. The Times Union reported that she “denied hysterically she participated in the rioting. She stood up from the witness chair screaming, then collapsed.” No other newspapers included that scene.

Mitchell returned to the court on March 23, telling Magistrate Renaud she was "sorry," according to the Home News and New York World-Telegram. In passing sentence, Renaud commented that “he did not believe the girl acted maliciously,” those two publications and the New York Times and New York Age reported. The sentence reflected that assessment: three days in the Workhouse or a fine of $10. The New York American reported only that outcome, obliquely reporting Renaud's comment by describing her as having "unwittingly started Tuesday's outbreak." A brief mention in the New York Amsterdam News gave the opposite impression by describing Mitchell as having been "found guilty" of "stirring up the mob." The Daily Worker pointed to what its reporter saw as the implications of her sentence, that it "beating of Negro children by Harlem white storekeepers of the police, as frequently has been the case." Mitchell was one of only three people convicted during the disorder who paid a fine. She was also one of only eighteen of those arraigned represented by a lawyer, in her case Sidney Christian, a prominent West Indian attorney.

The lawyer was likely obtained with the help of Mitchell’s father, Thomas E. Thompson. A West Indian immigrant who had arrived in New York City in 1895, Thompson had been a postal worker for thirty-five years at the time of his daughter’s arrest, and an office holder in the Prince Hall Masons. He and his family were among the earliest Black residents of Harlem, recorded in the 1910 census living in 55 West 137th Street. While not featuring on the social pages as Sidney Christian did, Thompson would have had the resources and the standing in the West Indian community to have known of and involved the lawyer. Mitchell, one of the youngest of Thompson's twelve children, had married in April 1934, and at the time of the disorder lived with her husband, David Mitchell, a handyman in an apartment building, at 287 West 150th Street. That she was in a store twenty-five blocks south of her home indicated the distance from which the businesses on West 125th Street drew their customers.

As the only person arrested in Kress’ store, and named in newspaper stories about the disorder, Mitchell was one of the few identifiable sources of information about the beginnings of the disorder for the MCCH. However, when Lt. Battle called at her home and requested that she be at the public hearing on March 30, “she refused to come.” Asked again about her testimony three weeks later, Battle reiterated that "she absolutely refuses to come to this hearing."

Margaret Mitchell and her husband still lived in the same apartment when the census enumerator called in 1940. In January 1945, she joined 200 family and friends celebrating her parents' 50th wedding anniversary, photographed alongside her siblings in an image published in the New York Amsterdam News. Her husband David was not part of the celebration; he was a sergeant in the US military serving overseas, as were two of Mitchell’s brothers and four nephews.
In Harlem court on March 23 (6) All the city's major newspapers reported the hearings in the Harlem Court even as they involved just five men and one woman arrested in the disorder being sentenced on the minor charge of disorderly conduct. Only the New York Evening Journal story referred to conditions at the court, that "special squadrons of police stood guard outside." Given that previous stories in other newspapers had mentioned similar deployments, their failure to do so on this occasion likely indicates that additional police were not actually present. The New York Evening Journal was also alone in directly drawing attention to what the charges and outcomes reported in the stories indicated, that those sentenced were "minor offenders in the outbreak."

The woman, Margaret Mitchell, was mentioned in all those stories. Those stories continued to confuse her with a woman on 125th Street who screamed that Rivera had been killed some time after Mitchell’s arrest. They presented Mitchell's actions as having started the disorder, a claim that publications presented in different ways. The New York American reported Mitchell "started" the disorder, the Afro-American and New York Times that she "provoked" it (a claim they attributed to police), the Daily News that she "precipitated" it, the New York Evening Journal that she "set-off" the disorder, the New York Herald Tribune that she was "the spark which fired the riot," a claim attributed to police, and the Home News and New York Amsterdam News that she "stirred up the mob." More qualified claims were presented in the New York World-Telegram, that she only "helped stir Harlem mobs to rioting," and the New York Age, that she "precipitated" the disorder, but that the reaction to her outcry was "magnified to riot proportions by Communist literature." The New York Post opted for a more specific framing that more clearly captured the scope of Mitchell's responsibility, that she was "instrumental in starting the rumor that led to the riots." The Daily Worker did not ascribe any responsibility to Mitchell, describing her only as having "raised the outcry." The headlines to stories in the in the Home News and New York World-Telegram described Mitchell as the "cause" of the disorder (notwithstanding the more qualified statement in the later story itself), and "Blamed for Riot" in the New York Times. Mitchell shared the description in newspaper headlines of having caused the riot with Lino Rivera.

