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

In the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20

Around two dozen uniformed patrolmen kept people away from the city block housing the Harlem Courthouse. Inside, ten more officers lined the stairs leading up to the courtroom, within which an additional fifteen officers were stationed. So many people had crowded into the courtroom by 9:30 AM that for the remainder of the day only those who could prove they had business in the court were admitted. Hundreds of others were left standing in crowds on the sidewalks outside the police cordon. Many had come from the Black neighborhoods to the west; the sprinkling of white spectators likely included members of the Communist Party as well as residents of the white section around the courthouse. While no one in those crowds turned to violence against people or property as white observers clearly worried they might, they did express dissatisfaction with the white authorities. “Boos and jeers” greeted the arrival of the police wagons, and “considerable grumbling, [and] some shouting of threats” continued throughout the day. Just what people were calling out went unreported by white observers of these events. The men and women exiting the police wagons at the courthouse yet again found themselves in front of press photographers, some on the street, others shooting out of windows on the upper floors of the building, one of whom took this image of a group of men arriving.
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Inside the courthouse, clearly aware that the eyes of Black Harlem were on him, Magistrate Stanley Renaud began the hearing by announcing that “at his request," a Black Assistant District Attorney, Richard E. Carey, had been assigned to prosecute the accused rioters so that "there can be no charge of discrimination." Carey had only been sworn in as a district attorney a month earlier, after practicing as a defense lawyer for ten years. During that time he had served as the legal advisor for the group that organized the picket and boycott campaign in 1934, and represented John Johnson, one of the protesters that the Beck shoe store had successfully sued in the New York Supreme Court to have the picketing declared unlawful. Active in the Democratic party, Carey’s decision to become a prosecutor was reported by the New York Amsterdam News to have been an effort to position himself to be a magistrate.

Police brought sixty-three Black men, eight white men, and five Black women before Renaud for arraignment, beginning with James Bright, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man accused of breaking windows in a Lenox Avenue drug store. Just over half of the arrested men who appeared after him were, like Bright, between twenty and twenty-nine years of age. Only twenty were older, with just six over forty years of age, Leroy Gillard and Joseph Moore the oldest at age forty-six. Thirty years separated them from the youngest of those arrested, sixteen-year-old Joseph Hayes, one of only fourteen men less than twenty years of age. Among that group were four of the eight white men arrested during the disorder, eighteen-year-old Louis Tonick, nineteen-year-olds Murray Samuels and Sam Jamison, arrested in front of the Kress store, and Leo Smith. Three of the other four white men who appeared before Magistrate Renaud were between twenty and twenty-four years of age, with the oldest white man, Jean Jacquelin only thirty-three years old. The five Black women arraigned in the court were similarly young. Margaret Mitchell was the youngest, eighteen years of age; Viola Woods the oldest, only thirty years old.

The accusation of breaking windows made against James Bright that began the arraignments proved not to be typical of the allegations made over the course of the court session. Only fifteen others were alleged to have committed that act, although they were a diverse group, including three Black women, Viola Woods, Louise Brown, and Rose Murrell, and one white man, Leo Smith. Unlike most of those arrested for breaking windows, Bright was charged with the offense of disorderly conduct. Only four others faced that charge; the other ten were charged with the offense of malicious mischief. The later was an offense that included the destruction of property, with the punishment determined by the value of the property or damage done. The threshold for a felony charge was $250; store windows were generally valued at less than $100, so fell within the lesser, misdemeanor form of the offense. Disorderly conduct, by contrast, encompassed a variety of forms of breach of the peace, none of which involved damage to property. It carried a lesser sentence than a misdemeanor and fell within the jurisdiction of the magistrate: Renaud would determine guilt and, if necessary, punishment. Carey's decision to charge men and women accused of breaking windows with disorderly conduct likely indicated a lack of evidence that they were responsible for that damage. Their arrest would have resulted from being nearby when windows were broken, part of crowds on the streets, which police could portray as being involved in the "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior" that constituted disorderly conduct.

After a second man accused of breaking windows, Arthur Bennett, followed Bright, police brought Rivers Wright before Magistrate Renaud. Detective Doyle accused the twenty-one-year-old Black man of assault, alleging that he was part of a group of men who attacked an unnamed white man. With no arrests in forty-seven of the reported assaults during the disorder, such allegations were an infrequent part of the court hearing, made against only five other men. However, the offense with which the prosecutor charged Wright was disorderly conduct. As with Bright, that charge likely indicated that police did not have evidence that Wright participated in the assault, only that he had been part of a crowd nearby. Wright was the only one of the men arrested for assault who faced that charge in the Harlem court; Carey charged the other five men, including one white man, Harry Gordon, accused of assaulting a patrolman arresting him for trying to speak to the crowd in front of the Kress store, with the offense of assault. The use of a weapon and the extent of the injury inflicted defined the different degrees of that offense.  

