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

In Harlem court on March 20 (76)

Seventy-six of those arrested in the 28th Precinct, south of West 130th Street, during the disorder appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud decided just over half of those prosecutions. He rendered verdicts in only nine cases, convicting five men and one woman and discharging three men. That was far fewer cases than Magistrate Ford decided in the Washington Heights Court that day in large part because those arraigned in Harlem faced more serious charges. Renaud sent twelve others for trial on misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions and eighteen more charged with felonies to the grand jury. The remaining thirty-seven people he remanded in custody on bail. Those hearings were reported in all of Harlem’s white newspapers, but not in Black newspapers, which did not report the disorder until March 30, when they reported later court appearances. The newspaper stories varied in detail, with most only offering general accounts.

Descriptions of the scene at the court emphasized the number of police present and how they kept onlookers at a distance. The Home News put the number of police at fifty, the New York Post at sixty-five. The New York Times reported “Heavy police guards composed of men on foot, mounted and on motorcycles, surrounded the courts,” the Home News reported “cordons," and later that “Heavy police guards surrounded the courts and held back many colored persons who attempted to enter the buildings,” the New York Sun “lines of policemen formed in the street” that stopped anyone from going “west of Third Avenue or east of Sylvan Place," the Daily News that “Spectators were kept a block away from the buildings," and the New York American that the court was "heavily guarded,” with the "crowd gathered in the vicinity but was not permitted near the courthouse.” Only the Daily News noted the police presence in the crowd itself, that “plainclothesmen prowled through the crowds.”

The New York Sun also reported an additional 25 officers in the court building, ten on the stairs leading up to the courtroom and 15 in the courtroom itself, the Daily News more generally that “police lined the corridors of the courts.” Despite police restricting access to the courthouse, newspaper stories did mention the presence of spectators in the courtroom. That crowd had arrived early according to the New York Post, which reported that by 9:30 AM the space had become so crowded that the doors were closed. The Times Union described those present as Black, while the New York Evening Journal said the courtroom was crowded with participants in the disorder, prisoners awaiting arraignment.

Newspapers offered only slightly more details about the crowd outside the courthouse. Only the New York American put a number on those present, 1,500 people, which is likely an exaggeration given the sensational style of that publication. The New York Post described the crowd as lining the curbs outside the courthouse rather than giving its size. The New York Sun, New York Times, and Daily News mentioned crowds without describing their size. Those stories focused on the composition and behavior of the people, about which they offered contradictory pictures. Most of the spectators, inside and out, were Negroes, according to the New York Post, while the New York Times described them as “Negro friends of the prisoners assembled to attend the arraignments.” To the contrary, the Daily News portrayed them as “evenly distributed between white and colored.” Descriptions of how they behaved ran the gamut, with the New York Post portraying them as showing “clearly that they were there just to see the sights," to the Daily News insisting that they were “entirely orderly,” and the New York Sun and New York Times highlighting moments of anger, “a storm of boos and jeers from the crowd” as a wagon loaded with prisoners drove by in the New York Sun, and “considerable grumbling, some shouting of threats, but no violence” recounted in the New York Times.

Two photographs published in the Daily News captured the arrival of prisoners at the Harlem courthouse. In a photograph that appeared on the front page on March 21, shot from street level, a crowd can be seen in the background, held back by a uniformed patrolman, the elevated railway line indicating that they were on 3rd Avenue. An injured man is visible in the photograph; unlike the photograph published in the same newspaper of men being loaded into a wagon at the 28th Precinct, the caption to that image made no mention of the man’s injury. However, a second photograph published in the Daily News of a different group of men exiting a wagon and entering the court, shot from above, did draw attention to prisoners’ injuries, in both the headline and caption attached to it. “Casualties of Race War,” was the headline given to the image, which was captioned, “Prisoners of War! Wounded in the battle of Harlem, these prisoners arrive at Harlem Court in police wagon.” (It is difficult to determine which of the men shown in the photograph are injured as the only available image is scanned from microfilm and is of poor quality. One of the men in the foreground may have a bandaged head.) A third photograph of prisoners arriving at the courthouse, found in the Getty Images collection, is not attributed to a newspaper or agency and did not appear in any of the publications examined for this study. Taken from a similar elevated angle to the first of the Daily News images, it showed a different group of prisoners being taken into the courthouse. The different arrangement of vehicles indicates that the photographs are of two different groups of prisoners. None of the men in that image have visible injuries, nor did the caption reference any. It simply noted, “Members of the press as well as police officers watch as police vans escort the arrested to the courthouse the day after rioting in the Harlem neighbourhood in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, 20th March 1935.”
Embed from Getty Images


