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

"Indictments Due For Riot Anarchy," New York Sun, March 25, 1925, 2.

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Reactions to Appointments to the MCCH The Home News, which had an anti-Communist editorial position, prefigured one strand of criticisms of La Guardia’s appointments when it described the Commission members as “all of distinct liberal leanings” in reporting their names. The New York Sun and New York American, also anti-Communist newspapers, expanded those criticisms. Both reported complaints by unnamed “anti-Red organizations.” The New York American story described them as “openly dissatisfied with the make-up of the Mayor’s committee,” while the New York Sun reported more specifically that they considered “that the Mayor's investigating committee is composed largely of men whose names have been associated with radical movements in this country.” The targets of the complaints were Randolph, Hays, Ernst, Villard and Cullen. In Randolph’s case these critics pointed to him being named in the Lusk Committee report, an investigation of radicalism conducted by the state legislature fifteen years earlier. Hays’ recent work defending John Strachey, “avowed English Communist,” which is why he was in Chicago at the time of the disorder, was singled out. Despite their more well-known affiliations, Ernst and Villard were criticized for their membership in the United Action Campaign Committee of the League for Independent Political Action, an obscure group trying to create a political organization that united workers, farmers and intellectuals that was largely defunct by 1935, with the New York American quoting two selections from a pamphlet that committee published two years earlier. Notwithstanding the uncompelling nature of the specific charges made against those four men, they were well-known for their involvement in a range of liberal causes and organizations. Not so Cullen. In his case, the charge reported in the New York American was that the poet’s writings were “quoted regularly and enthusiastically by communist publications.”

While those criticisms were reported only in avowedly anti-Communist newspapers, and did not appear in later stories, criticisms of the Black members of the Commission appointed by La Guardia were more widely and extensively reported. While stories in Black newspapers described the criticisms in the most detail, they also appeared in the white press, particularly in stories about the Mayor’s attendance at a meeting of Black clergymen on March 25. As Black newspapers were published weekly, those stories did not appear until March 30, after those in the white press, and after the Mayor had added an additional Black member to the Commission, Rev. John Robinson.

The first reported criticism of the Black members came from Charles Hanson of the Harlem Committee on Public Policy, which organized a meeting at the YMCA on March 22. The New York Age described that organization as “made up of business and professional men and women and welfare workers,” and “James H. Hubert, executive secretary of the New York Urban League, several prominent local clergymen and others” as giving addresses. Walter White of the NAACP was in the audience. (NAACP, 0267, 16) The New York Times reported that Hanson said Randolph “was the only Negro on the committee who had practical knowledge of conditions in Harlem.” No other white newspapers mentioned that meeting or Hanson’s criticism. They were reported in New York Amsterdam News, which added that “special censure” was directed at the appointment of Cullen and Delany, dismissed as a “poet” and a “Fusion Republican,” and hence affiliated with La Guardia, or as the paper's columnist J. A. Rogers put it, “[held] a position under the mayor." Neither criticism was mentioned in the New York Age and Norfolk Journal and Guide reports of that meeting. Bennie Butler of the NAACP also wrote to specifically complain about Cullen and Delany, as having little in common with the rank and file, were not equipped to analyze conditions in and did not come into daily conduct with the masses.. <[Correspondence, M-Z, 1-3>] The Daily Worker echoed that criticism of the appointment of Delany in an editorial on March 23 that described him as “only too eager to foster the Hearst-La Guardia plot against the Communist Party.”

Even as he announced the committee, La Guardia had Charles Roberts reach out to Harlem’s clergy, apparently anticipating criticism that none had been appointed. He proved to be correct. “The absence of the name of even one minister on the whole body” was the first criticism mentioned in the New York Age, which it reported “was considered by many as a slight to the colored clergy and an oversight on the part of the authorities.” The mayor’s subsequent meeting with the Interdominational Preachers Meeting of Greater New York and Vicinity, had been planned to take place in secret, according to the New York Sun and but someone provided the press with the location. Only the New York Times reported that Charles Roberts, appointed the MCCH chairman only hours earlier, and Hubert Delany accompanied him. About fifty clergymen attended the meeting according to the New York Herald Tribune or seventy-five according to the Home News and New York Times. Several of them criticized La Guardia for not appointing a clergyman to the committee, stories in the New York World-Telegram and Daily News, and the New York Amsterdam News, New York Age, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, reported. The New York Herald Tribune reported that La Guardia had tried to preempt those criticisms when he spoke, explaining that he had not appointed a minister because “If I had appointed one I would have had to appoint many others.” The story then quoted three complaints about that decision:
"There ought to be a minister on that committee!" shouted a parson in the front row, as soon as the Mayor ended. "There is not a minister in this community who is not in touch with more persons than any member of your committee. Since we are recognized as leaders we should have representation."

"The people here believe the ministers have been slighted by the Mayor," another pastor commented gloomily. "A minister is necessary for psychological reasons."

An emotional touch was contributed by the last protest, when another minister demanded:

"Why should we get up here and beg for a place - we, who have been suffering for many long years?"

The opening of the story framed those reactions in terms that suggested that the reporter had not taken them entirely seriously, that the clergymen “told him he had outraged their feelings and prestige by failing to appoint one of their profession to the committee named to investigate the riot.” The Home News reported only one minister questioning La Guardia about “why he had not appointed one of their members to the investigating committee, pointing out that they were in close touch with the residents of the district and that one clergyman should be on it for psychological reasons.” That clergyman was “Rev. D. Ward Nichols, pastor of the Emanuel A.M.E. Church,” according to the Afro-American story, which described him as saying that “not one of [the members of the committee] has the psychological influence which comes within the power of any one of the ministers present.” Rather than reporting any criticisms from the group, the New York Times story reported only the Mayor’s speech, referring to comments he made about criticisms in general terms, “that he had been criticized for his selection of the committee, some saying it was too small, others demanding a larger body. He also admitted that he might have been at fault in not appointing one clergyman to the committee.” The Am reported the meeting without any mention of the criticism of the Mayor.

The Mayor did not respond to his critics according to all but one white newspaper. The New York Herald Tribune and Daily News emphasized that La Guardia had no reaction to the complaints. The Home News reported that La Guardia asked the clergy to form a committee to advise the investigation, which was part of his speech, and that the group instead elected Robinson to represent them. The New York Times also mentioned Robinson’s selection after La Guardia left. Only the New York World-Telegram story reported that the group’s selection was a response to a statement by the Mayor, who, “Obviously nettled toward the end,” “announced he would consider the names of Negro clergymen submitted to him for membership.”