Only the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Home News reported that Mitchell told Renaud that she was "sorry." Whatever her role, Magistrate Renaud determined it was not "malicious" or intended to have the consequences it did. That statement appeared in only the New York Times, New York World-Telegram, Home News, and New York Age, and implicitly in the New York American, which did not mention Renaud, but described Mitchell as having "unwittingly" started the disorder. By contrast, the New York Herald Tribune reported that Reanud "lectured Miss Mitchell on keeping the peace." No story mentioned her lawyer, who likely would have had some role in promoting Renaud's assessment. The magistrate's judgement was reflected in the light sentence he imposed, reported as a choice between a $10 fine and three days in the Workhouse in the New York Times, New York Evening Journal, Daily Worker, New York Age, and Afro-American and simply as a fine in the Daily News, New York American, New York World-Telegram, Home News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Amsterdam News. However, Mitchell's sentence proved to be more punitive than those given to most of the others arrested for inciting crowds: six of the seven received suspended sentences, the other a month in the Workhouse.

Four of the five men sentenced at the same time were reported as charged with breaking windows, rather than the actual offense, disorderly conduct, in the Daily News, New York Times, Home News, New York World-Telegram, New York Age, and Afro-American, while the offense was reported in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and New York American. Unlike Leo Smith, James Bright, and Arthur Bennett, there was no other evidence that John Hawkins had broken windows. Initially charged with riot, in the analysis he has been classified with those inciting riot. The Home News, New York American, New York World-Telegram, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal did not name the men. While the Daily News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Home News, and the New York Age and Afro-American, identified a white man, Leo Smith, among that group, his presence went unmentioned in the New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and New York American. In the later two Hearst newspapers, that silence fitted their emphasis on white men and women as victims of violence during the disorder. The men were not mentioned at all in the New York Amsterdam News. The fifth man, Rivers Wright, had been charged with assault. None of the stories mentioned a charge in his case, only his conviction of disorderly assault and lesser sentence, ten days in the Workhouse compared to thirty days for the other men.
Rivers Wright arrested Detective Doyle of the 5th Division arrested Rivers Wright, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, for allegedly being part of a group of men who attacked an unnamed white man at 125th St and Lenox Avenue at some point in the disorder. Wright lived at 2137 7th Avenue, a block west and two blocks north of the site of the alleged assault, and in the heart of the disorder. Police arrived at the intersection around 11:00 PM, so Doyle likely arrested Wright around then or later.

Only one source provided any details of the circumstances of his arrest. The Home News reported on March 21 that Wright was arrested "after he and a number of others are said to have attacked a white man at 125th St and Lenox Ave." Wright appeared in lists of those arrested during the disorder in the Atlanta World, Afro-American,and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York American, New York Evening Journal, and Daily News.

Among the first arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Wright was charged with disorderly conduct, not assault, as was the case with half of those arrested for assault. As the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," police did not appear to have evidence that Wright participated in the assault. Instead, he may have been part of a crowd nearby, caught up in police efforts to arrest those responsible for the assault. Those circumstances fitted the definition of the offense.

Disorderly conduct was an offense that was adjudicated by a magistrate rather than referred to another court as was the case with misdemeanor and felony offenses. Magistrate Renaud convicted Wright and remanded him for sentence on March 23. On that date, he sent Wright to the Workhouse for ten days. His appearance was widely reported, in stories that named him in the Daily News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and New York Age and stories in which he was unnamed in the New York World-Telegram, New York American, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and Home News. None of those stories mentioned what Wright had allegedly done. Four other men convicted of disorderly conduct sentenced at the same time, after being charged with breaking windows, received terms of thirty days. The disparity in sentence offered further evidence that Wright had not actually been involved in the alleged assault.
In court on March 23 While none of those arrested in the disorder faced trial on Saturday, the six convicted of disorderly conduct by Magistrate Renaud on March 20 returned to the Harlem court for sentencing. While the hearing was widely reported in the city’s newspapers, the details hardly warranted that attention. Only the New York Evening Journal story made that clear in commenting that those who appeared were “minor offenders in the outbreak." At the same time, District Attorney Dodge continued to assert that Communists had been responsible for the disorder and could provoke further violence, affirming to reporters his commitment to having the grand jury investigate those who advocated the overthrow of government by force and violence. So even as the legal outcomes indicated the limited extent to which the police response had encompassed the violence of the disorder, Dodge's preoccupations ensured that the grand jury investigation would not address the missing details of what had happened.

