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

"Highlights on the Harlem Front," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 20, 1935, 2.

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Kress 5, 10 & 25c store front windows broken Around 6:15 PM, a step was set up on the sidewalk in front of the Kress 5, 10 & 25c store. A Black man climbed up, spoke briefly to the crowd of about 100 gathered there, and then had Daniel Miller, a twenty-four-year-old white man, take his place on the step. As Miller began to speak, someone threw an object through one of the store windows. A second object quickly followed, smashing another window, according to the New York Times and New York Sun. Different objects are identified as having smashed the store window. A bottle was the most common, identified in the New York Times and Home News, and more precisely a milk bottle in the New York Sun and a whiskey bottle in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and by a police inspector quoted in the Afro-American. The Daily News identified the object as a brick, as did the New York Sun in the case of the second object, while Louise Thompson described it as a stone. The MCCH report opted to simply say "a missile" hit the window. These are all everyday objects, likely close to hand on 125th Street, other than the whiskey bottle. A whiskey bottle fit with portrayals of those who attacked white businesses as hoodlums and played to racist stereotypes about African Americans, as was evident in the appearance of this detail in a list of brief items headlined "Highlights on the Harlem Front." Picketing of white-owned businesses on 125th Street by Black organizations in 1934 had not resulted in any broken windows; concern about what had become of the boy arrested at Kress' may have caused this crowd to react differently. There may also have been members of groups affiliated with the Communist Party in the crowd; when those groups picketed the Empire Cafeteria in 1934, they did break windows.

After the windows were broken, police officers moved in to arrest Miller and push people away from the store, most of whom ran across 125th Street to the opposite sidewalk. No one was arrested for breaking the window. Harry Gordon was arrested soon after trying to speak to the crowd on 125th Street east of Kress' store. A few minutes later, around 6:45 PM, three men began picketing in front of Kress' store. They too were soon arrested by police. Three to five police radio cars, an emergency [riot] truck, and six mounted policemen struggled to keep people from the store. No further objects appear to have been thrown at Kress' store front windows at this time. Soon after West 125th Street was cleared, around 7 P.M., people pushed on to 8th Avenue saw a hearse stop behind the store on West 124th Street, triggering rumors it had come to pick up the body of the boy who had been arrested, and a rush to the rear of the store that saw windows there broken.

Sustained and extensive attacks on stores on 125th Street came sometime after those rear windows were broken. Another brick hit Kress' front windows around 10:40 PM, allegedly thrown by William Ford, who then called for others on the street to attack police. Louise Thompson described a group breaking though the police cordon around 125th Street to break all but a few windows in the store, in the context of an exaggerated claim about the extent of smashed windows, and Kress' store does appear on the list of businesses with broken windows compiled by a La Prensa reporter who walked down 125th Street. But a reporter for the Afro-American wrote that the store "suffered very little loss on the front." The store manager, Jackson Smith, confirmed that later in a public hearing of the MCCH. Of the eighteen windows facing 125th Street and in the vestibule, only four were damaged. Repairs to the front of the store next day appeared to have focused on only two sections of the store window on the right side of the left entrance, in a photograph published in the New York American, and on the left side of the right entrance, where a ladder can be seen in Universal newsreel footage. Those repairs cannot have taken long. A photograph of Kress' store published in the Daily News on March 21 showed intact store windows guarded by two police officers. A sustained police presence during the disorder appeared to have protected the front of the store. That was the opinion of Channing Tobias, the fifty-three-year-old Black secretary of the Colored Division of the National Council of the YMCA, who told E. Franklin Frazier that "I guess it was because police were on guard" that Kress' store "got only a small window smashed." Police established a cordon in front of the store after it closed. Officers were still there around 10 PM, when Detective Henry Roge was hit by a rock while standing in front of the store, and after a window was broken at 10:40 PM, there were officers able to arrest William Ford. Later in the evening, the police cordon extended to cover 125th Street from 8th Avenue to Lenox Avenue, with Kress' store remaining at its center, and as the base for police responding to the disorder.

A window being smashed as a speaker began to address a crowd in front of Kress' store featured in narratives in the New York Times, New York Sun, and Home News. Only the New York Times and New York Sun mentioned the second object and smashed window. A broken window, without reference to a speaker, is reported by the Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Age, and Pittsburgh Courier. No mention of a window in Kress' store being smashed at the beginning of the disorder appears in the narratives published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, New York American, Daily Mirror, and New York Post, and the Afro-American reported only the damage visible the next day. In the MCCH public hearings, Inspector Di Martini, Patrolman Moran, Jackson Smith, the store manager, and Louise Thompson all discussed how the window was broken. In the MCCH's final report, the arrests of Miller and Gordon police made in the aftermath of the window being broken were included as examples of "actions on the part of the police [that] only tended to arouse resentment in the crowd."

The Kress 5, 10 & 25c store appeared in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 and was still visible in the Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941.
Arrests for looting (60) Details of the circumstances in which police made arrests for looting can be found for twenty-seven of the sixty people taken into custody. Police officers most often had seen crowds in front of stores or heard glass breaking, resulting in twelve arrests. Less often they saw individuals reaching into windows or coming out of stores, making six arrests. Officers had to come from some distance to make an arrest — from cars patrolling the streets, from positions on intersections, or from guarding stores across the street. As a result, officers often fired guns at suspected looters — both the individuals police killed, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson, allegedly had been seen looting — and did not get to the scene in time to arrest all those involved before they ran off. On only two of the twelve occasions police saw crowds taking goods from stores was there evidence that they arrested several people at the same time, three men at the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue and two men at 1916 7th Avenue. A man and a woman were also arrested at the same time at 340 Lenox Avenue, but there were no details of the circumstances of those arrests. There are two other police officers that the Magistrates Court docket book recorded as each having arrested three men at the same address, the Romanoff Drug Store at 375 Lenox Avenue and the Butler Food Market at 1974 7th Avenue, likely indicating they were arrested at the same time, but no sources provide details of those arrests. More than one person was arrested for looting four other stores, at 372 Lenox Avenue, 374 Lenox Avenue, 400 Lenox Avenue, and 200 West 128th Street, but those arrests came at different times. Police also made nine arrests away from the business the men had allegedly looted. There was no information on the circumstances of the remaining thirty-one arrests for looting.