La Guardia’s commitment to add a Black clergyman was also reported in Harlem’s two black newspapers. In the New York Amsterdam News story “the mayor promised to consider the appointment of one minister to his body,” while the New York Age added that he “promised to appoint one of their body to the committee if a name would be sent to him immediately” and “offered the body the opportunity to name one of their number who they felt most capable. If this name were sent to him immediately, he said, he would appoint the man to the committee. A second additional appointment, chosen from a denomination not included in the Alliance, would also be named, he added.” Rev. Robinson was appointed to the Committee several days later, on March 29, attending their meeting that day. At La Guardia’s request, he was added to the subcommittee investigating “the disturbances of March 19.” [“Re app’t of Robinson on Harlem Committee,” Roll 76, F3, 13] Only the New York Amsterdam News (4/6) reported Robinson’s appointment. There is no evidence of how the Harlem community reacted to the choice of Robinson. A second clergyman was not appointed until April 4, when La Guardia wrote to notify Roberts he had selected Father McCann of St. Charles Borromeo on West 141st Street. It is not clear if McCann attended the Committee meeting on April 5 as no attendance was recorded in minutes, but he was present at the subcommittee hearing on April 6. An outspoken anti-Communist who had blamed Communists for the disorder and called for a movement to drive them out of Harlem, McCann’s appointment was likely intended to address those critics. Again, only the New York Amsterdam News reported this appointment, under the headline, “Mayor Places Radicals' Foe On Riot Body.” Predictably, the CP criticized McCann’s appointment, writing to both the MCCH and La Guardia about the priest’s call to drive white Communists out of Harlem (but not until April 25, to say “we understand that Reverend McCann has been appointed a member of your commission,” which seems to confirm that the appointment was not widely announced). They claimed his appointment represented an effort “at stirring up further animosity between white and Negro people in Harlem and still further trying to place the blame for the March 19 events on the Communist Party.”

La Guardia made no moves to address the other criticisms of the Black members reported extensively in a story in the New York Amsterdam News, and in less detail in the New York Age and Norfolk Journal and Guide, on March 30. The Consolidated Tenants League, like the HCPP, judged only A. Philip Randolph fit for the task of investigating the disorder and “sufficiently free from political and other affiliations and views to render them capable of obtaining the proper economic-social view of the problem,” a story in the New York Amsterdam News reported. New York Amsterdam News columnist, J. A. Rogers, wrote that “in naming the routine inquiry he, or his advisers, chose among them two or three routine names and left out some who would be more effective on it. The three most outspoken critics against conditions in Harlem are James W. Ford, Frank Crosswaith and the Rev. A. C. Powell, Jr., yet none of them is on the commission.” Bennie Buter had also suggested Frank Crosswaith, together with Rev. King and Dalmus Steele, when he wrote to ?<[Correspondence, M-Z, 1-3>]

For others, the issue was that those on the Commission did not represent all of the Harlem community. The New York chapter of the National Association of College Women proposed adding social worker Mrs C. C Saunders, Amsterdam News editor Obie McCullum and Rev Johnson, who had led the boycott movement. The Consolidated Tenants League suggested “Frank Crosswaith, labor organizer; Dr. Cyril Dolly, physician; the Rev. A. Clayton Powell, Jr., of Abyssinian Baptist Church, and Mrs. Minnie Green of the Tenants' League.” Individuals interviewed for a “Man on the Street” story in the New York Amsterdam News were asked, "Do you feel that the committee appointed by Mayor LaGuardia is sufficiently representative of the people to report on their needs?" Only two of the thirteen men and women were satisfied with the Mayor’s appointments. In the opinion of the others the members were too removed from the realities of life in Harlem. New York Amsterdam News columnist J. A. Rogers had also heard the complaint “that they, themselves, are not in the breadline.” While three of the men interviewed offered no suggestions for who should have been appointed, six men and women suggested an unemployed person or someone “up against it,” and one suggested “William H. Davis (general manager of the Amsterdam News) and the Rev. James W. Brown (pastor of the Mother A. M. E. Zion Church).”

James Hubert of the Urban League [indirectly?] suggested the need for a social worker in letter to La Guardia. “nor do I wish to suggest that a social worker be included on the committee; notwithstanding the fact that if anybody is supposed to know anything about these problems, surely it is the social worker. I understand that there is a person on the committee who is supposed to represent social workers, but I have not been able to discover who it might be since there is no one named up to now who is thought of as a social worker.” <2 Urban League to LaG, 26 March 1935> It seems unlikely that he did not know that the social worker was Eunice Carter, who had a degree in social work from Smith College. However, he would also have known that it was ten years since Carter had worked in the field, during which time she had shifted into the practice of law. <Carter 43, 48>Hubert clearly wanted someone more centrally defined by social work expertise on the Commission. The Norfolk Journal and Guide included the absence of "an outstanding colored social worker" among the complaints it reported.

While this criticism was “considerable” in the assessment of the New York Age, and less “mild” than that offered by the ministers “in every section of Harlem,” according to James Hubert < 2 Urban League to LaG, 26 March 1935>, it was not the universal reaction of the Black community. Allyn Grenville, a correspondent for the Norfolk Journal and Guide, certainly thought the criticism was largely the work of “a score of leaders trying to use the rioting as a peg upon which to lift themselves to prominence.” In his opinion, “as commissions go, it is a representative one with more than the usual number of men of integrity. Another story in the same issue of the newspaper reversed the terms in which the New York Amsterdam News and New York Age had assessed the situation, stating “On the whole, the city has received the commission as being representative of both the city and of Harlem, and above the average, perhaps, in having a full membership of trained and capable people.” Channing Tobias offered a slightly more restrained endorsement in the New York World-Telegram: “While the committee might have been more representative in spots, still it is a committee of reputable citizens that can be depended upon to run down the facts and make a dispassionate presentation of them to the mayor.” More narrowly, New York Amsterdam News columnist J. A. Rogers defended Hubert Delany against the charge that as a member of the city government he was not willing to stand up to whites. He recounted hearing Delany “speak on the race question to a group in downtown New York, which was composed largely of white people, and it would be difficult to find any more outspoken than he was.”

Among the white newspapers, La Guardia’s appointments received editorial endorsements from the New York Post, New York World-Telegram and New York Herald Tribune. All noted the Black members, whose presence the New York World-Telegram said showed “good sense,” while the New York Post referred to the Black majority as something that was “proper.” The New York Herald Tribune merely noted that the commission was made up of “distinguished men, both white and Negro.” The New York Post also described the commission members as “distinguished.” Referring to the white men La Guardia appointed, the New York World-Telegram described them as “highly intelligent humanitarians.” A story in the New York Post offered an alternative description of the white members as “men who have the confidence of Negro leaders.”