Twenty-two-year-old Theodore Hughes, who appeared after Wright, was accused by Patrolman Carrington of having committed an act more typical of those brought before Renaud: looting items from a store. Police accused thirty-six others, just under half of those arraigned that day, of such theft. They were a less diverse group than those police alleged had broken windows, Black men apart from two white men, Louis Tonick and Jean Jacquelin, and one Black woman, Elizabeth Tai. Those men were also older than those alleged to have committed other acts: fifteen were over thirty years of age, more than two thirds of those arrested of that age, including the two oldest who appeared in the Harlem court, Gillard and Moore. As with Bright and Wright, the offense with which Carey charged Hughes, petit larceny, proved not to be typical of those accused of looting. Only four others faced that charge. A substantial majority, twenty-seven, instead were charged with burglary, including Elizabeth Tai. Carey charged two others, Louis Tonick, the eighteen-year-old white man, and Edward Larry with robbery. The offense of burglary involved breaking into a building to commit a crime; in the context of the disorder, that applied to those alleged to have both broken a store’s windows, entered the store, and taken items from inside. The value of the items taken did not matter. That act became robbery if the property was taken from a person. The offense of larceny fitted circumstances in which items were taken without breaking a store window. The value of that property determined the form of the offense, with petit larceny involving goods worth $100 or less. In the case of Hughes, the man accused of breaking the windows of the meat market from which he took two pieces of pork, Emmett Williams was arraigned directly after him, charged with the offense of malicious mischief. Two of those accused of looting, Albert Bass and James Smith, faced charges of disorderly conduct, indicating that police had no evidence that they had taken any merchandise, broken windows, or entered a business. The definition of disorderly conduct included only various forms of breach of the peace, so police had likely arrested them in a crowd near a looted store.

Following Emmett Williams, police next brought Margaret Mitchell before Magistrate Renaud. Her early appearance in court was fitting as she had been the first person police arrested, inside the Kress store around 5:00 PM, accused of “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect.” Those arrested for inciting crowds made up a far smaller group than those arrested for looting. The fourteen others were all men, including the three white men, Daniel Miller, Murray Samuels, and Sam Jamison, arrested in front of the Kress store, and the Black man who picketed with them, Claudio Viabolo. All but one of those men were charged with the offense of riot. To fall within that offense, the men had to be part of a group of three or more who threatened to use, attempted to use, or did use violence against a person or property. In the context of the disorder, police accused them of calling on groups of which they were members to break store windows or attack police. Carey, however, charged Mitchell with disorderly conduct; only John Hawkins of those accused of riot also faced that charge. In Mitchell’s case, that offense fit what police alleged she had done. While she had been part of a crowd in the store, she had not acted with any of those women or men, nor had she sought to damage property. Mitchell may not have intended to cause any disturbance. According to the Times Union she “denied hysterically she participated in the rioting. She stood up from the witness chair screaming, then collapsed.” Police likely could also only place Hawkins in a crowd, not acting with others or calling on them to attack property or people.

Four more men and one woman arrested during the disorder appeared before Renaud before he heard Officer Ramos accuse Jose Perez of having a gun in his possession, the least frequent charge made against those arrested during the disorder. Only Perez, recorded by the court clerk as a white man but given his name likely Puerto Rican, faced just that charge; the two Black men alleged to have had weapons in their possession who appeared before Renaud later in the day had also been accused of other acts, breaking windows in the case of Arthur Killen and looting in the case of Raymond Easley. Police had found weapons in those men’s possession after arresting them for those other actions. Perez attracted police attention in some other way.

Magistrate Renaud remanded just under half of those arrested in the disorder, twenty-eight Black men, five white men, and three Black women, for further investigation of their alleged offenses. That group included all the men charged with assault other than Rivers Wright. Most of the rest, thirty-one of those arrested, he referred for trial in the Court of Special Sessions, in the case of nine Black men, one white man, and one white woman, or a hearing in the grand jury for the other nineteen Black men. None of the seven accused of having broken windows in that group had allegedly done enough damage for the charge against them to be a felony punished by longer terms of imprisonment; they were all sent to the Court of Special Sessions. By contrast, all four of those accused of inciting crowds that Renaud referred on March 20 were sent to the grand jury to face felony charges. Most of those accused of looting were likewise sent to the grand jury to face felony charges. Renaud referred only four of the nineteen to the Court of Special Sessions, all of who had been charged with petit larceny not burglary. In those cases, like the prosecutions for breaking windows, the value of the property determined that outcome.