Several of those police did arrest, at least, denied they had been involved in looting (details are not available for all those arrested). Arthur Merritt and Hezekiah Wright said they had been part of a crowd drawn to the scene as police had been. Others admitted having done only some of what police alleged: Arnold Ford and Horace Fowler said that they had taken merchandise but not broken windows to gain access to a business; Charles Saunders and Edward Larry said that they had not gone into a store but had picked up merchandise off the street (which Arnold Ford later told his probation officer that he had done); and Carl Jones and Thomas Jackson said that they had broken windows but not taken merchandise. Others may have offered similar statements in the police line-up the morning after the disorder; a reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote “Many in the lineup still carried things they admitted picking up in the street, but denied reaching into broken shop windows to secure" [sic?]. Cigarettes were the favorite item "found." A story in the New York Sun included a similar claim, that “Many admitted thefts from stores damaged during the riot, stealing everything from toothbrushes to shirts and groceries, but all denied breaking the store windows, insisting that they had picked up the articles from the street after others had thrown them out of stores.” In court such admissions warranted lesser charges than burglary. More broadly, they distinguished those who made them from looters, from those who attacked stores and created disorder, and associated them instead with onlookers and passersby whose behavior was less out of the ordinary.

Merchandise that police allegedly found in an individual’s possession provided the basis for officers to make arrests, and was central to the arrests of the nine individuals police did not allegedly witness taking goods from stores. This was the case often enough that police estimated “that the plunder recovered so far today will fill a ton truck,” according to the New York Sun. Photographs showed individuals arrested for looting carrying the merchandise they had allegedly stolen. The image below published in the New York Evening Journal shows a man in the foreground carrying a full shopping bag labeled as coming from Rex Food Market at 348 Lenox Avenue, as well as what appears to be an alarm clock and at least one other item. Behind him a second man carries three metal boxes in his left hand, and in his right hand, just visible in the background, a full shopping bag of the same design as the first man. The Afro-American incorporated the details of the photograph, which it did not publish, into a story: to illustrate the claim that "Police arrested pillagers wherever they could," the reporter added "One man was arrested carrying three new steel cash boxes taken from a stationary store. Another had a shopping bag full of loot." (The New York Herald Tribune published an Associated Press image of the same scene taken a second earlier or later, showing the man in the foreground with his head turned slightly more toward the police officer behind him, and that officer with his nightstick raised slightly higher, in front of his face.)
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A third man arrested for looting photographed by the New York Evening Journal was carrying even larger items, a tall bin containing at least four or five pots of various sizes, with perhaps more merchandise not sticking out the top. The police officer following him is carrying two wooden poles, perhaps brooms or mops also found in the man's possession — although it's not clear he could have carried any more than he did in the photograph. The man in the images may be James Williams. Among those arrested for looting for which there was information on goods allegedly found in their possession, only he was charged with taking hardware.

The arrested men in the photographs are carrying large amounts of merchandise that would have attracted the attention of police looking for looters. Three of those arrested away from looted stores allegedly had a similar quantity of goods in their possession. James Williams was carrying four pots of different sizes, two pans, a pitcher, two pails, a bread box and a cloth lamp. Edward Larry had a box containing eight shirts (although the police officer may not have been able to see them as Larry was in a taxi). Jean Jacquelin had two ladies’ suits and two pairs of trousers in his possession, at 5:40 AM. Police similarly alleged that some those arrested at looted locations carried bulky items: Lawrence Humphrey had a 50lb bag of rice; Thomas Babbitt had two cases of soap.

However, police evidently also stopped four others they had not allegedly seen looting who had nothing obvious in their possession. Arnold Ford had a package that cannot have been large; it contained three cakes of soap, a can of shoe polish, two pairs of garters, six spools of thread, a jar of Vaseline, and three packets of tea, with a value of $1.15. John Henry and Oscar Leacock between them had $75 of jewelry. Patrolman William Clements stopped Edward Larry after observing him in a taxi without being able to see if he had anything in his possession. The relatively indiscriminate nature of police arrests for looting was also evident in a comment made during the line-up of those arrested before they were taken to court. “One Negro woman still had in her possession five milk bottles,” a reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote. “Police were doubtful that she drank as much milk as all that.” Storeowners claims to be able to identify the goods found in the possession of those arrested away from the scene as coming from their stores are more credible in the case of jewelry and clothing than more commonplace items such as pans or soap. Merchandise police claim to have found in the possession of several of those arrested at looted stores was even more unexceptional and unlikely to have been able to be identified by a storeowner — unless it was in a labeled shopping bag like those visible in the the New York Evening Journal photograph: Amie Taylor had eighteen packets of gum; Arthur Merritt had two cans of beans, a can of milk, and a can of tuna fish; Joseph Wade had several toy pistols; Milton Ackerman had two rolls of paper, worth five cents, and eight cents' worth of napkins; Raymond Easley had an unspecified number of cigars. Perhaps more noteworthy in the context of the disorder were the man’s suit and a lady’s coat carried by Horace Fowler and the bag of laundry in Lamter Jackson’s possession.

