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

"Harlem's Third Rioter is Dead; Many Are Fined," Afro-American, March 30, 1935, 12.

In the Afro-American

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Sam Jameson, Murray Samuels, and Claudio Viabolo arrested Shortly after 6:45 PM, Patrolman Timothy Shannon and other officers arrested two nineteen-year-old white men, Sam Jameson and Murray Samuels, and Claudio Viabolo, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man, who were picketing in front of Kress’ store at 256 West 125th Street. The three men had arrived a few minutes earlier, likely from 262 Lenox Avenue, the offices of the organization to which they belonged, the Young Liberators. The placards they carried read “Kress Brutally Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child and Negro Women. Negro and White Don’t Buy Here” and “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child.” An officer “told or asked [the men] to stop marching in front of Kress'," Patrolman Moran told a public hearing of the MCCH and when they did not leave “after about five minutes," police arrested them for unlawful assembly. Jackson Smith, the store manager, watched the arrest from inside the store. “The police took the placards and pushed the people carrying them into the vestibule,” he told a later public hearing. Around thirty minutes earlier, Patrolman Shannon had arrested another man in front of the store, twenty-year-old white man, Daniel Miller, pulling him down from a stepladder when he tried to speak to a crowd. A few minutes later, around 6:30 PM, other officers, including Patrolman Irwin Young, arrested a second white man, Harry Gordon, when tried to speak to the crowd by climbing a lamppost on 125th Street east of Kress’ store.

The testimony of Moran and Smith in the public hearings provided the only details of the arrests of Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo. The men themselves did not testify. Patrolman Shannon did testify, but was not asked about any of the arrests he made. Newspaper stories on the arrests grouped the men with Miller, and in some cases, Gordon, reflecting information from police that they had acted together to create the disorder. Two Hearst newspapers, the New York American and New York Evening Journal, published stories that described the arrest, but they included details that testimony in the public hearings indicate did not happen: Jameson and Samuels arrived with Miller and Gordon, not after them, in the newspaper narrative, picketed before Miller spoke, and with Harry Gordon came to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, battling Shannon and two other patrolmen before also being arrested. Viabolo was not on the picket line in those stories, but in the New York American was a member of the crowd who joined in efforts to prevent Miller’s arrest. Although the newspapers said their information came from police, the elements that did not happen seem to be a product of the anti-Communist stance and sensational style of the Hearst newspapers. The New York Times and, somewhat surprisingly, the Daily Worker, also published narratives in which the men picketed before Miller spoke, but without details of their arrest. The New York Times simply reported that the arrest of Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo, and Miller, came “later,” after Miller spoke. The Daily Worker did not report specific arrests, but rather that “police broke up the picket line, arresting the leaders.”

Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo all appeared in the lists of those arrested during the disorder published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York Evening Journal, the Daily News, the New York American, and the New York Herald Tribune, among those charged with inciting a riot. However, the white men, Jameson and Samuels, as well as Miller and Gordon, are not in the transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter in the MCCH records. Viabolo did appear, with Margaret Mitchell, the Black woman arrested inside Kress' store. That discrepancy suggests that the white men were omitted from the transcription, perhaps overlooked because they were somehow less readily identified as participants in the disorder among others arrested for unrelated activities at that time. It may be that the charges against those men were not recorded as riot. The charge against Viabolo in the blotter is disorderly conduct, with the note that he was “Disorderly in Kress’ 5 & 10c store,” the same description recorded for Margaret Mitchell.

In a line-up on the morning of March 20 that included ninety-six of those arrested disorder, police put Jameson, Samuels and Viabolo in a group with Miller and Gordon, a New York Herald Tribune story noted. Police described the men as all "arrested at a demonstration in front of the Kress store." That grouping was not mentioned in the two other newspaper stories about the line-up, in the Daily Mirror and New York Sun. An unnamed Black man, presumably Viabolo, was quoted in the New York Sun “giving his version of the start of the trouble:” "We were picketing in front of the store. I heard that a child had been killed inside. I thought it ought to be called to the attention of the public, about the child being killed.” The man then told the officer questioning him that he “and his companions took turns on a soap box “informing the public.”” That last detail was not part of any other description of the picketing. The two other newspaper stories on the line-up did not include Viabolo’s comments, but focused, as the New York Sun did, on Harry Gordon’s exchange with police, in which he refused to answer questions until he saw his lawyer.

