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

In court on March 23

While none of those arrested in the disorder faced trial on Saturday, the six convicted of disorderly conduct by Magistrate Renaud on March 20 returned to the Harlem court for sentencing. While the hearing was widely reported in the city’s newspapers, the details hardly warranted that attention. Only the New York Evening Journal story made that clear in commenting that those who appeared were “minor offenders in the outbreak." At the same time, District Attorney Dodge continued to assert that Communists had been responsible for the disorder and could provoke further violence, affirming to reporters his commitment to having the grand jury investigate those who advocated the overthrow of government by force and violence. So even as the legal outcomes indicated the limited extent to which the police response had encompassed the violence of the disorder, Dodge's preoccupations ensured that the grand jury investigation would not address the missing details of what had happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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