On three occasions, police effectively, and in one case apparently literally, found goods when none were in the possession of an individual when an arrest was made. Officers claimed Hezekiel Wright and Thomas Jackson had dropped items before they got to the men. With merchandise thrown from stores spread over many sections of Harlem’s sidewalk, goods would likely have been nearby anyone police confronted. Police took until sometime in early April to mention the looted horn and socket set they claimed Lloyd Hobbs had in his possession when Officer McInerney shot him, after not recording them as evidence at the time of the shooting. After police witnesses produced the items during testimony before the MCCH in May, the New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and the New York World-Telegram reported that police could not explain where that evidence had been before it was delivered to the District Attorney. Witnesses at the scene said Hobbs had not been carrying anything.

While the newspaper reports of the police line-up suggest that many of those arrested still had the goods they had allegedly stolen in their possession as they were being taken to court, in three cases, police apparently could not produce allegedly stolen merchandise or convincing evidence that it existed, as prosecutors reduced the charge against those individuals from burglary or larceny to unlawful entry and disorderly conduct. (A lack of evidence of looting may also be why ten of those named in published lists of those arrested for looting did not appear in court.) Magistrates transferred an additional seven defendants to the Court of Special Sessions, indicating that prosecutors did not provide adequate evidence of at least one element of a burglary charge.
Arrests (128)
Arrests for looting away from the scene (9) While police arrested most of those they alleged had been looting at the scene, having witnessed their actions, one third (9 of 27) were arrested at other locations at least several blocks from the business that had been looted. (For just over half of the arrests (33/60) the sources do not provide a location of arrest, although the looted store is identified in fourteen cases). Two of those arrests occurred the day after the disorder; the other seven are on the map below.

What caused police to stop these men is not made clear in any sources. The most likely reason is that they were carrying goods that police suspected might have been looted, but photographs in newspapers of police reportedly searching Black men for weapons suggest that officers more indiscriminately stopped people on the street. Certainly police treatment of Black residents of Harlem at other times indicates that they would not have felt any need to have a justification for stopping and searching those they encountered during the disorder. Such policing extended to vehicles as well as pedestrians. Police had stopped a car to search its occupants for weapons in an image taken by a New York Evening Journal photographer, and one of those arrested for looting, Edward Larry, had been observed in a taxi.

Two photographs of men arrested for looting show individuals carrying large amounts of merchandise that would have attracted the attention of police on the lookout for looters. The men are not identified. The two men in a photograph published in the New York Evening Journal are carrying shopping bags from the Rex Food Market at 348 Lenox Avenue, one of the businesses whose owner sued the city for damages, so could be two of the sixteen men arrested for looting an unknown location.
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The man in the second photograph, also published in the New York Evening Journal, carrying a tall bin containing at least four or five pots of various sizes, with perhaps more merchandise not sticking out of the top, might be James Williams. One of three men arrested away from looted stores who allegedly had a quantity of goods in their possession, the affidavit recorded Williams was carrying four pots of different sizes, two pans, a pitcher, two pails, a bread box and a cloth lamp. Edward Larry had a box containing eight shirts (although the police officer may not have been able to see them as Larry was in a taxi). Jean Jacquelin had two ladies’ suits and two pairs of trousers in his possession.

However, police evidently also stopped others they had not allegedly seen looting who had nothing obvious in their possession. Arnold Ford had a package that cannot have been large; it contained three cakes of soap, a can of shoe polish, two pairs of garters, six spools of thread, a jar of Vaseline, and three packets of tea, with a value of $1.15. John Henry and Oscar Leacock between them had $75 of jewelry, most likely watches and rings rather than anything more bulky. The relatively indiscriminate nature of police arrests for looting is also evident in a comment reportedly made during the line-up of those arrested before they were taken to court. “One Negro woman still had in her possession five milk bottles,” a reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote. “Police were doubtful that she drank as much milk as all that.”

Storeowners claimed to be able to identify the goods found in the possession of eight of the nine men arrested away from the scene of their alleged looting. Those statements are more credible in the case of jewelry and clothing than more commonplace items such as pans or soap — although identification of such items might have been helped if they were in shopping bags like those being carried by the men in the New York Evening Journal photograph. In the case of Larry, the storeowner also identified him as one of the men who had robbed his store.

None of the reports of the arrest of Joseph Moore mention what items, if any, he had in his possession when Patrolman Louis Frikser arrested him. A few minutes earlier Frisker had arrested Arnold Ford, who was carrying a small package. The two men were prosecuted together, charged with taking merchandise from Harry Lash's 5c and 10c store, although the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against Moore as "Acc'd stolen goods during the riot" not "Burglarized store during riot" as in Ford's case. The first charge suggested Moore had not obtained whatever goods he had allegedly stolen directly from the store, a version of events not mentioned anywhere else. Prosecutors erased any distinction in the charges against Ford and Moore in the Harlem Magistrate Court, charging both with burglary.

Frisker arrested Ford and Moore on the Third Avenue Bridge, a distance from store. It is not clear if the patrolman had been deployed on the bridge in response to the disorder or the location was a part of a regular patrol. Both men lived in the Bronx, near to the bridge, which was one of five thoroughfares between 127th Street and 155th Street connecting Harlem to the Bronx.

Police arrested six other men on the major avenues running through Harlem; Henry and Leacock and Williams on Lenox Avenue, Larry on 7th Avenue, and Jacquelin on 8th Avenue. Williams was the farthest from the store he had allegedly looted; Henry and Leacock were the closest. Police arrested all three, and Edward Larry, in areas which saw clusters of attacks on stores and violence, bringing numbers of police who the men would have had to pass by. All four, and Ford and Moore, may have been on their way home as they were arrested between the stores they allegedly looted and their homes. Police arrested Jacquelin on Eighth Avenue at the very end of the disorder, when cars were patrolling the avenue. Ten minutes earlier officers in a patrol car on the avenue a block north had shot and killed James Thompson while trying to arrest him for allegedly looting a grocery store. Jacquelin lived close by, several buildings to the east on West 127th Street, so was leaving home rather than returning there.