The Daily News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal published photographs taken a few seconds apart that are captioned as showing the four white men arrested outside Kress’ store in the West 123rd Street police station on their way to the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Surrounded on three sides by both uniformed police and detectives in plainclothes, three white men are visible, with another white man party visible behind them, all but the first, identified as Harry Gordon, looking at the ground. On the right of the image is a Black man, almost certainly Viabolo, as police had grouped him with these men in the line-up earlier that day, and would again in the courthouse. He is unmentioned in the captions, and, perhaps as a result, cropped out of versions of the photograph published by several regional newspapers. Reflecting its anti-communist focus, the New York Evening Journal placed the photograph on page one, across the whole width of the page, with a caption labeling the men “young college-bred Communists.” The next page featured photographs of two placards used in the picket, and the leaflets circulated by both the Young Liberators and the Communist Party. The Daily News photograph, taken at almost the same moment, appeared in the center of a two page spread of photographs of the disorder in the center of the newspaper. The caption did not identify the men as Communists but as inciting the riot, focusing on drawing a contrast between their uninjured appearances and the damage done during the disorder. (Gordon later testified he had been beaten and had injuries to his face; he may be the man whose face was not visible in that photograph, notwithstanding the caption.)

Police continued to group Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo with Miller and Gordon when they appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court. In stories on the court appearances, the New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Times all described the men as the "ringleaders" of the disorder, which was likely the term police used. However, while the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Daily Mirror included all five men in that group, the New York American, Home News, and New York Times omitted Gordon. That difference appears to have resulted from Gordon being arraigned separately from the three Young Liberators and Miller. That separation would have resulted from the different arresting officer listed in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book for Gordon, Patrolman Irwin Young, not Patrolman Shannon, the arresting officer recorded for the four other men. The charge recorded for Gordon was also different, assaulting Young, not inciting riot. The Daily News claimed Gordon "was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers."

When the court clerk called the names of Jameson, Samuels, Viabolo, and Miller, two lawyers from the International Labor Defense Fund rose to represent them. The appearance of those attorneys was reported by the New York American, Daily Mirror, Home News, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, New York World-Telegram, and Daily Worker, but for some reason they were not recorded in the column for the name and address of a defendant's lawyer in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. The ILD's affiliation with the Communist Party would have been well known to readers of those newspapers, but the Daily Mirror explicitly made the connection in its story, stating that the men's "Communistic affiliations were declared" by the identity of their attorneys. The Daily Mirror and Daily Worker named the lawyers as Miss Yetta M. Aronsky and I[sidore] Englander, while the Daily News named only Aronsky, and the New York American, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Times reported only "a woman lawyer" who would not give her name to their reporters. (Englander later testified about being present in the court in a public hearing of the MCCH.)

Assistant District Attorney Richard E. Carey, the Black attorney Magistrate Renaud had requested prosecute those arrested in the disorder, according to the Daily News, asked that the men be held for a hearing on Friday on the maximum bail of $2,500. The men's lawyers protested that sum. Others arrested during the disorder charged with felonies had their bail set at $1,000, including Harry Gordon. Magistrate Renaud dismissed those protests, and complaints by Aronsky, reported by the Daily News and Daily Worker, that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest."

When Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo returned to the Harlem Magistrates Court with Miller, Magistrate Ford dismissed the charges against the group because their cases had already been decided by Dodge's grand jury. The Magistrates Court docket book recorded the deposition of the men's cases as "Dism[issed], def[endant] indicted." Stories in the Home News, Daily Mirror, and New York Amsterdam News also reported that they had been indicted by the grand jury. However, while the grand jury did send the men for trial, it was for a misdemeanor, not a felony, so an information, not an indictment, and to the Court of Special Sessions, not the Court of General Sessions. Other newspaper stories included elements of that distinction. The New York American reported that after being discharged, the men were "turned over to detectives with bench warrants based on the grand jury informations voted last week charging inciting to riot." The New York Herald Tribune also reported "two informations charging five persons with inciting riot" without naming them; so too did the Daily News, which alone specified that an information charged a misdemeanor and that the men were sent for trial in the Court of Special Sessions. The grand jury also sent all the other individuals charged with inciting a riot that appeared before it to the Court of Special Sessions to face trial for misdemeanors. If the men were being prosecuted for the form of the crime defined as a misdemeanor, unlawful assembly, their crime was being treated as involving disturbing the peace, not efforts to prevent the enforcement of the law or incite force or violence.