As was the case in reports of the police line-up, several newspaper stories included incidental mentions of the visible injuries of many of those under arrest. The New York World-Telegram merely noted “many battered and sore” among the prisoners. The Daily News mentioned that “numerous minor defendants appeared in court with bandaged and plastered heads” but only to contrast them with the group of alleged Communists, none of whom was “hurt.” Alone among the mentions of injured prisoners, the New York Sun story explicitly stated what would have been widely understood to be the source of their injuries, describing “Groups of prisoners battered and bruised after their furious battles with the police.” The implicit acceptance of police violence against Black New Yorkers by the white press stood in stark contrast to the attention and criticism it attracted in the Black press.

Only the New York Evening Journal and Home News published lists of those being arraigned, neither of which was complete. The Home News identified thirty-seven of the seventy-six individuals, including their name, address, charge, the magistrate’s decision, the amount he set for bail, and also brief descriptions of their alleged offense. (In several cases those descriptions provide the only details of those events.) Three of those omitted were discharged; those discharged were also omitted from the publication's list of those arraigned in the Washington Heights court. There is no obvious reason why the other thirty-six were not listed. As discussed below, the New York Post, Daily News, and Daily Worker did note the speed with which cases were processed, which might have made it difficult for reporters to hear or otherwise gather information about them. The list in the New York Evening Journal also included the name, address, charge, the magistrate’s decision, and the amount he set for bail, without any information on the alleged offense. (My copy of this story is incomplete, so I do not know how many of those arraigned the newspaper identified; sixteen names are visible, but there were more in the list.)

The appearances of the four alleged Communists, Daniel Miller, Murray Samuels, Sam Jamison, and Claudio Viabolo, and in some cases Harry Gordon, also arrested at the beginning of the disorder were the only widely reported arraignments, with the Daily News, New York American and New York Evening Journal, also publishing photographs of the men leaving the 28th Precinct station for court. 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. And the New York Sun mentioned four white men but identified only 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 Gordon being arrested by a different police officer. The Daily News claimed Gordon "was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers." The New York World-Telegram simply reported that “The fifth [man] was to be arraigned later in Harlem Court.”

These men drew reporters’ attention at least in part because police identified them as the instigators of the disorder, a claim that the Daily Worker reported that ADA Carey also made during the men’s arraignment. 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. The Daily Mirror elaborated that description in more sensational terms, describing them as “the curb-stone orators who had deliberately incited the 125th St. mobs to looting frenzy,” while the Daily News and New York World-Telegram used less sensational variations, with the Daily News describing them as those “whose propaganda is blamed for the riot” and the New York World-Telegram describing them as “accused of store picketing activities alleged to have been the direct causes of the riot.”

The stories also labeled the men Communists, with the New York World-Telegram and New York Sun directly attributing that information to police. The Daily Worker obliquely confirmed that source, reporting “Authorities declared that they 'would prove they were Reds.'” The anti-Communist Daily Mirror claimed the men identified themselves, that they were “all admitted Communists.” While the other stories did not explicitly label the men Communists, they identified the lawyers who represented them, details which would have conveyed to their readers that they were Communists. The Home News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily News all described the lawyers as from the ILD, well known in the 1930s as the legal arm of the Communist Party. 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 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.)

The other element of the men’s arraignment that drew attention was the bail of $2,500 that Magistrate Renaud set for Miller and the three Young Liberators (but not for Gordon). While the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, New York World-Telegram, Home News, and New York Times simply noted the amount of the bail, the Daily Mirror noted that sum was the “maximum bonds,” and was requested by the prosecutor, Carey. Without noting the high level of the bail, the Daily News reported that the men’s ILD lawyers “protested vehemently against the amount of bail.” That story also reported that one of those lawyers, Aronsky also complained that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest," a detail that only the Daily Worker also reported. Magistrate Renaud responded to that complaint with a “retort,” the Daily News reported obliquely, and by saying “that he had no responsibility in the matter,” according to the Daily Worker.