The remaining two men police arrested without witnessing their alleged looting were arrested in the late afternoon of March 20, after the disorder. Detective Mark Redmond of the 28th Precinct first arrested arrested Clifford Mitchell at his home, 362 Lenox Avenue, although the address the Magistrates Court clerk recorded for Mitchell, likely in error, is 363 Lenox Avenue, a building across the street. An hour later, Detective Frank McKenna, also from the 28th Precinct, arrested Daughty Shavos at his home at 40 West 119th Street. Between them, Shavos and Mitchell allegedly had $50 of clothing in their possession, which Louis Levy identified as coming from his store. What led police to the men's homes is not mentioned in any sources. They may have attracted police attention trying to sell the clothing. It is also possible that Mitchell gave police Shavos' name.

Judges in the Court of Special Sessions convicted two of these men, Henry and Leacock, and acquitted two others, Williams and Jacquelin. Shavos was also tried in the Court of Special Sessions, but there is no record of the outcome. The grand jury dismissed the charges against Mitchell, and indicted Moore, Larry, and Ford. The later two pled guilty in the Court of General Sessions, while the judge dismissed the charges against Moore.
Looting of food and drink (24) Business stocking food and drink make up the largest group of those who had goods stolen (24 of 57). There are also photographs of a meat market, a grocery store, and a liquor store that have been looted whose location is unknown, which may be additional looted locations or images of already identified looting. Some of the looting of businesses categorized as selling miscellaneous consumer goods may also have involved taking food and drink. Both stationery stores and drug stores sometimes sold meals and drinks. So too apparently did 5 & 10c stores; among the items Arnold Ford allegedly took from Lash’s store was three packets of tea (but that business is not included as one looted for food and drink, but as one looted for miscellaneous goods, as those items made up the bulk of what was taken). The number of these types of business looted reflected in part that they comprised a large proportion of the stores in Black Harlem, with grocery stores the most frequently found business, and restaurants nearly as numerous. Food and drink being taken also fit the portrayal of the disorder as motivated by economic grievances.

Newspaper accounts of the merchandise taken from businesses featured food and drink alongside clothing. "The large grocery stores were looted," the Afro-American's correspondent reported, "and persons denied relief and discriminated against by the relief bureau authorities seized food for their starving families." The Daily Worker offered a similar picture: “When the shop windows were broken and wares of all sorts displayed, the starving and penniless Negroes in the crowd seized the opportunity to carry off food, clothes, articles of all sorts.” In his "Hectic Harlem" column in the New York Amsterdam News, Roi Ottley highlighted food in his description of looting, writing “As Negroes snatched choice hams from butchers stores…lifted suits from tailor shops…and carried out bags of rice and other edables…the feeling, 'here’s our chance to have some of the things we should have,' was often evidenced.” So too did J. A. Rogers in his "Ruminations" column, also in the New York Amsterdam News, writing "From the ravenous manner in which I saw some of the rioters eating the looted food, it was clear that they hadn't had a decent meal in months." The New York Post, like Ottley, imputed motives while identifying food as a target, describing looting as “the glamorous opportunity of snatching food and coats and liquor and tobacco from behind the broken panes.” Food also featured in Louise Thompson’s memoir of what she saw during the disorder, as “People on the street were tossing up to [people...on the second floor of apartment buildings] groceries – flour – anything they could toss up.” She offered more detail writing in New Masses: "Many grocery stores windows were smashed; hungry Negroes scooped armloads of canned goods, loaves of bread, sacks of flour, vegetables, running to their homes with the food."

Adam Clayton Powell described what he saw in the form of vignettes rather than a general picture of looting, in the first of three articles published by the New York Post; two of the three scenes involved food: “Witness a man, tall, strong and well built, carrying through the murkiness of the Harlem morning two pieces of the twelve-cents-a-pound salt pork that he had taken from a butcher's broken window. Witness two young lads one of them just finished high schools-furtively sneaking home as the noise of March 19 subsided, lugging two sacks of rice and sugar.” The Daily Worker also published a story by an “Eye Witness” that recounted police violence against a “young Negro boy” arrested with two cans of vegetables in his possession.

Food also featured in stories about the police line-up the morning after the disorder. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun noted in general terms that many of those paraded before police and reporters admitted to stealing groceries. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle singled out one Black woman who “still had in her possession five milk bottles.” In addition, two men arrested for looting who appear in a New York Evening Journal photograph are carrying shopping bags labeled as coming from Rex Food Market at 348 Lenox Avenue.

Legal records offer a similar mix of broad and individual pictures of the merchandise taken. Nine business owners selling food and drink are among those identified who sued the city for damages, with losses of $14,000 for George Chronis’ restaurant, $2,068 for Irving Stekin's grocery store, $759.58 for Radio City Meat Market, $745 for Frank Dethomas' candy store, $721 for Manny Zipp's grocery store, $630 for William Feinstein's liquor store, $537 for Alfonso Avitable's Savoy Food Market, $453.90 for Alfonso Principe's saloon, and $146.75 for Michael D’Agostino’s market. Those losses, other than for Chronis, are lower than those claimed by the owners of stores selling clothing and miscellaneous other merchandise. (The nature of eleven of twenty-seven businesses identified in suits against city are unknown, so could include additional stores selling food and drink.) Details of the losses of an additional eight businesses are identified in legal proceedings. The value of the merchandise in those cases is less than the losses of those who sued the city: $200 for Mario Pravia's candy store, $200 for J. P. Bulluroff's grocery store, $167.86 for Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store, $100 for Jacob Solomon's grocery store, $50-75 for Sarah Refkin's delicatessen, $10-$12 for the San Antonio Market, and several bottles of liquor from the Mediavilla Liquor store. An indication of what items made up those totals is provided by the details Sol Weit gave to a probation officer: the $167.86 of goods taken from the store he co-owned consisted of “126 pounds of butter, 90 dozen eggs, eight cartons of cigarettes, a ham and other food products, as well as $14 from the cash register.”