As other prosecutions resulting from the riot made their way through the courts there were no reports mentioning Jamison, Samuels, and Viabolo, or Miller. Finally, on June 20, the four men appeared in the Court of Special Sessions. The New York Amsterdam News reported an additional defendant, a "young sympathizer," Dave Mencher, not mentioned in any other sources, or in the Daily Worker story, the only other report of this trial located. Only one prosecution witness testified before the court's three judges, Sergeant Bauer of the West 123rd Street station (likely the sergeant who testified at the public hearings that he was involved in the arrest, although his name was recorded as Bowe in the transcript). It is not clear why Patrolman Timothy Shannon, the arresting officer, did not appear as a witness. International Labor Defense lawyers again represented the men, but not the same attorneys as the day after the disorder. Instead, Joseph Tauber and Edward Kuntz, who played prominent roles in the MCCH public hearings, represented the men. After cross-examining Bauer to establish that a crowd had collected in front of Kress' prior to the men arriving, they moved to have the charges dismissed. The judges agreed, and freed Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo, as well as Miller.

Claudio Viabolo lived in Harlem, at 202 West 132nd Street; the two white men did not. Sam Jameson lived at 967 East 178th Street in Washington Heights, north of the Black neighborhood, although when a reporter from the New York Evening Journal went to the address, the tenants denied knowing him. Murray Samuels lived at 8621 Twentieth Avenue, Brooklyn. However, he was not a student at City College, as the New York Evening Journal reported on March 21. A week later the New York Evening Journal acknowledged that the Murray Samuels a reporter had identified as attending evening classes was not the man arrested during the disorder, in a story headlined, "Far From Red, and Riot! Says C. C. N. Y. Man."

Claudio Viabolo’s name was spelled in a variety of ways in these sources. Viabolo is used here as it was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories about his appearances in the Harlem Magistrates Court published in the Afro-American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, New York American, and New York Age. The name was spelled Diabolo in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and stories in New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal. In the edition the New York Age rushed to print on March 23, the name was Bilo. In the Daily Worker on March 21, the name was Viano. Sam Jameson's name was also misspelled, but was not corrected over time as Viabolo's name was. Jameson is used here as it was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories published in New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and stories about court appearances published in the Home News and New York Sun. The name was spelled Jamieson in the Daily News, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Guide, and New York American.
Picketing in front of Kress' store Around 6:45 PM, three men arrived at the sidewalk of West 125th Street in front of Kress’ store carrying placards and began walking back and forth, picketing the store. A photograph published in the Daily News of the front of the store taken on March 21 shows the area the men would have walked, a wide sidewalk which would have allowed other people to still move past the store or gather in front of it.

About thirty minutes earlier, a window in the store had been broken as Daniel Miller had tried to speak from a ladder on the same stretch of sidewalk, after which he been arrested by Patrolman Timothy Shannon. The three men who walked the picket line were nineteen-year-old Sam Jameson and nineteen-year-old Murray Samuels, both unemployed white men, and Claudio Viabolo, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man. "We were picketing in front of the store. I heard that a child had been killed inside. I thought it ought to be called to the attention of the public, about the child being killed," an unnamed Black man, presumably Viabolo, explained when questioned the next day during a police line-up of those arrested reported in the New York Sun. However the signs the men carried referred to a beating not a killing, reading “Kress Brutally Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child and Negro Women. Negro and White Don’t Buy Here” and “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child."

Jackson Smith, the manager of Kress’ store, summoned to the front door earlier when James Parton had set up the stepladder that Miller climbed to speak, told a public hearing of the MCCH that he was still there when the three men began to picket. Louise Thompson testified in an earlier public hearing that she encountered the picketers on her return to the front of the store after being pushed east by police after the arrest of Miller, and witnessing the arrest of Harry Gordon about 300 feet from the store. Patrolman Timothy Moran, who had been stationed across West 125th Street from the store when the window was broken and Miller arrested, told a public hearing that “three other men with placards draped over their shoulders” arrived a few minutes after those events and began walking up and down in front of the store.