Newspapers reported the other arraignments with summary statements (The Daily Mirror and New York Herald Tribune reported only the arraignments of the alleged Communists). That most cases were not decided but instead held over for further hearings, was noted by the New York American, New York Times, Home News, and Daily Worker. The New York Post and Daily News specified that it was defendants facing the “more serious charges” that were held on bail, with the New York Post identifying those charges as burglary and inciting to riot. The New York Sun merely noted that “The more serious cases were brought before Magistrate Renaud in the Harlem Court.” Only the New York Post, New York Times, and Daily News also noted that Renaud did decide some cases. Where the New York Times simply reported that “several were sentenced immediately,” the Daily News specified that “In the cases of those charged with misdemeanors he invariably found them guilty and held them either without bail for investigation or in bail of $500 for sentence Friday" and the New York Post add the detail that these were “The relatively unimportant charges, disorderly conduct, simple assault and so on” in which “Small fines with alternative jail sentences were administered, with most of the prisoners taking the jail terms.” The summary details offered by the Daily News and New York Post mask the small number of cases Renaud decided: he convicted only five men and one woman, and actually acquitted three other men, of the total of seventy-six who appeared before him. He also did not sentence any of those he convicted, instead ordering them investigated and returned to court for sentencing three days later, on March 23. What the New York Post described happened in the Washington Heights court, not the Harlem court.

The other feature of the hearings noted in those stories was the speed, the short time taken on each case. An early edition of the New York Post reported that “cases were handled with almost unprecedented speed.” A later edition elaborated that minor charges were “handled at a speed of ten minutes or less to a case” and more serious charges “also were jammed through rapidly.” The Daily Worker, which cast the work of the “capitalist courts” as “frame-up cases and grinding out convictions,” had case handled even faster: “30 cases of Negroes were disposed of in almost as many minutes.” The Daily News described the speed in terms of the activities involved rather than time: “As rapidly as overtaxed court clerks could draw the necessary papers Renaud heard defendants.”

Newspaper stories had little to say about how those in the courtroom reacted to the proceedings. What they did mention suggested a wariness that the Black community might see racial discrimination at work that could prompt further disorder. Only the Daily News reported that Magistrate Renaud expressed such concerns at the beginning of the hearing, announcing that at his request Assistant District Attorney Richard E. Carey, who was Black, had been assigned to prosecute the accused rioters so that "there can be no charge of discrimination." Only the Brooklyn Daily Eagle also explicitly linked Carey’s role to racial tensions, pointed to him being the prosecutor in the Harlem Court to claim “it could hardly be said there was racial discrimination against the Negro Prisoners.” That story did not mention that Renaud had requested Carey. The Daily Mirror did note that Carey, whom the story described as “a colored attache of District attorney Dodge’s office,” was specially assigned at the demand of Renard without providing his explanation for that request. The New York Post and Daily Worker simply noted Carey’s involvement in the prosecutions. On at least one occasion, Carey’s involvement produced the racial tensions Renaud had sought to prevent, according to stories in the Daily News and Times Union. The fullest account was provided by the Daily News: “…when a white attorney, who refused to give his name to reporters, sought to inject a question of race while a colored patrolman was testifying against Leo Smith, 18, of 305 E. 118th St., who is white, Renaud denounced the attorney. '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.'" Missing from that story was the reaction in the courtroom, which is what the Times Union reported: “The tenseness lingering from the night was apparent in Harlem Court, where Negroes in the jammed room muttered disapprovingly as a lawyer for a white defendant hinted the trouble was started by Negroes and was racial in origin. Magistrate Renaud quickly reprimanded the attorney.” (Strikingly, that account, and mention of Margaret Mitchell’s reaction to be charged — that she "denied hysterically she participated in the rioting. She stood up from the witness chair screaming, then collapsed" — are the only references to the court proceedings in the Times Union story). Neither story made clear just what Smith’s lawyer had said. The Black officer who testifed against Smith was one of four Black patrolmen, together with a Black detective, that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle story referenced alongside Carey to refute the possibility of racial discrimination in the courts. The New York Herald Tribune was the only other newspaper to note that “Among the arresting officers were five Negro patrolmen and detectives.”

 

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