The individuals arrested for looting food and drink allegedly only had a small proportion of that merchandise in their possession, as the vignettes offered by Powell and the Daily Worker’s eyewitness suggest. The man charged with looting Weit’s store, Arthur Merritt, allegedly had only "two cans of beans, a can of milk and a can of tuna.” There are only records of what police claimed five of the other ten men arrested for looting businesses selling food and drink had in their possession. Lawrence Humphrey had a fifty-pound bag of rice, Amie Taylor eighteen packets of gum, Louis Cobb two bottles of whiskey, Theodore Hughes two pieces of pork, and Hezekiel Wright four lamps and two jars of food.
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.”
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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.”
Before court on March 20 For eighty-six of the Black men, six of the white men, and four of the Black women police arrested during the disorder, the legal process began with a trip in police wagons from Harlem to Police Headquarters downtown at 240 Center Street for a line-up. At least at the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, where most of those arrested were held, they were led out on the front doors on to the street to be loaded into the wagons. On that walk the men and women had to pass by a gauntlet of white press photographers and cameramen. Many of those under arrest showed signs of police violence during the disorder, bandages over wounds to their heads and hands, visible bruises, and torn clothing. The attention these men drew from reporters indicated that there were many more injured than the five arrested men identified in newspaper stories and medical records. Some of the twenty-nine men and women who had been arrested missing from the line-up had more serious injuries that kept them in Harlem's hospitals. Police officials were clearly still trying to establish exactly how many arrests had been made as they gave different totals to reporters, ranging from 113 reported by the New York Post to 121 reported by the Home News and 127 reported by the New York American. Three of those arrested during the disorder had already appeared in the Night Court the previous evening; Magistrate Capshaw had found Claudius Jones guilty of disorderly conduct for "refusing to obey police order to move away from a Harlem corner" and given him a suspended sentence, remanded James Smitten, charged with assault, and held Leo Smith on bail to appear in the Harlem court.

While the morning line-up was part of police practice, the number of prisoners coming from Harlem made it anything but routine. Police diverted traffic and cleared parked cars from the blocks surrounding the headquarters building to ensure access for the collection of patrol wagons. Even after crowding the prisoners disembarking those wagons into cells, there was not space for all those brought to police headquarters. Most were instead put in the photographic gallery.

Police then took groups of three to five prisoners to a floodlit stage, where detectives questioned them. "Did you throw that stone," a detective asked Isaac Daniels, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man arrested for allegedly throwing a stone that smashed glass in the window of Herman Young's hardware store and went on to hit Young . "No sir, I didn't have any," Young replied. The detective then changed tack and asked Daniels, "Are you working now?" That question may have been for the benefit of representatives of the Department of Public Welfare and the Aldermanic Welfare Committee, who attended the line-up and took notes. Daniels answered, yes, for the C.W.A. Twenty-one others in the line-up identified themselves as unemployed and on public relief, with three more on relief until recently, circumstances that reporters for the New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun and Daily Mirror highlighted, implying that they thought it helped explain their alleged offenses.

The detective then returned to the circumstances of Daniels' arrest. "What were you doing around there?" "I was coming home," Daniels replied. That was all the explanation Daniels was allowed to offer at this point in the legal process. The detective moved on to establishing Daniels' identity. "How long in New York?" "Since 1928." "Are you married?" "Yes Sir." "Where did you come from?" "Georgia." With that information, which likely helped police find his criminal record, the detective moved on to the next person in the line-up. Aubrey Patterson answered somewhat more effusively when asked to identify himself. In response to being asked if he was a citizen, the twenty-one year-old Black man said "I am a citizen of this great metropolis. I was born in this metropolis in 132nd Street." "What do you do for a living?" "I do laboring in the daytime and I go to school at nighttime." In extending beyond the brief, deferential answers offered by Daniels, Patterson's statements drew the ire of some of white reporter from the New York Sun observing the line-up. They described him as having "assumed a pompous air" and that he "gave off oratory to reply to most of the questions."

Those charged with looting faced questions about items found in their possession when they were arrested, which in some cases they were carrying at the line-up. Several insisted they had found goods ranging from toothbrushes and shirts to cigarettes and bottles of milk lying in the street, denying that they had reached through broken windows to take them from stores. White reporters at the line-up dismissed those statements, reporting them either as simply an admission of having stolen the items or defenses that lacked credibility

Aubrey Patterson declined to answer questions about the looting with which he was charged. One white reporter made fun of the explanation he offered, claiming that it drew laughter from some of those observing the line-up: "I don't want to extricate myself from any guilt." Patterson may have misspoken; those in the room may also have misheard him, especially as the question posed to him about his citizenship suggests that he had an accent, likely West Indian. Either way, making fun of Patterson served to present him, and the others arrested during the disorder, as less threatening.

At least one other prisoner also declined to answer questions. In his case, those in the room reacted differently. Harry Gordon was one of the white men arrested outside the Kress store at the very beginning of the disorder. He was grouped on the line-up stage with the three other white men and the Black man identified as members of Communist Party organizations arrested around the same time: Daniel Miller and Murray Samuels, Sam Jamison, and Claudio Viabolo. Gordon identified himself as "a student at City College of New York," and then refused to answer any further question. Standing with one hand in his pocket, he announced, "I have no comment to make until I see my lawyer. I understand that anything I might say would be used against me." Captain Edward Dillon tried again, asking "If you are not guilty why do you want to see a lawyer?" "I know all that, but I won't talk until I see my lawyer," Gordon responded with a wave of his hand. Journalists in the room described Gordon as "defiant," his stance as a "Napoleonic pose," his statement marking him out to Daily Mirror's reporter as "the inciter of the night's rioting." As was the case with the city's then stridently anti-Communist Hearst newspapers, that publication was far more interested in the radicals arrested during the disorder than the Black residents. The four avowed Communists did not appear to respond in the same way. Viabolo, at least, offered an answer to what he had been doing before his arrest: "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."