As they debated who should be represented in the investigation of the disorder, neither the Mayor nor both white and Black newspapers made any mention of the group in Harlem’s population from which the boy grabbed in Kress’ store came. Lino Rivera was Puerto Rican, part of a community that predominated in the blocks of Harlem south of 125th Street, centered on 116th Street. In the plan of work for the MCCH Randolph proposed Puerto Ricans appeared only in a list of groups to have testify in public hearings late in the investigation. Suggestions from Walter White of the NAACP considered at the same time likewise included only one mention, the need for a “study of the origin of and interrelation of the various groups making up the Negro community of Harlem – West Indians, Puerto Ricans, Virgin Islanders etc, etc.” However, Puerto Rican leaders did not see themselves in that way, Insisting that their community had not participated in the events that followed Rivera’s release from the store, the city’s Spanish-language newspaper La Prensa attributed the disorder to the “colored elements” of the neighborhoods around 125th Street; “entirely separate from this is the Spanish-speaking group of the neighborhood, with distinct problems, absolutely different interests, and ethnic characteristics that disassociate Hispanics from their colored American neighbors.” [cited in Thomas, 78] The newspaper portrayed this Puerto Rican Harlem as a target of violence rather than a participant, publishing lists of damaged Hispanic-owned businesses that are not identified in any other source.

Despite those stories, there were some nationalist groups in the Puerto Rican community that did seek representation on the MCCH. Jesús Flores, head of Unidad Obrera (Workers’ Unity) on March 25, and Antonio Rivera, secretary of the Liga Puertorriqueña e Hispana and Isabel O’Neill, secretary of the Junta Liberal Puertorriqueña de Nueva York in June, wrote to La Guardia complaining that Puerto Ricans had been ignored, which Rivera labeled “unfair” and O’Neill an act of political and civic indifference and unmindfulness.” In addition, Ralph Bosch, a lawyer and former Republican state assembly candidate, wrote to La Guardia on March 21 advocating adding a Puerto Rican member to the MCCH: “Although the Portorican [sic] part of the population may have such needs as may call for slightly different remedies, yet when analized [sic] it all is the same social problem of racial relations.” While there are no replies to the PR groups in the Records of the Mayor, Bosch did receive a response, saying that “it is not deemed advisable to enlarge the membership or scope of program of the present committee.” (April 5, after Robinson and McCann added – LaGCC_01.004.0000.3146.09.pdf)
Thomas Jackson arrested Around 1.45 AM, Patrolmen Kalsky and Holland of the 28th Precinct saw a group of people around Jack Garmise's cigar store at 1916 7th Avenue, and then a milk can thrown through the plate glass windows. In the Magistrate Court affidavit, Kalsky alleged that he saw Thomas Jackson, a thirty-four-year-old Black man throw the milkcan. Jackson denied throwing anything at the store, or being part of an attack on it, when question by a Probation officer. Instead, he claimed he was drunk and had been walking along West 116th Street on his way to visit a prizefighter named Leo Williams to collect money he was owed when he had become caught in a crowd moving toward the store. Someone in the crowd then pushed him through the smashed window. Throwing such a large object would have been more difficult for Jackson than most in the crowd; after an accident in 1930, his left arm had been amputated above the elbow. Kalsky claimed Jackson was sober. He also alleged he saw him reach his hand through the smashed window and take merchandise from the display. He later told a Probation officer that as he approached, Jackson threw “some of the merchandise” back in the window. That phrasing suggests Jackson may not have had any merchandise on him when Kalsky arrested him, as does the district attorney's decision to offer to let him plead guilty to unlawful entry, rather than petit larceny, as others arrested for looting who made plea bargains did. The other officer, Holland, arrested Raymond Easley, a twenty-one-year-old Black man. He allegedly took cigars from the store window, according to a report in the Home News, wording that suggests the officers reported seeing him reaching into the window and found cigars in his possession. Holland also found a razor in Easley's possession. (Easley is not mentioned in the affidavit in the District Attorney’s case file in which he and Jackson are co-defendants, nor does the file include an examination of him. The only document in the case file referring to Easley is a criminal record; he had no previous prosecutions). Two arrests at the same incident of alleged looting was unusual during the disorder, suggesting that the officers were closer to the store than in other instances, perhaps only having to cross West 116th Street rather than 7th Avenue.

In addition to legal records, Jackson appeared in newspaper reports of different stages of the legal process, few of which offered any details. His name was listed among those arrested in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide and in the New York Evening Journal. Only the Home News reported his arraignment in the Magistrates Court, where the Magistrate sent him to the grand jury. Indicted on March 22, his appearance in the Court of General Sessions to have his bail continued four days later was reported in only the New York Sun. Jackson's reappearance a few days later to plead guilty attracted more coverage, in the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, New York Times, and New York Amsterdam News. The New York Times, New York Evening Journal, Daily News and Times Union reported his sentencing to six months in the Workhouse two weeks later, information also published in the New York Amsterdam News, New York Age and Afro-American, and recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

The Probation Department investigation conducted prior to Jackson's sentencing offers information on his life before his arrest. Born in Manhasset, Long Island, Thomas Dean was five years old when his mother left his father to live with Jonah Jackson. When they married, Thomas took Jackson as his last name. At age ten, Jackson's truancy resulted in his committal to a juvenile asylum in Chauncy for two years. After his release, he returned to live with his mother and finish his schooling in Corona. Soon after leaving school at age sixteen, around 1917, Jackson moved to Manhattan. He found work first for a moving company, and then as a driver for a bottle company on West 35th Street for eight years, before switching to driving a taxi. He told a Probation officer he was twice fined for speeding in 1923, and in 1928 served two days in prison for another traffic offense, offenses that did not appear in his criminal record and did not prevent his ongoing employment. During this time, from around 1920 until 1932, Jackson lived with Rose Repologo, an Italian woman, who the Probation Officer claimed was "an unwed mother who had been a former inmate of St Barnabas House," and who Jackson's sister described as "too good" for him. The couple lived downtown, at 414 West 36th Street, likely when Jackson worked nearby, information only in a second Probation Department investigation in 1940. He also reported being stabbed with a butcher's knife in a fight on West 36th Street in 1924, a detail in the Probation Officer's preliminary investigation not included in the report.

In 1930, Jackson was injured in a street car accident that required the amputation of his left arm below the elbow. Unable to find a job after the injury, Jackson, Repologo and her son were briefly on relief in 1932, by then living at 247 West 115th Street, until the New York Railway paid him $7800 in compensation for his injury. Sometime soon after, Repologo left Jackson. His sister told a Probation officer that after receiving the compensation Jackson "completely ignored" his family and "mistreated" Repologo, as a result of which Repologo left him for another man. The Home Relief Bureau reported Jackson told them that he had deposited $2500 in a bank account in the name of Rose Jackson, and that she had taken the money and disappeared. Early in 1933, Jackson invested $1200 in opening Tom's Confectionary Store in the basement of 270 West 115th Street, down the block from his residence. Setting up a small business was a strategy followed by many other residents of black neighborhoods in the 1930s when faced with unemployment. Jackson also joined many other small business owners in taking the opportunity to participate in Harlem's largest business, numbers gambling. In August 1933 he was convicted for collecting bets on numbers, the result he told a Probation officer in 1940 of having been found in his store with fourteen slips in his possession, sufficient only to result in a fine of $50. By the end of 1933, Jackson's business had failed. A Probation Officer reported the cause as Jackson's "neglect," recording in the preliminary investigation that Jackson claimed his "employees robbed him." The preliminary investigation also notes that the balance of Jackson's compensation payment had been spent on merchandise for the store. Jackson also said "he 'clowned' his way through life and spent most of his money having a 'big time'" in poolrooms, according to the Probation Department Investigation Report.