The police officers stationed at the store had been instructed to “keep the crowd moving in from of the store, Moran testified. They were likely standing in a similar location to those in the above photograph of Kress' store on March 21. An officer “told or asked [the men] to stop marching in front of Kress’” and when they did not leave “after about five minutes," police arrested them for unlawful assembly. Sgt. Bauer testified he was involved in the arrest, as again was Patrolman Shannon, who had arrested Miller and was recorded as the arresting officer. “The police took the placards and pushed the people carrying them into the vestibule,” Jackson Smith told a public hearing. By 7:00 PM, crowds around Kress’ store had been pushed to 8th and 7th avenues.

A second version of the placard that read “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child,” photographed for the Daily News in an image available at Getty Images, had “Young Liberators” added at the bottom. That organization, which had ties to the Communist Party, had led a successful boycott campaign in 1934 to force the Empire Cafeteria to employ Black workers. The appeal not to shop at Kress’ store on one sign evoked that campaign and the more extensive boycott campaign undertaken by a coalition of Black organizations that had made pickets in front of stores on West 125th Street a familiar sight in 1934. More broadly, the Young Liberators were “a group of young people who are struggling for Negro rights,” Joe Taylor, the organization's president, told a public hearing of the MCCH, with about 140 Black and white members. A Black man came to their nearby office, at 262 Lenox Ave near 126th Street, about 5 PM, and said “Did you know that a Negro boy had been beaten nearly to death in the Kress store?” Taylor did not, and went to investigate, arriving after Kress’ store was closed. He then went to the police station on West 123rd Street before returning to West 124th Street. Later Taylor went to an address he heard was the home of Lino Rivera, but could find out nothing. Back at the office, other members of the Young Liberators produced a leaflet that was distributed on West 125th starting around 7:30 PM. Headed “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman Attacked By Boss and Cops = Child near Death,” the final line urged people to “Join the Picket Line.” That reference to a picket line provided further evidence that the men arrested for picketing came from the Young Liberators. The first public hearing of the MCCH devoted time to establishing who had produced that leaflet and when it was distributed. Since the leaflets did not appear on the streets before 7:30 PM, the MCCH Final Report concluded that the actions of the Young Liberators “were not responsible for the disorders and attacks on property which were already in full swing.”

The place of the picketing in the sequence of events outside Kress’ was described most clearly in testimony given in the public hearings of the MCCH. However, those details did not become well known as neither the MCCH subcommittee nor final reports mentioned the picketing. Those narratives included only the two men arrested for trying to speak in front of the store, Miller and Gordon, who were not named. Newspaper stories truncated and confused the events established in the public hearings, as police told reporters that Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo had arrived and acted together with Miller and Gordon to cause the disorder.

The most common version of that narrative had the group picketing the store before Daniel Miller attempted to speak. The New York Times, New York Sun, New York Evening Journal, New York American, and Daily Worker all published stories with that chronology, with different descriptions of who was involved. The New York Times reported "Two white and two Negro pickets paraded back and forth in front of the store, bearing placards of the Young Liberators League with the inscription: 'Kress Brutality Beats Negro Child' and 'Kress Brutality Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child.'" The New York Sun used similar phrasing: “a group of agitators, two white and two Negroes, arrived in front of the establishment and took up picket posts carrying placards of the Young Liberators League, which shouted in type that 'Kress brutally beats and seriously injures Negro child.'” The Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal and New York American, identified Samuels, Jameson, and Harry Gordon as picketing, and omitted Diabolo or any mention of Black men among those carrying placards. The Daily Worker more vaguely referred to an unspecified number of Young Liberators forming a picket line. The New York Age substituted Gordon for Miller but otherwise followed the same narrative in which “several Communist leaders gathered and began a picket movement before the store,” before Gordon was arrested for “addressing a group” and Samuels and Viabolo arrested for “acting in concert with Gordon.” The arrests of Jameson, and Miller, were reported separately without any details of the circumstances.