After the line-up, the arrested men and women were loaded back into police wagons. Once again they encountered press photographers. Cameras followed them even into the wagons, capturing images of at least two groups not simply in police custody but contained in a cell-like space that conveyed that order had been restored in Harlem.
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Escorted by police motorcycles, the wagons transported those under arrest uptown to be arraigned in the two courts whose jurisdictions encompassed the disorder, the Harlem court at 170 East 121st Street and the Washington Heights court at 455 West 151st Street.
Looting of miscellaneous consumer goods (14) Aside from food and drink and clothing, businesses selling a variety of other consumer goods had stock stolen (14 of 57). There is also a photograph of a looted jewelry store at an unidentified location, which may be an additional looted business or an image of an already identified looting. The merchandise sold by these businesses is a mix of household items akin to food and clothing, such as cigarettes, soap, and pots, and goods such as jewelry likely taken for their value rather than for everyday use.

Newspaper accounts of looting mentioned only two items other than food and clothing: cigarettes and toothbrushes. The New York Post imputed motives while identifying cigarettes as a target, describing looting as “the glamorous opportunity of snatching food and coats and liquor and tobacco from behind the broken panes." Cigarettes also featured in stories about the police line-up the morning after the disorder. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted that many of those paraded before police and reporters admitted to taking cigarettes. Neither of the other stories about the line-up mentioned cigarettes; instead both the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun listed toothbrushes alongside clothing and groceries. Those items capture only some of the businesses selling miscellaneous goods that are reported as having being looted to do these match with reported looting; drug stores and cigar stores (some stationery stores also sold cigarettes and tobacco products, and 5c and 10c stores possibly sold toothbrushes). Jewelry, hardware, auto supply, and optician stores did not attract the attention of newspaper reporters, but items likely from a hardware store are visible in the photographs of men being arrested. A tall bin containing at least four or five pots of various sizes, with perhaps more merchandise not sticking out the top appears in one photograph published in the New York Evening Journal. A clock and three cash boxes are visible in the photograph below, also from the New York Evening Journal.
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Legal records offer a similar mix of broad and individual pictures of the merchandise taken. Two business owners not selling food and clothing are among those identified who sued the city for damages, with losses of $2,685 for Benjamin Zelvin's jewelry store and $572 for the Sav-On Drug store. Zelvin's damages are significantly higher than those suffered by all but two of the nine owners of stores selling food and drink who also sued the city, and than the damages suffered by most of the clothing stores. (The nature of eleven of twenty-eight businesses identified in suits against city are unknown, so could include additional stores selling food and drink.) Details of the losses of an additional seven businesses are identified in legal proceedings. The value of the merchandise in those cases is less than the losses of those who sued the city: $1,000 for Lash's 5c & 10c store; $850 for the Greenfield Auto Equipment store, $500 for Herman Young's hardware store; $300 for Harry Farber's stationery store, $100 for Jack Garmise's cigar shop, and $33 for Lazar's cigar store.

Seven individuals arrested for looting miscellaneous items allegedly had only small amounts of that merchandise in their possession. With the exception of the $75 of unspecified jewelry that police claimed John Henry and Oscar Leacock had in their possession when arrested, that merchandise had little value: Thomas Babbitt had two cases of soap; James Williams had four pots of different sizes, two pans, a pitcher, two pails, a bread box, and a cloth lamp, with a value of $12.55; Arnold Ford had three cakes of soap, a can of shoe polish, two pairs of garters, six spools of thread, a jar of vaseline, and three packets of tea, with a value of $1.15; Raymond Easley had an unspecified number of cigars; Milton Ackerman had two rolls of paper and napkins; and Robert Tanner had a pipe.
Line-up at Police Headquarters (96) On the morning of March 20, police transported most of those arrested during the disorder from Harlem’s two police stations downtown to police headquarters for a line-up prior to their arraignment in the Magistrates courts. Only four white newspapers reported details of that line-up. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun devoted the most space to those events; the Daily Mirror offered an overview and a brief account of an exchange between Harry Gordon, one of the white men arrested in front of the Kress store at the beginning of the disorder, and Captain Dillon, one of the officers questioning prisoners. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle included a series of snippets in a list of “Highlights on the Harlem Front.” The Daily News, Daily Mirror, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle published photographs of prisoners being taken to the line-up and waiting in police headquarters.

The stories presented those arrested as a group, emphasizing the scale of the disorder, in contrast with subsequent stories about the appearance of those prisoners in court, which named multiple individuals. The focus of the stories was those charged with looting and on Harry Gordon. No mention was made of those charged with assault. The only suggestion of violence by those arrested came in a photograph published on the front page of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of prisoners after the line-up in the back of a police wagon that would take them back uptown to the Magistrates courts. One of several images of the prisoners being transported, in this photograph, as the caption described it, “in the left foreground a policeman is holding a long knife taken from one of the rioters.” There was no reference to that weapon in the newspaper’s story. However, many of those arrested were injured, described as having “battered heads and hands” in the New York Herald Tribune and “bruised and beaten and their clothing was torn” according to the New York Sun. Prisoners with those injuries appeared in images taken by press photographers as they were being transported to police headquarters. A Black man in the foreground of a Daily News image of prisoners being led into the back of a police wagon in front of the 28th Precinct had a large bandage around his head. The caption to that image was the only one to draw attention to the injuries of those arrested in the disorder, noting "First man in line was badly banged up." The same man also appeared in a second Daily News photograph exiting a wagon at the Harlem court. Two other men with bandages around their heads appeared among a half dozen prisoners photographed sitting in the rear of a wagon, in an Acme agency photograph that has been insightfully analyzed by Sara Blair. The newspaper stories offered no comment on those injuries, which almost certainly indicated that the men had been subject to violence by police.
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Photographs of those being transported to and from police headquarters likewise offered images of groups of prisoners, albeit of only part of the large group referenced in the stories. The Daily News published multiple photographs of prisoners being transported to police headquarters: two views of a group being loaded into police wagons in front of the 28th Precinct, one from across the street showing the crowd of press around the entrance and a newsreel crew filming from the top of a van and another from next to the wagon (discussed above). Both showed approximately half a dozen men. The Daily Mirror also published a similar close-up photograph of men being loaded into a police wagon, likely taken at the same time and place, although the details are difficult to make out in the microfilm copy. Two photographs of men in the back of police wagons, one published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the other an Acme agency photograph, showed eight to ten men.