Soon after being forced to sell his store, Jackson moved in with his half-sister Beatrice Cooper and her family, and applied for Home Relief as part of that household. In 1934 the family lived in a series of apartments on West 118th Street, West 121st Street, and finally outside Harlem on West 99th Street. At the beginning of March 1935, Beatrice's husband John obtained a Work Relief job, and according to the Home Relief Bureau, refused to support Jackson. Jackson and his sister did not get on; a Probation Officer reported that he said that she was "too strict," while she described him as having "treated them with scorn." Relocating back to Harlem, Jackson moved into a furnished room in an apartment at 217 West 121st Street, and then, a day before the disorder, relocated to another at 253 West 121st Street. Unusually for the men arrested for involvement in the disorder, the report from the Psychiatric Clinic offered no explanation for Jackson's participation. Dr Sylvan Keiser described him as a "talkative, cheerful pleasant type of person" "of Average Intelligence."

Information survives on Jackson's life in the five years after his release from the workhouse in 1935 as a result of a subsequent conviction in 1940, which led to him again being investigated by the Probation Department, and that report being added to the file created in 1935. A few days after his release from the workhouse, in October 1935, Jackson was assigned work as a laborer by the Works Progress Administration. That job lasted almost three years, during which time Jackson lived in a furnished room in 154 West 121st Street and then in a rooming house at 2053 7th Avenue. He had little contact with his family; his sister told a Probation Officer that "he has always desired to live alone without restriction." Around 1937 Jackson contracted syphilis, he claimed from a prostitute. In August 1938 Jackson lost his WPA position, according to the Probation Department report, after he returned drunk having left the project without permission and swore at his supervisors and coworkers. A few weeks later, Jackson was arrested for slashing the tire of a taxi, and sentenced to a month in the workhouse. A year later he was back in workhouse, for 90 days, after pleading guilty to perjury and election fraud after being paid to fill in false affidavits related to a primary election. Following his release he worked briefly as an office cleaner and later as a watchman, while receiving relief payments, except for a period when an agent discontinued payments because Jackson supplied false information about his residence. He had left the rooming house for a furnished room in 135 West 119th Street. In October 1940, Jackson was charged with rape. He and two other men allegedly abducted a twenty-nine-year-old Black woman from a bar at West 119th Street and 8th Avenue and took her to his room at 152 West 119th Street, where they assaulted and robbed her. Jackson pled guilty to third degree assault. Examined again in the Psychiatric Clinic, this time Dr. John Cassity found Jackson still an "adjusted personality," although "on a low cultural level in recent months," but also "quite an aggressive individual [who] reacts with violence upon provocation." Judge Jacob Gould Schurman sentenced Jackson to the Penitentiary. He had been released by April 1943, when he registered for the draft, and was living with his sister Dorothy at 37 West 99th Street.
Arnold Ford arrested Around 1.50 AM, Patrolman Louis Frikser arrested Arnold Ford, a nineteen-year-old Black man, on the Third Avenue Bridge, which connected the eastern end of West 130th Street in Harlem with the Bronx. Frikser reported that he had observed Ford "walking across the bridge with a package," according to the details provided in the Probation Department investigation. Ford was likely going home; he lived just three blocks beyond the bridge, at 246 East 136th Street in the Bronx. The package he carried 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. According to Frikser, Ford admitted being part of a group of men who had entered Harry Lash's 5 & 10c store at 400 Lenox Avenue, five blocks west of the bridge on the corner of West 130th Street, and stolen goods. Later, in court, Ford stated that he had not broken the store windows, but only joined others entering the store and "helping himself to some merchandise." Eighteen months after the disorder, Ford told his Probation officer that he "found the goods in the street."

Patrolman Frikser stopped a second man crossing the bridge from Harlem, Joseph Moore, a forty-six-year-old West Indian carpenter "a few minutes" after Ford, and also arrested him for looting Lash's store. None of the reports of this case detail what caused Frikser to stop Moore or what he found in his possession. Like Ford, Moore was likely returning home; he lived at 248 East 136th Street in the Bronx, a building next door to where Ford resided. But Ford did not know Moore, according to a note in the Preliminary Investigation in his Probation Department file

Only seven other men are identified in the sources as having been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, a group making up one third (9 of 27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27 of 60).

Police charged both Ford and Moore with burglary in the Harlem Magistrate Court on March 20. Subsequently they were indicted by the grand jury and tried in the Court of General Sessions. During the trial on April 1, Ford pled guilty to petit larceny, while Moore was acquitted at the direction of the judge, an outcome for which the Daily Worker gave credit to the International Labor Defence lawyers who appeared for him (that story made no mention of Ford). Eighteen months later, Ford told his Probation officer that he pleaded guilty "because he was told to do so and that as a matter of fact he is not guilty and did not take part in the riot and that he found the goods in the street." The officer described Ford as "brooding over his conviction," suggesting he regretted the plea.

Ford (and Moore) appear in newspaper reports only in the list of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, a list published in the New York Evening Journal, and stories in the Home News and New York Sun. The Home News story included brief summaries of the charges made in the Magistrates Court; in this case, it grouped Ford and Moore together, arrested at the same time for looting the same store, but confused the $1000 of goods stolen reported by Lash in his affidavit before the Magistrates Court for what the men were found carrying, also mistakenly identifying it as clothing. The New York Sun likewise mistakenly alleged the men had stolen $1000 of property, but did correctly identify those goods as "general merchandise," in reporting the men's pleas in the Court of General Sessions, on March 25, after their indictment by the grand jury on March 22.

Of the ten men convicted in the Court of General Sessions as a result of the disorder, judges placed only Ford and Charles Saunders on probation rather than incarcertating them (the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded this outcome as a suspended sentence). Ford remained under supervision under April 1938.