The consistent reporting of what was written on the placards likely resulted from police displaying them to reporters as well as photographers, with images published in the New York Evening Journal (and taken by the Daily News). The Daily Mirror did describe a placard that read, "Avenge the death of this little colored boy!" Given that the photographed placards, and the leaflet distributed by the Young Liberators soon after the picket, refer to a beaten boy, that placard is likely an invention that fit the sensationalized tone of the tabloid's reporting. However, stories in the Home News and New York Age about the men’s appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court the next day, had them distributing placards, not picketing, placards which read "Kress store is resorting to lynching.” Jackson Smith, the manager of Kress’ store, told a public hearing of the MCCH that he saw a placard that read “Kess brutally beats Negro child.” Patrolman Moran’s testimony was less certain: “As I can recall, they referred to a child being beaten in Kress in the earlier part of the afternoon.”

Several of the narratives that mistakenly had the three Young Liberators picketing before Miller spoke also included inaccurate accounts of the circumstances of the men’s arrests. The New York American and the New York Evening Journal had Jameson and Samuels, together with Gordon, going to Miller’s aid when Patrolman Shannon arrested him. Viabolo was missing from the New York Evening Journal story and appeared in the New York American’s narrative as a bystander who also obstructed Miller's arrest. The New York Times simply reported that the arrest of Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo came “later,” after Miller spoke. The Daily Worker did not report specific arrests, but rather that “police broke up the picket line, arresting the leaders.”

Mentions of the picketing were vaguer and more fragmentary in the Afro-American, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York Post. The Afro-American reporter who arrived in front of Kress store around 7:14 PM noted that before he “got on the spot, the screaming of the girl and the flying rumors had brought forth four youngsters, three white, with sandwich signs telling of ''Boy Brutally Beaten.'” “[F]rom somewhere pickets had appeared," the New York Herald Tribune reported, "bearing placards reading: 'Kress Brutality Beats Negro Child.' Neither story mentioned the arrest of those picketing, although the New York Herald Tribune story later noted that “Police seized members of the mob who appeared to be its leaders as they drove it back.” Neither of the other two stories described picketing. The Daily News came closest, reporting “the Young Liberators marched through various streets with red and black smeared placards on which in tremendous letters was the legend: 'CHILD BRUTALLY BEATEN: WOMAN ATTACKED BY BOSS AND COPS: CHILD NEAR DEATH.' The New York Post, while naming the three men among those arrested, described them only as speaking to the crowd.

Unlike those initial stories, newspaper stories about proceedings in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 consistently grouped Viabolo with the four white men arrested in front of Kress’ store. Police presented the five men as a group first in a line-up before they were taken to court, the New York Herald Tribune reported, and then at the courthouse, describing the men as the "ringleaders" of the disorder. When Jameson, Samuels, and Diabolo were arraigned with Miller in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge recorded in the docket book for all of them was riot. Assistant District Attorney Carey requested each man be held for a hearing on March 23, on the maximum bail of $2,500. When the four men returned to court, the charges against them were dismissed as they had already been indicted as a result of District Attorney Dodge's investigation. While the Magistrates Court docket book recorded the deposition of each of the men's cases as "Dism[issed], def[endant] indicted," Dodge announced the day after their indictment that he was instead sending them for trial on misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions, not felony charges in the Court of General Sessions. The men's trial did not take place until June 20. After hearing evidence that that a crowd had collected in front of Kress' prior to the men arriving, the men's ILD lawyers moved to have the charges dismissed, the New York Amsterdam News and Daily Worker reported. The judges granted that motion and freed the four men.

Claudio Viabolo’s name was spelled in a variety of ways in these sources. Viabolo is used here as it was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories about his appearances in the Harlem Magistrates Court published in the Afro-American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, New York American, and New York Age. The name was spelled Diabolo in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and stories in New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal. In the edition the New York Age rushed to print on March 23, the name was Bilo. In the Daily Worker on March 21, the name was Viano. Sam Jameson's name was also misspelled, but was not corrected over time as Viabolo's name was. Jameson is used here as it was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories published in New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and stories about court appearances published in the Home News and New York Sun. The name was spelled Jamieson in the Daily News, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Guide, and New York American.