Margaret Mitchell, the one woman in the group, drew the most attention, with her reaction in Kress’ store to Rivera being taken away by staff presented by the press as having had a role in starting the disorder. Those stories continued to confuse her with a woman on 125th Street who screamed that Rivera had been killed some time after Mitchell’s arrest. In court she said “sorry.” That would be the only public statement Mitchell would make about the disorder, as she refused repeated requests to testify at one of the MCCH’s public hearings in the following weeks. Her silence worked to disassociate her from disorder, perhaps to protect the respectability of her family or to avoid putting herself at odds with police and white authorities. While other women shopping in the store did speak to MCCH investigators, they also ultimately did not testify. Their silence contributed, in combination with the apparent unwillingness of police to arrest women, to historians overlooking the role of Black women in the early hours of the disorder.

Magistrate Renaud determined that Mitchell had not intended to provoke violence, describing her actions as not “malicious.” He was likely encouraged in that conclusion by Mitchell’s lawyer, Sidney Christian, a prominent West Indian attorney. At the same time, the magistrate evidently did believe Mitchel had contributed to the disorder in Kress’ store. That was not immediately obvious in the sentence he imposed of three days in the Workhouse or a fine of $10, a lesser sentence than he gave the others who appeared in court that day. However, Mitchell's sentence proved to be more punitive than those given to most of the others arrested for inciting crowds: six of the seven received suspended sentences, the other a month in the Workhouse. In Mitchell’s case, she (or her family) was able to mitigate that difference by paying the fine. That they had the financial resources to do so sets Mitchell apart from most of those arrested in the disorder, reinforcing the sense that the politics of respectability motivated her silence.

The other member of the group being sentenced who would have stood out was Leo Smith, a white man, but he did not receive the attention given to Mitchell. The Hearst newspapers, New York Evening Journal and New York American, did not mention him at all, avoiding distracting from their emphasis on white victims of violence. The other newspapers simply identified his race. Smith’s attorney apparently did not repeat the claims that the disorder had been a race riot started by Black residents, so not something a white man could have been involved in, that had provoked the Magistrate and Black spectators at his first appearance on March 20. Like three Black men who appeared with him, John Hawkins, James Bright, and Arthur Bennett, he received a sentence of one month in the Workhouse. Newspapers reported they had all broken windows, even though they would have been convicted of malicious mischief, not disorderly conduct, if police had evidence to support that charge. There was no suggestion that he had broken windows in Black rather than white businesses or otherwise been in conflict with Black residents during the disorder, so his presence among those convicted did not undermine efforts to present the disorder as “not a race riot,” but added to the variety of those involved in the disorder and to economic rather than racial motivations. The three men’s sentences of a month in the Workhouse were among the more punitive given to those accused of breaking windows, only half of whom served terms of one to six months.

The final man sentenced, Rivers Wright, received a term of only ten days. He had been arrested for assault, but as he had only been charged with disorderly conduct in court, police clearly did not have evidence he had participated in such violence. While not released, his short imprisonment cast him as someone police encountered in the crowds on the streets, not a participant in assaults or attacks on businesses.

Up in the Washington Heights court, unreported in the press, another of those arrested in the disorder joined those in the Harlem court in being removed from the ranks of those precipitating violence. Elva Jacobs was returned to court to have the charge against her reduced from burglary to unlawful entry. In other words, police only had evidence that she had entered a store, not that she had broken in or taken any merchandise. She was sent to the Court of Special Sessions for trial as that charge was still a misdemeanor. However, the magistrate set bail for Jacobs at only $50, the lowest for anyone arrested during the disorder.