The New York Herald Tribune reported ninety-six prisoners were involved in the line-up, while the New York Sun and Daily Mirror reported only eighty-nine. As the New York Herald Tribune used its number in a headline, it is treated as the more reliable. All three stories agreed that there were six white men and four black women in the group; the remainder were Black men. They also agreed that twenty-one of those questioned by police were on relief, three had been until recently, and one was a CWA worker. That information was likely obtained for the benefit of “a representative of the Department of Public Welfare and a representative of the Aldermanic Welfare Committee,” who attended the line-up according to the New York Herald Tribune. “Both took notes, presumably in checking the number of prisoners on the home relief rolls.” However many prisoners were brought to police headquarters, the number was more than the building’s cells could accommodate, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Post. The former reported, “There weren't enough cells to go around for the Harlem visitors at headquarters and many were herded in the photographic gallery,” with the later specifying that "All prisoners were placed together in the photograph gallery as the cell block at Headquarters only has capacity for thirty." A photograph published in the Daily Mirror seemed to confirm the overcrowding, showing prisoners packed together behind bars. Not all of those arrested during the disorder were in the line-up. One hundred and six people would appear in court on March 20. None of the stories mentioned that some of those arrested were missing. A passing mention in the New York Post provided a possible explanation, noting that during the disorder "prisoners were herded in police stations when they did not require hospital treatment, and were sent to Headquarters this morning." Some of those arrested could still have been in the hospital at the time of the line-up or at least had not been transported back to a police station.

Police led groups of three to five men and women on to a narrow, flood-lit stand to be questioned by detectives, according to both the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Mirror. A transcript of the exchange between a police officer and Isaac Daniels in the line-up contained in his district attorney's case file indicated the questions asked of those in the line-up: about an individual’s alleged offense, which elicited explanations; about details of that explanation; and about their identity in terms of time in New York City, marital status, and birthplace. Unfortunately, there are no records of the questioning of others police arrested during the disorder

Other than the injuries suffered by many prisoners, the other detail that attracted the attention of the reporters was the goods that many of those in the line-up carried with them. The New York Herald Tribune simply reported that “Many admitted they had stolen articles such as clothing, groceries and toothbrushes in their possession when apprehended.” While the New York Herald Tribune simply presented those individuals as guilty of looting, the New York Sun added a sense of the answers they gave that complicated that picture: “Many admitted thefts from the stores damaged during the riot, stealing everything from toothbrushes to shirts and groceries, but all denied breaking the store windows, insisting that they had picked the articles up from the street after others had thrown them out of the stores.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle also reported such responses only to make fun of them: “Many in the lineup still carried things they admitted picking up in the street but denied reaching into broken shop windows to secure. Cigarettes were the favorite item 'found.' One Negro woman still had in her possession five milk bottles. Police were doubtful that she drank as much milk as all that.”

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle also made fun of some of the answers offered by Aubrey Patterson, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, statements also reported in the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun. "'I don't want to extricate myself from any guilt,' said Aubert Patterson, colored, of 83 E. 113th St. Manhattan,” according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “in explaining (amid laughter) why he didn't want to discuss the charge of burglary against him." The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun by contrast, quoted Patterson answering questions, although only the New York Sun reported the questions: "'Are you a citizen?' Capt. Dillon asked this prisoner, who had identified himself as Aubrey Patterson, of 83 East 113th Street. 'I am a citizen of this great metropolis,' replied Patterson. 'I was born in this metropolis on 132d Street.' 'What do you do for a living?' 'I do laboring in the daytime and I go to school at nighttime.'" The story framed that exchange by denigrating Patterson as having "assumed a pompous air when questioned by Acting Capt. Dillon and gave off oratory to reply to most of the questions." The New York Herald Tribune did not offer any similar judgement but did add that Patterson was "a light-skinned Negro"

The other prisoner that reporters selected for attention was Harry Gordon, whom the New York Herald Tribune reported was grouped with Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators in the line-up. Gordon’s response to being questioned was reported by the New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, and Daily Mirror. The briefest mention appeared in the Daily Mirror, which reported only that "under the grilling conducted by Acting Capt. Edward Dillon" he declared "I am a student at City College of New York" and "refused to answer further questions." The reporter described Gordon's manner as "defiant." The other stories conveyed a similar judgment in their portrayals of Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune described him as "a tall, lanky youth [who] thrust one hand in his pocket and struck an orator's attitude" during the questioning; the New York Sun described his pose as "Napoleonic." Neither of those stories mentioned Gordon identifying himself as a student; they instead quoted him as refusing to answer questions until he saw a lawyer. The New York Sun quoted the exchange at the greatest length:
"I have no comment to make until I see my lawyer. I understand that anything I might say would be used against me."

"If you are not guilty why do you want to see a lawyer?" he was asked.

"I know all that," he replied with a wave of his hand "But I won't talk until I see my lawyer."
The Daily Mirror concluded that Gordon, in responding as he did, "had practically declared himself the inciter of the night's rioting" and the leader of the four others arrested at the beginning of the disorder.