The judge's decision to place Ford on probation likely owed much to the interest shown in him by Dr. Mason Pitman, superintendent of the Colored Orphan Asylum, located north of Manhattan at Riverdale, West 261st Street. Pitman expressed surprise that Ford had been arrested, writing to the Probation Department, "I do not understand why Arnold got into this trouble but I suppose that is something none of us understand, as we have never been put on the spot," and asking for leniency - going so far as to appear at the sentencing hearing. Ford and his younger brother and sister had been placed in the institution in 1927, when a judge committed them as neglected children. His mother Susan had turned to the court saying she had been deserted by her husband, Arnold Josiah Ford, a prominent Black Hebrew rabbi. However, the Big Sisters informed the Probation Department that the couple had divorced, with Josiah marrying again and Susan having children with another man. At the hearing Josiah agreed to contribute to his ex-wife's support but "would not claim the children." (Arnold's social security record identified his father as Donold J Ford, whose name does not appear in the Probation Department file). Ford remained in the Asylum until 1933, spending the last two years at it's boarding home in Jamaica, Queens, before being discharged back into his mother's care. The summary of his records at the Colored Orphan Asylum noted "He was found to be a nice boy in every way and was well liked by all who came in contact with him." Ford and his mother lived together at several addresses before moving to 246 East 136th Street two months before the disorder. Susan worked a few days a week as a domestic servant for a household on West 77th Street, while Arnold occasionally worked as an itinerant bootblack.

During his three years on probation, Ford frustrated the efforts of the Probation Department to supervise and direct his life. He reported far less frequently than required, blaming a lack of carfare for the trip, took up few of his probation officers' suggestions for vocational training, and refused to apply for aid from the Home Relief Bureau because it required answering invasive questions. His mother did not share his objections, as she began receiving Home Relief in September 1935, and cut back her hours of domestic work. Ford did enroll in the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936, seeking an assignment to one of the rural work relief camps, but was rejected when the medical examination revealed he had a hernia. For several months Ford traveled to Morrisania Hospital for treatment, during which he was bedridden at home for at least two months. Around his illness, Ford briefly worked as an errand boy for a grocery store on Amsterdam Ave and West 79th Street, let go because his employer did not think he was physically able to carry heavy bundles, then two days a week as a cleaner and porter for a synagogue in the Bronx at Gerard Avenue and 161st Street, and then as an errand boy for a millinery firm on West 37th Street. Soon after he got that position in March he moved out of the apartment at 258 East 148th Street that he and his mother had moved to in June 1936, and in with the mother and a cousin of the woman he had married a month earlier, Gwendolyn Jordan, a twenty-year-old housemaid, at 134 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. He did not pass on that news to his Probation officer, who learned of the marriage from a Home Relief investigator who had visited Ford's mother.

In August 1937 Ford lost his job, fired for making an error in delivering a package. The next month he found a job as a pin boy at Williamsbridge Bowling Alley at 225th Street and White Plains Road, working from 1 PM to 1 AM for two-thirds of his previous wage and requiring a journey of more than eighteen miles. But the next month Ford was again looking for work; when his Probation officer urged him to apply for Home Relief, he recorded Arnold and Gwendolyn as refusing and saying “they did not want to answer so many questions as the Home Relief Bureau wants to know too many personal questions which they refuse to answer and they would feel like slaves to this bureau and they believe that the clients of this bureau are treated like slaves.” Gwendolyn took a similar position on medical care for her pregnancy; when the Probation officer urged her to visit the hospital, she refused, he wrote, “because they ask too many questions and also because free service is no good and that the patients are ill-treated and neglected.” Instead, she planned to have the baby delivered at home by a local physician who the family went to for care, and the couple saved about $40 for the expenses. Tragically, that doctor was not in attendance when Gwendolyn went into labor in December 1937, and the baby presented in breech position. Although an ambulance was called, the child died. The Probation officer's assessment of those events is jarring in its callousness: “It seems that the probationer, his wife and his mother-in-law are ignorant and suspicious people who cannot be advised by anybody.” In the remaining three months of his probation, Ford and his wife continued to live with his mother-in-law, her cousin, and his two adult daughters, pooling their relief payments and wages, with Ford's contribution being what he could make from odd jobs while he looked for work.

In 1940 Ford was living with his wife and their one-year-old daughter, at 863 Home Street in the Bronx, when the census enumerator called. He gave his occupation as porter, but was still without a job, as remained the case when he completed a draft registration card later that year. On the card his address is recorded as 892 Union Avenue in the Bronx, although that address was struck out and replaced successively with four other addresses in the Bronx. A note on the card indicates Ford served in the Navy, receiving an honorable discharge on October 7, 1946.
Hezekiah Wright arrested Around 12.30 AM, Acting Captain Conrad Rothengast of the 6th Detective Division arrested Hezekiah Wright, a thirty-six-year-old Black janitor in front of a delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue. Rothengast claimed that shots being fired on 7th Avenue near 123rd Street drew his attention to a group of men standing in front of the delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue, owned by Sarah Refkin and managed by Nathan Pavlowitz, according to a Probation Department investigation report. As he approached the group, he allegedly saw Wright kick and smash the store's plate glass window, reach in and take four lamps and two jars of food. Wright then saw him coming towards him, dropped those items and held his hands above his head. The detective somehow interpreted that stance as indicating that Wright was about to attack him, so struck him with his baton before arresting him.

Wright denied any involvement in the looting of the store when interviewed by a Probation officer. Instead he said he was returning to his home at 155 West 123rd Street, around the corner from the delicatessen, having gone out to buy cigarettes, when he saw the crowd in front of the store. Those men ran when they saw Rothengast approaching; Wright said he stayed where he was as he was not involved in attacking the store. Others arrested in the disorder similarly claimed to have been out on errands and mistaken for participants in acts of violence. In Wright's case it was not unusual to be on the streets late at night. He told the Probation Officer that he occasionally went on walks in the late evening, as the long hours of his job kept him occupied until then. The Probation Officer reported nothing that indicated he would have chosen to participate in looting, characterizing him instead as "a quiet, inoffensive type of individual." Dr Walter Bromberg used a similar phrase in the report of his examination of Wright in the Court's Psychiatric Clinic, describing him as "a quiet, cooperative individual," who showed "no evidence of any emotional upset" or "of any aggressive, antisocial personality characteristics." The Probation officer did report that Wright's "moral standards are lax," apparently because his "greatest outlet [was] playing the policy numbers in the hope he will "become lucky" and "hit the numbers." That very widespread activity in Harlem reflected the limited economic opportunities available to the neighborhood's residents at least as much as their morality. Missing from the Probation Department investigation report is the explanation that the Probation officer wrote at the end of the Preliminary Investigation: that Wright was "A victim of mob hysteria who [?] advantages during a tense situation to enrich himself at others expense and by a criminal act." Other psychiatrists had invoked the influence of the mob in reporting their examinations of men arrested in the disorder, and it may be that this Probation officer had been anticipating that it would also appear in Wright's report. When it did not, he may have chosen to omit his comment.

