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

Patrolman John McInerney in the grand jury (June 10)

Just over a week after the last public hearing of the MCCH's Subcommittee on Crime, on May 22, their investigator, James Tartar, was notified that Inspector Di Martini planned to resubmit the case to the district attorney for consideration for presentation to the grand jury. He attended the subsequent conference, and by his own account, "after much argument," "convinced the District Attorney that the new witnesses would testify to new facts and that they should be heard." Tartar also accompanied Detective O'Brien to serve subpoenas on the four witnesses whose testimony was heard on May 18, an indication that the new legal proceeding was instigated by the MCCH. On March 28, ADA Saul Price heard testimony from Marshall Pfifer, Joseph Hughes, Warren Wright, and John Bennett, the latter evidently recovered from the illness that kept him from the MCCH hearing. There were no records of Bennett's testimony. Price then decided to resubmit the case to the grand jury.

The New York Amsterdam News reported the pending hearing in its June 7 edition, information that likely came from someone from the MCCH. The story attributed the resubmission of the case to testimony at the May 18 hearing and listed four "facts brought out by the Commission" that it evidently understood as the arguments that would be made in the hearing:

(1) That McInerney did not list any stolen articles when he made a record of the youth's arrest at the 123d street station following the shooting
(2) That a number of objects, allegedly stolen, were shown to the Grand Jury on April 4, although police officers were unable to account for their presence during the March 19 and April 4 period.
(3) That tests, made at the suggestion of Attorney Arthur Garfield Hays of the Mayor's Commission, failed to show Hobbs' fingerprints on the stolen articles
(4) That Detective John J. O'Brien, assigned to investigate the shooting, made no attempt to look into the boy's background, but concentrated his efforts on proving Lloyd Hobbs a thief. He did not call on the boy's family until after Lloyd's death on Harlem Hospital on March 30.

In addition to the four new eyewitnesses, Russell Hobbs and his parents, Patrolman Watterson, and Detective O'Brien again testified. Patrolman McInerney again sought to appear, resulting in the hearing being postponed from June 7 until June 10 as he was on vacation. The witnesses "testified to practically the same as they had before," according to James Tartar. The MCCH investigator himself also testified. He told the grand jury that McInerney had not handed in the allegedly stolen items until April 8 and that police records indicated that "no loot had been found on the person of Lloyd Hobbs." The latter statement had been contradicted on May 18 by O'Brien's claim that the horn and socket set were listed in the arrest record, and likely was again on June 10. Arthur Garfield Hays "took an active part" in the hearing, according to the New York Age, although on what basis he could have done so is not clear. Again, the grand jury decided it did not need to hear from McInerney, although on this occasion they "deliberated for fully thirty minutes," Tartar reported. And again, they dismissed the case against the patrolman.

Tartar clearly spoke to journalists from the the New York Age and the Afro-American about his testimony, as it featured in the stories that those Black newspapers published about the grand jury decision. (Despite reporting the pending hearing, the New York Amsterdam News did not publish a story about its outcome.) What "registered with the grand jury," according to the Afro-American, was "the officer's claim and the evidence of the loot." While Black journalists expressed frustration with the decision — the headline in the New York Age read, "Grand Jury Refuses to Indict Policeman Who Fatally Shot Youth in Riot," while the Afro-American's headline read "2 Grand Juries Won't Indict Cop Who Killed Boy" — it went unreported in the white press.

With the end of the legal proceedings, the only remaining means of holding McInerney accountable was a police department hearing. Tartar reported that he urged Inspector Di Martini to hold such an investigation after the grand jury decision. In fact, such a hearing had already been planned, in the aftermath of the decision of the first grand jury. Hays had asked Commissioner Valentine that the police department "make an investigation," to which he had responded that the case would be "thoroughly investigated and appropriate action taken." Hays had written in the Report of the Subcommittee on May 29, before the second grand jury, that a hearing was pending. It appeared to have been delayed because the officer assigned to conduct it, Deputy Inspector McGrath, was away from the city until May 23, according to a phone message left for Arthur Garfield Hays on May 17. Tartar was likely responsible for Black journalists reporting that a police hearing was a possibility rather than pending. McInerney "may still, however, face departmental action," the New York Age reported. The Afro-American reporter was both more explicit that a "police department trial was being pushed" rather than being considered at the initiative of the police department, and dismissive of its value: "this gives no hopes to Mr and Mrs Lawyer Hobbs...that the case will pass the investigating stages."

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Reactions to the subcommittee's report The report of the Subcommittee on Crime arrived in the Mayor’s office on June 11. Having produced it in part to dispel the rumors and distortions circulating about the disorder, the MCCH was frustrated that La Guardia did not quickly release it to the public. They set up a meeting with the mayor in early July to discuss it and other preliminary reports they had submitted, but the meeting apparently did not take place. After receiving a letter from L. F. Coles complaining that the MCCH had accomplished nothing, Hays wrote to La Guardia on July 18 appealing to him to quiet such criticism by releasing the report. “I have been receiving many letters asking me about our Report. A letter just received to the effect that ‘nobody expected us to do anything’ rather got under my skin. Won’t you devote a moment to this or, at any rate, let me know when we can give it out to the public?” It took almost another month, but on August 10th La Guardia did release the report.