The New York Sun alone included the response of Claudio Viabolo, who was in the same group as Gordon. The story did not name him, instead identifying him as “Another Negro, 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."

Whereupon this Negro and his companions took turns on a soap box "informing the public," Capt. Dillon was told.”
The inclusion of Viabolo’s answers was an unusual departure from reporting across the range of newspapers that consistently portrayed the Communists involved in the early part of the disorder as white. A striking example of that focus are the later photographs of this group taken in the 28th Precinct station house as they were being transported to the Harlem courthouse. Although Viabolo was visible in images published in the Daily News, New York American and New York Evening Journal, he was not identified as part of the group in the captions, and was cropped out of versions of the photograph published by several regional newspapers.
Events
Aubrey Patterson arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Baumann of the 11th Precinct arrested Aubrey Patterson, a twenty-one-year-old Black man who lived at 81 East 113th Street. Baumann charged him with burglary, with a note in the 28th Precinct police blotter recording that Patterson "Burglarised store during riot." Patterson was named in the list of those arrested for burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the list in the New York Evening Journal. No one was recorded as the complainant against him in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and there was no evidence of the location of the business that he allegedly looted.

Police transported Patterson and ninety-five others to Police Headquarters on the morning of March 20 after the disorder. That group was then put in a line-up and questioned by detectives in front of reporters before police put them back into patrol wagons and drove them uptown to the Harlem and Washington Heights Magistrates Courts. Three of the four newspaper stories about the line-up mentioned Patterson. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle did so to make fun of him: "'I don't want to extricate myself from any guilt,' said Aubery Patterson, colored, of 83 E. 113th St. Manhattan, in explaining (amid laughter) why he didn't want to discuss the charge of burglary against him." The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun by contrast, quoted Patterson answering questions, although only the New York Sun reported the questions: "'Are you a citizen?' Capt. Dillon asked this prisoner, who had identified himself as Aubrey Patterson, of 83 East 113th Street. 'I am a citizen of this great metropolis,' replied Patterson. I was born in this metropolis on 132d Street.' 'What do you do for a living?' 'I do laboring in the daytime and I go to school at nighttime.'" The story framed that exchange by denigrating Patterson as having "assumed a pompous air when questioned by Acting Capt. Dillon and gave off oratory to reply to most of the questions." The New York Herald Tribune did not offer any similar judgement but did add that Patterson was "a light-skinned Negro." (The only other individual quoted in stories about the line-up was Harry Gordon, one of the white men arrested at the start of the disorder).

In the Harlem Magistrates Court, prosecutors charged Patterson with disorderly conduct, not burglary. That charge likely indicates that police had no evidence that he had either entered a store or taken merchandise, so could not charge him with burglary or even attempted burglary, or with larceny. Patterson was one of a small number of those arrested during the disorder who was recorded as having had an attorney appear for him, in his case "T. French," whose offices were at 200 West 131st Street. He told a MCCH investigator that French was "a friend," and that the ILD had also offered to defend him. Magistrate Renaud remanded Patterson in custody on $100 bail. When he appeared in court again, on March 25, Magistrate Ford discharged Patterson, an outcome also recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter.

Patterson was later interviewed by a MCCH investigator, identified as "A Militant Negro Student of the Harlem Evening High School, 116th St & Lenox Avenue." The questions focused on the existence of a united front and any interracial campaigns being carried on by the National Student League or others, as part of MCCH research into radical groups in Harlem. Patterson told the interviewer he had been a student at the evening high since 1932. "Studying" was the occupation he gave when he registered for the draft five years after the disorder, in 1940. In April of that year a census enumerator recorded Patterson and his widowed mother still living at 83 East 113th Street; by October, when he registered for the draft, their address was several buildings further east, 110 East 113th Street.
Joseph Sarnelli assaulted As Joseph Sarnelli was closing his barber’s shop in the Hotel Theresa at 2088 7th Avenue near 125th Street, a group of Black men reportedly “smashed into his shop… and demanded that he give up his razors.” Sarnelli fought with the men and “was being badly pummeled” until Patrolman Thomas Jordan came to his aid, according to the New York Post.

Attacks by groups were the most common form of assault on whites during the disorder, but the only other instance that also involved an attempted robbery was the assault on Max Newman in his grocery store (there is also one robbery, which involved threats by men armed with knives but no assault). The presence of a police officer able to come to Sarnelli’s assistance was not surprising given that the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue was part of the police perimeter around Kress' store. Nonetheless, multiple assaults took place there during the disorder. Just when this assault occurred was not clear. Harlem’s businesses could remain open until 9:00 PM, 11:00 PM, or even midnight, and this area was a site of disorder throughout that period. One possible time was around 10:00 PM, when Patrolman Charles Robbins was hit over the head with an iron bar by someone police did not apprehend, the first reported violence south of 125th Street. The circumstances of that attack indicated that police were at best struggling to control the area at that time, perhaps creating the opportunity for some of those on the street to attempt a robbery. The shop’s location might have made it a particular target; the Hotel Theresa did not accept Black guests, a situation that would not change until 1940. Sarnelli was unlikely to have kept his business open until the time of other attacks in the area given the increasing disorder.

This assault was mentioned only in the New York Post and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The Brooklyn newspaper included the case as one of ten brief "Highlights on the Harlem Front" and identified Sarnelli as white and as being attacked by three Black men. No one was arrested for the assault, and Sarnelli did not appear in any of the lists of those injured despite the claim in the New York Post story that he was “badly pummeled.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described Sarnelli only as struggling with the men. Brief accounts of assaults on whites such as this were a feature of the reporting of the New York Post and the New York Evening Journal, which emphasized racial violence. The Black men's alleged desire to obtain razors conformed to racist stereotypes that featured in those newspapers, which held the razor was the preferred weapon of Black men. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle presented the assault in those terms: "One policeman probably can be credited with saving considerable bloodshed."