The Magistrate Court affidavit included few of those details. In that account, Rothengast simply saw Wright kick in the window and take a quantity of groceries. A Home News report of Wright's arraignment in that court put the value of the goods he allegedly stole at $100. The Probation Department investigation report specified that the items Rothegast alleged Wright tried to steal had a combined value of $11.10, the lamps 90 cents each and the jars of food $3.75 each. Stories in the New York Age and New York Times reporting later stages of his prosecution included the details that he had allegedly stolen "four lamps and a quantity of food," with the latter story misstating the value of those items as "about $8 in all." As Pavlowitz, the store manager, told a Probation officer, others had taken the other missing merchandise, which he valued at between $50 and $75, rather than $100.

The lists of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal included Wright among those charged with burglary. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, with the docket book and the Home News recording that Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on $1000 bail. The grand jury indicted Wright on March 22, according to his District Attorney's case file; three days later Judge Morris Koenig of the Court of General Sessions continued his bail, a step in the legal process documented only by the New York Sun. It took only two more days for Wright to agree to a plea bargain offered by a district attorney; his appearance in court to plead guilty to unlawful entry was reported in the New York Post on March 27, and New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News and New York Times on March 28, and the New York Amsterdam News on March 30. Wright told a Probation officer he pled guilty on the advice of his lawyer, denying he attacked the store. His sentencing on April 8 was recorded in 28th Precinct Police blotter and again widely reported, in the Times Union on April 8, in the New York Evening News, New York Times and Daily News on April 9, and in the New York Amsterdam News, New York Age and Afro-American on April 13. Judge Donnellan sent Wright to the Workhouse for three months.

Wright told a Probation officer he had been in New York City for eight years. Born in Kingston, North Carolina, his family moved at some point to Suffolk, Virginia, and from there to Boston in 1906. Around 1909, his mother became ill with tuberculosis and sought treatment at the Rutland Sanitarium. When she was released after two years, Wright and his five younger siblings returned with her to Suffolk, where her sister helped Wright look after the younger children. His father rejoined the family a year later, Wright worked with him making baskets. When Wright was fourteen years old, his mother died. The Probation investigation included no information about Wright's subsequent life in Virginia other than his statement that he had spent thirty days in jail in 1917 after a fight with a railway detective when a circus arrived in town, and his marriage to Odel Burns in 1923. His World War One Draft registration lists his employment in 1918 as a soda foundation clerk in the Colored YMCA in Hopewell, Virginia.

Around 1927, Wright moved to New York City, likely with his family, as his father and three of his surviving siblings lived in Harlem in 1935, and the other sibling nearby in Newark, New Jersey. His father Charles, who in 1935 lived with his second wife and one of his daughters at 510 Manhattan Avenue, was a Baptist minister at Jerusalem Church. Wright worked for his first five years in the city as a chauffeur for Dr Bernard Zaglin. That work was "irregular," which might explain why the Preliminary Investigation in Wright's Probation Department file also records him working in Haverstraw, sixty miles north of the city on the Hudson River, as a driver hauling bricks for the Excelsior Brick Company in the busy season, the summer of 1931, and sometime prior to that as a painter and in a poolroom, and as a laborer in nearby Iona Island. The Probation Department investigation report presents all Wright's work in Haverstraw as prior to his employment by Zaglin even thought the Preliminary Investigation records the length of his work hauling bricks as May-October 1931. It may be that he lived and worked in Haverstraw prior to moving to Harlem, and returned there periodically.

It was to Haverstraw that his wife Odel went when she left him in 1932, with a man named Charlie Phillips, information in the Preliminary Investigation that the Probation officer omitted from the Investigation Report. Instead, the report explained the couple's "separation" as a result of Wright's "infidelity with Marion Harris," with who he was living at the time of his arrest. As was the case with others whose relationships followed the more fluid marriage patterns of working-class communities, the Probation Department investigation report described the twenty-two-year-old Harris as Wright's "mistress," ignoring the information in the Preliminary Investigation that they had married in April 1933, again in Haverstraw. At that time they were living with one of Wright's cousins at 860 Hunts Point Avenue in the Bronx, rent free as Wright was unemployed after Zaglin decided in October 1932 that he no longer needed a chauffeur.

Wright remained unemployed until July 1933, when he and Harris were employed as janitors at 155 West 123rd Street, a job that came with an apartment in the basement. They still held that position at the time of his arrest, and his employer told a Probation officer he would reemploy Wright when he was released. However, if that happened, Wright did not live in the building. A census enumerator found him at 143 West 113th Street in 1940, where he told her he had been in 1935 (a question in that census), and was employed as the superintendent of an apartment building. He also told the enumerator he was married, but Harris is not recorded in the census schedule. Two years later, when Wright registered for the draft, he was living and working in another building, at 216 West 114th Street. He left blank the line for "Name and Address of Person Who Will Always Know Your address," where men typically included their wife or a parent. His home address is struck out and updated several months later to 143 West 113th Street, his home in 1940.
Robert Tanner arrested Around 3 AM, Officer Charles Necas of the 28th Precinct reported seeing Robert Tanner, a seventeen-year-old Black student, put his hand in the broken window of Jack Garmise's cigar shop at 1916 7th Avenue and take a pipe, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit. Necas then arrested Tanner. The store window had been broken a little over an hour earlier, when two police officers allegedly saw someone in a crowd throw a milk can. At that time officers arrested two men, Thomas Jackson and Raymond Easley. That Tanner allegedly took a single pipe suggests that there was little merchandise in the window by that time, that most of the $100 of pipes, clocks, watches, razors and other goods that Garmise reported stolen had been taken earlier. While it does not appear that police officers guarded the damaged store, as they did on West 125th Street, it was in a likely location for police to be stationed: on the corner of West 116th Street, the business district south of West 125th Street, and Harlem's busiest avenue. Tanner lived on West 116th Street only three buildings west of 7th Avenue, at 218 West 116th Street. He was likely one of the many Harlem residents drawn to the streets by the disorder. There is no mention of others in the area at the time, but there are a scattering of reported events nearby around this time.