Historians’ descriptions of the protests outside Kress’ store follow the narrative provided by police, treating all those arrested as part of a single group. That framing implicitly introduces the idea that the disorder was orchestrated by those men, while offering no details of how the crowds of women and men around them acted to weigh against that evidence. Weight is added to that implication by the failure to fully identify the men involved in the protests. While Cheryl Greenberg and Lorrin Thomas do not identify the men, Mark Naison, Thomas Kessner, Marilynn Johnson, and Nicole Watson describe them as members of the Young Liberators. None of those historians mentions that four of the five, and both the speakers arrested, were white men. Naison did describe the Young Liberators as an interracial group; so too did Nicole Watson, however she did not identify the men in front of the store as members of the Young Liberators. Neglecting their race makes those men appear more representative of the crowd than they were, particularly in Greenberg and Watson’s narratives, which do not identify them as Young Liberators. Naison, Kessner, Greenberg, Thomas, Johnson, and Watson all follow the chronology that has the picketing begin before the speakers were arrested. Grouping the men places an organized Communist protest at the center of the outbreak of disorder and makes the window being broken and the men’s arrest a response to the feeling they built in the crowd. Recognizing that the protests occurred in a less coordinated way highlights that police responded immediately to any sign of protest, not just to a window being broken. They may also have acted so quickly because they recognized the men as Communists; the men’s language and appeals would have given them away. Communist protest in Harlem, and across the city, drew violent responses from police throughout the early 1930s. Recognition of the fragmented nature of the protests and the identity of those involved directs attention away from those events to the crowds of Black men and women around them. Crowd members gathered in groups, talked among themselves, sought answers from police about what had happened to the boy, and responded to police efforts to clear the street. Rather than organized or orchestrated by the Young Liberators, those behaviors appear more spontaneous, in line with the interpretation offered in the MCCH’s final report.
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.
Leo Smith arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Williams of the 6th Detective Division arrested Leo Smith, an eighteen-year-old white man, for allegedly "throwing a stone through a Seventh Avenue window," according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. The specific location of the damaged store is not given. However, Smith was one of three men arrested during the disorder arraigned in the Night Court, during the disorder on March 19, the New York Herald Tribune reported, so was arrested early in the disorder, likely near 125th Street, where the initial events were concentrated. In reporting that Smith was "accused of smashing a store window," a story in the Home News gave the address as 3180 7th Avenue, a non-existent address. He lived well to the east of Harlem, at 305 East 118th Street, between Second and First Avenues, an area with only white residents.

Smith was included in lists of those arrested in the disorder charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, in the New York Evening Journal and in the New York American, and without a charge in a list published in the Daily News. He was not included, however, in the transcript of the 28th Precinct police blotter, likely because he was arrested and sent to the Night Court on March 19 (although one of the two other men arraigned in the Night Court, Claudius Jones, is in the transcript). There Magistrate Capshaw held him for the Magistrates Court, on bail of $500. On March 20, Smith appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, charged with disorderly conduct. Magistrate Renaud tried and convicted him that day, holding him for sentence, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book and a story in the Home News. According to the Daily News, Smith had a white lawyer (although none was recorded in the docket book). The unnamed lawyer attracted the reporter's attention when he "sought to inject a question of race while a colored patrolman was testifying against" Smith. A slightly less cryptic account of what the lawyer said appeared in the Times Union, the only other newspaper to report the incident: "a lawyer for a white defendant hinted the trouble was started by Negroes and was racial in origin." According to that story, "Negroes in the jammed room muttered disapprovingly" and "Magistrate Renaud quickly reprimanded the attorney." The Daily News quoted the magistrate's words: "The patrolman in this case happens to be colored, the Judge happens to be white and the prosecutor is colored," said Renaud. "We recognize no race, color or creed here. We are looking for justice and law and order." When Smith returned to court on March 23, it was for sentencing, stories in the Afro-American, New York Age, Daily News, and New York Times reported. Magistrate Renaud sent him to the Workhouse for one month, a sentence in the middle of the range of punishments handed out to those arrested in the disorder.

Smith was recorded as white in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, in stories about his sentencing in the Afro-American, New York Age, Daily News, and New York Times and in lists published in the New York Evening Journal and Daily News. Neither story about his first appearance in court, in the New York Herald Tribune and the Home News, mentioned his race. His address, well east of the areas of Black residences in Harlem, fit with his recorded race (although the New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily News mistakenly recorded his address as West 118th Street). None of the newspaper reporting offered any comment regarding Smith's race.

