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

Indicted by Dodge's grand jury (17)

Five of the seventeen men indicted by the grand jury in response to District Attorney Dodge's investigation were identified by Assistant District Attorney Alexander Kaminsky in testimony before the first public hearing of the MCCH on March 30: Carl Jones, James Hughes, Thomas Jackson, Joseph Wade, and Hezekiah Wright. He was prepared to identify those men because they had pled guilty. The closed nature of grand jury hearings prevented the other men from being named. However, those that were initially held for investigation in the Magistrates Court are identified in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book: when they reappeared in court, as they had been indicted, a Magistrate had to discharge them so they could be rearrested on those charges. That outcome is recorded for fourteen men; it was not necessary in the case of Thomas Jackson, Joseph Wade, and Hezekiah Wright, who Magistrate Renaud had sent to the grand jury when they first appeared in court. In other words, Dodge preempted the normal legal process in the cases of just fourteen men.

The charges against the seventeen men do not line up with those reported in newspaper stories about the grand jury hearings on Dodge's investigation. The stories reported ten men indicted for burglary, five for riot, and two for assault. Only four of the seventeen men, the four Young Liberators, not five, faced charges of riot. Three men, not two, faced charges of assault: James Hughes, Isaac Daniels, and Douglas Cornelius.

If the reported charges are correct, which of the men were indicted on which days can only be determined with certainty in the case of the four Young Liberators, as indictments for riot were only voted on March 21, the first day of hearings. Indictments for assault were also only voted on that day, but there is no evidence of which of the three men charged with that offense were named in those indictments. It was most likely James Hughes and Isaac Daniels as they were discharged so they could be rearrested on March 22; Douglas Cornelius was not similarly discharged until March 25. However, as the four Young Liberators were not discharged until March 25, the timing of that process is not certain evidence. As there were only seven indictments on March 21, at least one more had to name more than a single individual, as the indictment naming the Young Liberators did. Nelson Brock, Reginald Mills, and William Grant were indicted together for burglary, so they were likely among those indicted on March 21. Milton Ackerman was the most likely of the men to have been the single person indicted on March 25, as the New York Times reported Ackerman was charged with "taking two rolls of paper, worth 5 cents, and 8 cents' worth of napkins from a Lenox Avenue store," close to the 15 cent value of the theft mentioned in stories about that indictment.

 

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