Tanner was one of only two of those arrested identified as a student, along with John Henry, and one of only four under eighteen years of age. His name is in the lists of those arrested for burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. When he was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrate Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on $1000 bail, according to the Magistrates Court docket book. The Home News published the only report of that appearance, which grouped Tanner with Thomas Jackson, one of the men arrested for the earlier attack on Garmise's shop who the docket book indicates had been arraigned shortly before Tanner. The story mistakenly reversed the timing of the men's alleged crimes described in the legal records, reporting that Tanner smashed a side window an hour before Jackson broke the front window. A grand jury indicted him on a charge of burglary on March 22nd. Three days later the New York Sun reported that Tanner appeared in the Court of General Sessions, at which time he did not offer a plea, unlike the other men who appeared with him, and the judge continued his bail. When he appeared again in the court, he pled not guilty. By April 4, he had agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny, an outcome which went unreported in the press but was noted in the District Attorney's case file and the 28th Precinct Police Blotter. The district attorney offered that plea bargain to most of those indicted for burglary. The blotter provided the only evidence of his sentence, to the New York City Reformatory, as a result of being a youthful first offender.
Joseph Wade arrested
At about 2.45 AM, Officer William Leahy of the 28th Precinct allegedly saw Joseph Wade, a twenty-four-year-old Black "candy boy" coming out of Frank De Thomas' candy store at 101 West 127th Street. Leahy noted that store's windows were broken, but not that he had seen Wade break them. When Leahy arrested Wade, he found several toy pistols worth sixty cents in Wade's possession, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit, or $70 of goods, according to later reports of Wade's sentencing in the New York Age and New York Times. For the last month, Wade had lived near the other end of the same block of West 127th Street as the store was located, at 148 West 127th Street.

Wade was clearly not the only person to have looted the store, as DeThomas claimed $745.25 in losses. He was among the twenty white store-owners to bring the first suits against the city for failing to protect their businesses identified in the New York Sun.

Wade appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, when Magistrate Renaud ordered him held for the grand jury without bail. While few of those charged after the disorder were denied bail, Wade's criminal record featured three convictions since 1926, including one for unlawful entry resulting from a charge of burglary. That conviction in December 1926 was followed by a second arrest for burglary in April 1931 for which Wade was discharged. Two months later he was convicted of gun possession. Finally, in October 1933, Wade pled guilty to attempted second degree assault, having been charged with rape. As a result, he spent around two years in prison in the nine years before the disorder: two indeterminate terms for the first two convictions, and a year in Sing Sing Prison for the final conviction. The New York Age reported Wade had been paroled in December 1934, only three months before the disorder (a detail not mentioned by any other newspaper).

The grand jury indicted Wade for burglary on March 22, and five days later he appeared in the Court of General Sessions having agreed to plead guilty to the lesser offense of petit larceny. The Probation Department would have conducted an investigation before Wade's sentencing, but as he had been convicted previously in the Court of General Sessions, he had likely had been investigated previously and that report would have been put in the file created then. On April 8, Judge Donnellan sentenced him to six months in the workhouse, a decision reported in the press as well as recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.

There are more reports of the progress of Wade’s prosecution than most looting cases. He appears not only in the lists of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal, and the Home News story on proceedings in the Harlem Magistrates Court. The New York Sun also reported his return to the Magistrates Court on March 25 to have his bail decision continued. At least five papers - New York Amsterdam News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times - reported Wade’s appearance in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty. The New York Times , New York Evening News, Daily News and Times Union, and three Black newspapers, the Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News and New York Age, also reported his sentencing eleven days later.

Wade had lived in New York City since at least 1920, when he and his mother Marie appear in the federal census, living with his father's brother at 262 West 124th Street. According to the census, he was born in New York City, but the Sing Sing Prison Inmate Admission Register recorded Charleston, South Carolina as his birthplace, and that of both his parents. Exactly when the family moved to New York City is uncertain; the register entry recorded Wade as having lived there for eleven years, so since around 1922, but the census indicates he had been in the city at least two years earlier. The Admission Register contains other fragmentary details of Wade’s life before the disorder. His father apparently died around 1923, when Wade was thirteen years old. He remained in school until he was sixteen years old; his first arrest and conviction must have occurred around the time he left school. He was born in according to the register, and he gave his age as twenty-four years in the Magistrate’s Court, but the census schedule records his age as ten years in 1920, putting his birthday in 1910. He must have given that earlier date when arrested in 1926, as he was not prosecuted in the juvenile court as he would have been if under sixteen years of age. As a youthful first offender, he was sent to the New York City Reformatory in January 1927. Released later that year, he began working as a porter at the Alhambra Theater. It appears that Wade’s arrest and conviction for gun possession in June 1931 cost him that job. Now aged around twenty-one-years old, he was sentenced to another indeterminate sentence, this time in the Penitentiary.

Wade served no more than eighteen months, as he started work as a porter for Sam Rosen of 216 West 125th Street around January 1933, according to the Sing Sing Prison Inmate Admission Register. By October, 1933, he lived at 109 West 129th Street; his mother Marie lived at 226 West 124th Street. That month Wade was charged with rape. The Admissions Register includes a section to record “Criminal Acts attributed to;” Wade’s entry is “Lived with girl,” suggesting that the charge may have been statutory rape, for sexual acts with a girl under eighteen years of age, the age of consent in New York in 1933. (Both the plea bargain and the sentence are in line with how courts handled such cases). Although sentenced to a minimum term of fifteen months, the Admissions Register recorded that he was eligible for parole after one year, on December 28, 1934. The report of his sentencing in the New York Age indicated he was released at the time.
In Harlem court on March 25 (18) Newspaper stories reporting the hearings in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 25 focused on the appearance of the four Young Liberators. Although Harry Gordon also appeared in the court that day, the stories no longer grouped him with the other four men as they had on March 20. Police identified the Young Liberators as "ringleaders," a term attributed to them in the New York Sun, New York Times, to District Attorney Dodge in the New York Post, and used without attribution in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, New York Evening Journal, Home News, and Daily News, and in the Afro-American. The New York World-Telegram alone did not name the four men or describe their alleged role in the disorder, while the New York Age described them as charged with starting the riot.

The New York Times, New York Sun, New York Post and New York Evening Journal, and the Afro-American all only published stories anticipating the four men's appearance; they did not report the outcome. Those newspapers may have been anticipating a spectacle at the hearing, which often accompanied the appearance of Communists. Police certainly thought that a possibility, as the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Daily News reported a heavy police presence. The hearing apparently did not deliver either disorder or any new information about the disorder. Stories in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, Daily News, Home News and New York World-Telegram, and the New York Age, simply reported that detectives presented the Magistrate with bench warrants, after which he discharged the men as they had already been indicted and police turned them over to the detectives.

Journalists paid little attention to the other fourteen men who appeared. The adjournment of Harry Gordon's case while police continued their investigation of his alleged assault on Patrolman Young was reported in the Home News, New York American and New York World-Telegram. The Home News identified two of the other men discharged as having already been indicted by Dodge's grand jury, Carl Jones and Milton Ackerman. Those men are likely the two unnamed Black men indicted for looting that New York Herald Tribune reported were dealt with in that way. Neither story made any mention of the other four men who went through the same process, Nelson Brock, Reginald Mills, William Grant and Douglas Cornelius. Only the New York Herald Tribune made mention of any other men, reporting three other unnamed individuals as having been convicted and had their sentences suspended and one who was released. Legal records indicate the later was Aubrey Patterson, the only person released on March 26. Only two people, Louise Brown and Warren Johnson, appear in the legal records as having been convicted and sentenced. Information on the remaining defendants comes only from legal records.