While many of the white men and women involved in disorder around the time of Smith's arrest were members of Communist Party organizations, the evidence is contradictory in regards to Smith himself. He was represented by a lawyer, as those affiliated with the party typically were, but the statements attributed to his lawyer are at odds with the party's position that the disorder was not a race riot. Given the hostility of the judiciary toward Communists, Smith's sentence might have been expected to be longer. However, Frank Wells, a Black man who appeared to have ties to the party and who was also convicted of disorderly conduct after being arrested for breaking windows, received the same term of one month in the Workhouse.
In Harlem court on March 25 (18) Newspaper stories reporting the hearings in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 25 focused on the appearance of the four Young Liberators. Although Harry Gordon also appeared in the court that day, the stories no longer grouped him with the other four men as they had on March 20. Police identified the Young Liberators as "ringleaders," a term attributed to them in the New York Sun, New York Times, to District Attorney Dodge in the New York Post, and used without attribution in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, New York Evening Journal, Home News, and Daily News, and in the Afro-American. The New York World-Telegram alone did not name the four men or describe their alleged role in the disorder, while the New York Age described them as charged with starting the riot.

The New York Times, New York Sun, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal, and the Afro-American all only published stories anticipating the four men's appearance; they did not report the outcome. Those newspapers may have been anticipating a spectacle at the hearing, which often accompanied the appearance of Communists. Police certainly thought that a possibility, as the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Daily News reported a heavy police presence. The hearing apparently did not deliver either disorder or any new information about the disorder. Stories in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, Daily News, Home News, and New York World-Telegram, and the New York Age, simply reported that detectives presented the Magistrate with bench warrants, after which he discharged the men as they had already been indicted and police turned them over to the detectives.

Journalists paid little attention to the other fourteen men who appeared. The adjournment of Harry Gordon's case while police continued their investigation of his alleged assault on Patrolman Young was reported in the Home News, New York American, and New York World-Telegram. The Home News identified two of the other men discharged as having already been indicted by Dodge's grand jury, Carl Jones and Milton Ackerman. Those men are likely the two unnamed Black men indicted for looting that the New York Herald Tribune reported were dealt with in that way. Neither story made any mention of the other four men who went through the same process, Nelson Brock, Reginald Mills, William Grant, and Douglas Cornelius. Only the New York Herald Tribune made mention of any other men, reporting three other unnamed individuals as having been convicted and had their sentences suspended and one who was released. Legal records indicate the later was Aubrey Patterson, the only person released on March 26. Only two people, Louise Brown and Warren Johnson, appear in the legal records as having been convicted and sentenced. Information on the remaining defendants comes only from legal records.

The lack of attention to those arrested in the disorder on this date reflected both the lack of spectacle in the hearings and in the details of the disorder revealed in prosecutions for relatively minor offenses, which contributed to the attention the press gave to statements District Attorney Dodge made on this date. However, Dodge would not deliver on his claims, leading journalists to turn instead to the public hearings of the MCCH.
John Hawkins arrested Detective George Booker of the 28th Precinct arrested John Hawkins, a thirty-year-old Black man, for allegedly inciting a riot. There are no details of his alleged offenses or where or when Hawkins was arrested. Booker also arrested Horace Fowler during the disorder, for allegedly looting Nicholas Peet's tailor's shop at 2063 7th Avenue. Booker made no mention of a crowd or anyone else being involved in that alleged looting, so he likely arrested Hawkins at some other time and place. Hawkins lived at 2357 8th Avenue, between West 126th and West 127th Streets. He could have been part of the crowds around that block of 8th Avenue, where Theodore Hughes was arrested for allegedly looting the store directly opposite the building where Hawkins lived, Emmet Williams for breaking the window of that store, and Rose Murrell for breaking a window in the store at 2366 8th Avenue.