The headlines of all the city’s white papers other than the New York Evening Journal highlighted the report’s criticisms of police (the Hearst newspaper opted for the unrevealing headline, “Mayor Studies Harlem Woes”). The opening statement of the subcommittee’s findings was widely quoted in those stories, often coupled with the opening of the section on police conduct. As a result, the characterization of the disorder as not a race riot and not caused by Communists, as well as the intensity of community’s resentment of police, were widely publicized. The narrative of the events of the disorder was not. Journalists evidently found nothing new in the report’s narrative of the events of the disorder.

The stories differed in how they framed the findings about the police: the subcommittee blamed them for the disorder according to the New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, Daily News, Times Union, and Daily Worker but simply condemned or criticized their actions according to the New York Times, New York Evening Journal, Home News, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The only other commentary offered on the report was the identification of the MCCH members as “all of liberal leanings” in the New York Herald Tribune, as “decidedly liberal leanings” in the New York Sun and as “known liberals” in the Home News. The implication was that they were sympathetic to the police and therefore not trustworthy to judge their actions.

The New York Age took a position that combined both those assessments. (Whether other Black newspapers shared that perspective is not known as the issues of the New York Amsterdam News and Afro-American for this date are both missing.) Its story highlighted that the report strongly condemned police and blamed them for “the seriousness of the incident.” However, as columnist Ebenezer Roy made clear, the contents of the report was news only for white New Yorkers. “The document, while making interesting reading, is neither startling nor revealing. In summation it says exactly what has been written by almost every pen-pusher who has been privileged to covet space in a publication since that date.”

Several days later, Father McCann made public the criticisms that had led him to refuse to sign the report, which the New York Herald Tribune and New York Times reported. He accused the other members of the MCCH of being prejudiced against the police department. The public hearings from which the report drew its evidence were “orgies of police baiting” dominated by Communists to the exclusion of the “best elements of Harlem.” For McCann, the testimony did not warrant the report’s conclusion that the police department was "the main cause of the disturbance.” The Uptown Chamber of Commerce, an organization made up of the white owners of Harlem’s largest businesses, echoed McCann’s criticisms, complaining that it was a “grave injustice” to ascribe any blame to police. In a letter to Mayor La Guardia shared with the press, the organization’s vice president Col. Leopold Philip accused MCCH members of having “preconceived ideas that the police and white business men of the community were to blame for uprising.” Moreover, they got “a distorted view of the Harlem situation from the wholly unrepresentative character of the majority of its witnesses” at the public hearings.” The report’s account of the events of the disorder also drew Philip’s ire. He labeled the events not a disturbance but a “lawless outburst” and an “outbreak of violence and sabotage" that caused “over a million dollars of property damage.” The report had described a similar scale of violence, if in somewhat vaguer terms; what it had not done, in Philip’s reading, was offer “a single word of condemnation of those who participated.”

While both McCann and the Uptown Chamber of Commerce presented themselves as speaking for Harlem, neither received any support in the Black press. The Chamber's letter "fairly reeks with the prejudice and contempt for Negroes which is the main cause of the community’s present state of unrest," St. Clair Bourne declared in his column in the New York Age. "Harlemites of all ranks dissented from the stand of the Catholic priest," a story in the Afro-American reported of Father McCann. Not only radicals such as Ira Kemp and Arthur Reid, but also president of the New York branch of the NAACP James Allen defended the report's description of the attitude of police. The NAACP had received many complaints of police brutality, including from the "best element" of the community, according to lawyers interviewed. Even representatives of the Catholic Church in Harlem, interviewed later by MCCH investigators, distanced themselves from McCann’s position. Elmo Anderson, business manager of the Catholic Board of Mission, made a point to say that "the more progressive Catholics of Harlem who know that such police brutality as described in the report exists; and is deeply resented by all the people of Harlem.” At St. Mark's Roman Catholic Church on West 135th Street, Father Mulvoy "declared Father McCann’s statements are his own and in no way the expression of other Catholic priests."

Critics of the Subcommittee report did, however, receive support from Mayor La Guardia and his administration. As the New York Times story pointedly noted, the report had been released without any comment from the mayor. He did share his reaction with the Uptown Chamber of Commerce. “I am quite in agreement that taking a few isolated cases of improper police action, does not represent the true picture of conditions. I am also in accord with you that innocent, law-abiding people, whether in Harlem or other parts of the City, must be protected against the vicious, criminal element. I pointed out both of these conclusions to the Sub-committee when they filed their report with me.” Unsurprisingly given the lead of the mayor, Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine was dismissive of the report when Hays asked what action he had taken. After rejecting each of the recommendations as unnecessary or impractical, Valentine reported that “no cause for disciplinary action was found” in Patrolman McInerney’s killing of Lloyd Hobbs or any of the other cases of police brutality described in the report. Since its submission, a second grand jury had heard the evidence against McInerney and decided not to charge him and a police department disciplinary hearing had merely reprimanded him for mishandling evidence. If the subcommittee's report had brought new attention to the police violence and mistreatment the audiences at the hearing had highlighted, it brought no changes in how the white press or the city reacted to that violence.

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