The magistrate took little time to make those decisions, surprising many of the reporters in the courtroom — and perhaps making it difficult for them to gather information on all the cases, as even the most comprehensive list, published in the Home News included only thirty-seven of those who appeared before Renaud. The lack of lawyers representing those being charged contributed to how quickly the magistrate made his decisions. Only sixteen attorneys appeared in the hearings before Renaud. Among them were several high-profile Black lawyers, even though it was not obvious that their clients had the resources to pay them. Sidney Christian, a prominent West Indian attorney, represented Margaret Mitchell. Her father, Thomas E. Thompson, may have retained Christian to represent her. A West Indian immigrant who had arrived in New York City in 1895, Thompson had been a postal worker for thirty-five years at the time of his daughter’s arrest, and an office holder in the Prince Hall Masons. Eustace Dench and John Lewis, who represented Viola Woods and James Williams, were both leaders of the Harlem Lawyers Association, an organization with around one hundred members that may have, may have offered their services as part of the group’s commitment to protecting the Black community’s civil rights. Carey, the prosecuting assistant district attorney, was also a member of the association. Two other lawyers were active in social organizations in Harlem and may also have been members of the association: Pope Billings, a former state assemblyman and member of the Elks Lodge, who represented Douglas Cornelius; and West-Indian born Hutson Lovell, also an Elk and prominent in the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, who represented William Ford. The lawyers for Frederick Harwell, Claude Jones, Arthur Merritt and Oscar Leacock could not be identified. The presence of this group of prominent Black attorneys in the courtroom would have contributed to Magistrate Renaud’s concern to involve Carey and try to blunt any charges of racial discrimination in the proceedings - and was likely one reason the men were there. Such an approach would have continued the strategy historian David Krugler argued was adopted in the wake of the racial disorders in 1919, when African American groups had acted to ensure that Black men and women arrested for riot-related offenses received unbiased treatment.

Aubrey Patterson identified his lawyer, T. French, as a friend. He may have been affiliated with the Communist Party, as the International Labor Defense offered to defend Patterson. White lawyers from that Communist Party organization, well-known in 1935 thanks to their role defending the Scottsboro Boys, did represent the four Communists arrested at the beginning of the disorder, Daniel Miller, Murray Samuels, Sam Jamison and Claudio Viabolo. The two attorneys, Yetta M. Aronsky and Isidore Englander, clashed with Renaud and drew the attention of reporters. When Carey asked that bail for the men be set at the maximum, $2500, higher than for any of the others arrested during the disorder, Aronsky and Englander, "protested vehemently." Renaud was unmoved; nor did he act on Aronksy's complaint that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest." Another ILD lawyer, Edward Kuntz, who would later take a leading role in MCCH hearings, represented Frank Wells. Kuntz would also appear for Harry Gordon at later hearings. Gordon on several occasions insisted he was getting his own lawyer, not being represented by the ILD lawyers who appeared for the other white men, as he was not connected with them. On March 20, however, he did not have a lawyer. That the lawyer who later represented him, Kuntz, was affiliated with the ILD, would not have helped Gordon's effort to distinguish himself from the Communists arrested in the disorder. He would later testify before a hearing of the MCCH that he knew Kuntz through the lawyer’s son rather than a shared affiliation with the Communist Party.

At least one other white lawyer appeared in the hearings, to represent Leo Smith, the youngest of the white men arrested by police. For some reason the lawyer’s name was not recorded in the court docket book, but he earned a rebuke from Renaud that attracted the attention of reporters from the Daily News and Times Union. The case would have stood out even before that clash as it reversed the racial dynamics of the vast majority of the hearings. Smith had been arrested by a Black patrolman, one of only five Black officers among the police who made arrests. Neither of the white journalists who reported the incident recounted just what Smith’s white attorney said while the Black patrolman was testifying — he “sought to inject a question of race,“ according to one, and “hinted the trouble was started by Negroes and was racial in origin” according to the other — but it prompted “muttered disapproval” from the predominantly Black spectators and a rebuke from Renaud: "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." That clash occurred early in the session; only eight men and women arrested during the disorder had appeared before Smith. What impact it had on the hearings that followed went unrecorded.

In just nine cases did the Magistrate adjudicate a prosecution. Three additional defendants charged with disorderly conduct whose cases he could have decided, Viola Woods, Frank Wells, and Albert Bass, he had investigated. Renaud convicted Margaret Mitchell and John Hawkins, arrested for inciting crowds, James Bright, Arthur Bennett, and Leo Smith, arrested for breaking windows, and Rivers Wright, arrested for assault. But he did not sentence any of them, instead ordering they be investigated and returned to court on March 23 for sentencing.

Renaud also acquitted Jacob Bonaparte, Oscar Austin, and Sam Nicholas, decisions that went unreported by the press. All three of those men had been arrested by the same police officer, on the complaint of the same person, J. Romanoff, the proprietor of a drug store on Lenox Avenue. There was clearly some confusion about what Romanoff and the officer alleged the men had done as the charge against them was changed from attempted burglary, which suggested the men had been involved in looting but had no stolen items in their possession, to disorderly conduct, which suggested that they had simply been part of a crowd around the drug store. Given that Renaud was not willing to hold the men for investigation as he did all the others arrested in the disorder who came before him on that day, it seems likely that neither Romanoff nor the police officer had seen the men do anything and that they were arrested too far from the store to be connected with what happened there. Newspaper stories about the hearings offer no insight on Renaud’s decision; they did not mention any of those who were acquitted or released.

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