In the 28th Precinct police blotter, the charge against Hawkins was recorded as inciting riot, which was also the charge under which he appeared in the list of those arrested during the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. When he appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, that was also the charge recorded in the docket book. However, the charge was later crossed out and "DISORDERLY CONDUCT" stamped in its place. That change had to have been made on March 20, as Magistrate Renaud convicted him that day and held him for investigation before sentencing. The offense of disorderly conduct did not involve being part of a group of three or more, as the offense of riot did, nor inciting others to threaten to, attempt to, or use violence against a person or property. Charging Hawkins with disorderly conduct thus likely indicated that police did not have evidence that he acted with or led a group of people; rather, that he had been part of a crowd on the street near attacks on property or people.

When Hawkins returned to court on March 23, Renaud sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse. Stories in the Daily News, New York Times, New York Age, and Afro-American reported the sentencing. Three other men sentenced at the same time had been accused of breaking windows; the three newspapers other than the New York Times reported that Hawkins had also committed that offense, while that newspaper merely reported his sentence.
James Bright arrested Sometime during the disorder, Detective Perretti of the 6th Division arrested James Bright, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking windows in the drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of 127th Street. Perretti likely arrested a second man, Arthur Bennett, also a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, at the same time, also for breaking the store's windows. There was no information on the circumstances of the arrests. Police had arrested Julian Rogers for breaking windows in William Gindin's store a few buildings to the south around 11:20 PM, so officers likely arrested Bright and Bennett soon after, around 11:30 PM. Late in the disorder, other officers made arrests for alleged looting at Frank De Thomas' candy store next to the drug store on West 127th Street and at Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store two buildings north on Lenox Avenue. Bright did not live close to the store, but five blocks north, at 44 West 133rd Street. He could have made his way down Lenox Avenue as part of one of the groups moving through the area attacking businesses or as a spectator following the crowds.

A story in the Home News was the only evidence that connected Bright, and Arthur Bennett, to 339 Lenox Avenue. Bright appeared in lists of those charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Inexplicably, the 28th Precinct police blotter records "Annoyed pedestrians" as the charge against him; no one else arrested during the disorder other than Bennett was charged with that offense. Bright appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with disorderly conduct, with Detective Perretti recorded in the docket book as the arresting officer. Bright had allegedly thrown "stones through the window of the store at 339 Lenox Ave.," according to the Home News story on those proceedings. However, if police had evidence of such an attack Bright would have been charged with malicious mischief. Charging him instead with disorderly conduct generally indicated that they only had evidence that he had been in the crowd around the store when the windows were broken. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bright of disorderly conduct. He returned to the court for sentencing on March 23, and received a term of one month in the Workhouse "for breaking windows" from Magistrate Renaud in proceedings reported in the Afro-American, New York Age, Daily News, and New York Times. None of those stories gave an address for the store whose windows Bright had allegedly broken.
Arthur Bennett arrested Sometime during the disorder, Detective Perretti of the 6th Division arrested Arthur Bennett, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking windows in the drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of 127th Street. Perretti likely arrested a second man, James Bright, also a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, at the same time, also for breaking the store's windows. There was no information on the circumstances of the arrests. Police had arrested Julian Rogers for breaking windows in William Gindin's store a few buildings to the south around 11:20 PM, so officers likely arrested Bright and Bennett soon after, around 11:30 PM. Late in the disorder, other officers made arrests for alleged looting at Frank De Thomas' candy store next to the drug store on West 127th Street and at Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store two buildings north on Lenox Avenue. Bennett did not live close to the store, but eight blocks south, at 48 West 119th Street.

A story in the Home News was the only evidence that connected Bennett and James Bright to 339 Lenox Avenue. Bennett appeared in lists of those charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Inexplicably, the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded "Annoyed pedestrians" as the charge against him; no one else arrested during the disorder other than Bright was charged with that offense. Bennett appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with disorderly conduct, with Detective Perretti recorded in the docket book as the arresting officer. He alleged that Bennett had thrown "stones through the window of the store at 339 Lenox Ave.," according to the Home News story on those proceedings. However, if police had evidence of such an attack Bright would have been charged with malicious mischief. Charging him instead with disorderly conduct generally indicated that they only had evidence that he had been in the crowd around the store when the windows were broken. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bennett of disorderly conduct. He returned to the court for sentencing on March 23, and received a term of one month in the workhouse "for breaking windows" from Magistrate Renaud in proceedings reported in the Afro-American, New York Age, New York Daily News, and New York Times. None of those stories gave an address for the store whose windows Bennett had allegedly broken.