The lack of attention to the those arrested in the disorder on this date reflected both the lack of spectacle in the hearings and in the details of the disorder revealed in prosecutions for relatively minor offenses, which contributed to the attention the press gave to statements District Attorney Dodge made on this date. However, Dodge would not deliver on his claims, leading journalists to turn instead to the public hearings of the MCCH.
Joseph Moore arrested Around 1.50 AM, Patrolman Louis Frikser arrested Joseph Moore, a forty-six-year-old West Indian carpenter, on the Third Avenue Bridge, which connected the eastern end of West 130th Street in Harlem with the Bronx. Frikser charged that Moore had been part of a group of men who had entered Harry Lash's 5 & 10c store at 400 Lenox Avenue, five blocks west of the bridge on the corner of West 130th Street, and stolen goods. None of the reports of this case detail what caused Frikser to stop Moore or what he found in his possession. Moore was likely returning home; he lived just three blocks beyond the bridge, at 248 East 136th Street in the Bronx.

"A few minutes" earlier Frikser had observed Arnold Ford, a nineteen-year-old Black man "walking across the bridge with a package," according to the details provided in the Probation Department investigation of Ford. Ford was also likely going home; he lived in a building next to Moore's residence, at 246 East 136th Street in the Bronx. The package he carried cannot have been large; it contained "soap, garters, thread and notions" with a value of $1.15. According to Frikser, Ford admitted he had stolen goods from Harry Lash's 5 & 10c store, joining others entering the store and "helping himself to some merchandise," but denying breaking the store windows. But Ford did not know Moore, according to a note in the Preliminary Investigation in his Probation Department file.

Only seven other men are identified in the sources as having been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, a group making up one third (9/27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27/60).

While 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, police charged both Moore and Ford with burglary in the Harlem Magistrate Court. 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. Subsequently they were indicted by the grand jury and tried together in the Court of General Sessions. During the trial on April 1, Moore was acquitted at the direction of the judge, an outcome for which the Daily Worker gave credit to the International Labor Defense lawyers who appeared for him (that story made no mention of Ford, who pled guilty to petit larceny). The story gave no indication of the basis of the successful defense, noting only that the attorneys "had riddled the framed-up case against the worker." The involvement of the ILD suggests Moore may have had ties to the Communist party; the only others arrested during the disorder they represented were the men who picketed Kress' store.

Moore (and Ford) appear in newspaper reports only in the list of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, a list published in the New York Evening Journal, and stories in the Home News and New York Sun. The Home News story included brief summaries of the charges made in the Magistrates Court; in this case, it grouped Moore and Ford together, arrested at the same time for looting the same store, but confused the $1000 of goods stolen reported by Lash in his affidavit before the Magistrates Court for what the men were found carrying, also mistakenly identifying it as clothing. The New York Sun likewise mistakenly alleged the men had stolen $1000 of property, but did correctly identify those goods as "general merchandise," in reporting the men's pleas in the Court of General Sessions, and those of four others charged with third degree burglary, on March 25, after their indictment by the grand jury on March 22.

Moore had arrived in the United States from Barbados in 1917, perhaps initially living in Pennsylvania, as the 1930 Census reported his eldest daughter had been born there around 1920. By around 1926, he and his family were in New York City as another daughter is listed as having been born there. In 1930 the census enumerator recorded Moore living in an apartment at 213 West 142nd Street with his wife Olive, three daughters and a son, working as a carpenter for building contractors, but unemployed at that time, April 3. At some point between 1930 and his arrest in 1935 the family relocated to the Bronx, and were still at the same address when a census enumerator called on April 2, 1940. Moore's eldest daughter, twenty years old by this time, is not part of the household, but Moore and his wife had two more children, both boys. Still working as a carpenter, Moore was now employed by the Parks Department.
Dodge grand jury hearing, March 25 (1) While the grand jury was not in session over the weekend, Dodge affirmed his commitment to the investigation to several reporters on Saturday, March 23. He emphasized his concern with a specific target, those who advocated the overthrow of government by force and violence, according to stories in the New York American, New York Times, Daily News and Home News. Although the statement did not appear to directly reference Communists, most of those newspapers identified them as the target in their headlines: “Dodge Plans War on Reds in Harlem” in the Daily News; “Dodge Declares War on Red Leaders” in the Home News; and “Dodge Expects Arrest of Red Leaders” in the New York Times. The anti-Communist New York American predictably reported the DA’s comments in more detail and attempted to link them to further charges, as it had previously in posing questions about the criminal anarchy statute. Its story quoted Dodge as invoking the Constitution, and posed questions to him about involving Federal authorities, which he declined to answer. That story, and those in the New York Times and Daily News, also reported that books and papers seized in the raid on the ILD offices were being examined for evidence.

When Dodge spoke to the press on Monday, he affirmed he was in fact following the path that the New York American reporter had raised two days earlier. He mentioned charges of criminal anarchy, which carried a sentence of up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $5000, in connection with the disorder. However, newspaper stories differed on just what he said, with the New York American, Home News and New York Sun reporting such charges “might be returned,” the New York Herald Tribune that the DA had evidence that “would justify” such charges, the Daily News, Times Union and New York Post that indictments would be sought and the New York World-Telegram that indictments were being sought. The New York Times did not publish a story about Dodge or the grand jury. There is no evidence that Dodge actually presented such charges; certainly, the grand jury did not vote for any indictments for criminal anarchy.

In raising criminal anarchy, Dodge told reporters that his investigators had found “some good clues,” a phrase reported in the New York American, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, Times Union and Home News. The New York World-Telegram substituted “splendid new leads.” As examples, he displayed pamphlets seized in the earlier raids on the offices of Communist Party organizations, saying although he could no reveal their content, they were “hot stuff.” His claim that the documents were advocating the overthrow of the government was widely reported, in the New York Post, New York Sun, Home News, Times Union, New York Herald Tribune and New York World-Telegram, as was the assertion that they had been "distributed to young school children.” Curiously given their anti-Communist focus, none of the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal, New York American and the Daily Mirror, mentioned the pamphlets.

Instead, the New York American (in a separate, earlier story) and New York Evening Journal, joined only by the New York Post, reported Dodge again speaking about the grand jury considering new legislation so “irresponsible agitators would be prevented from goading thoughtless people toward the overthrow of the American form of government, by violence,” as the New York American reported. The New York Evening Journal summarized its purpose as “designed to curb Communistic activities in the interests of the public safety.” The New York Post described the legislation as “defining” free speech, with all three stories reporting that he insisted it would not be a restriction on free speech. The two Hearst newspapers were also alone in including in their stories that Dodge had met with Federal officials and planned to turn his evidence over to them.

For all of Dodge’s bravado, the day’s grand jury hearing resulted in only one additional indictment related to the disorder. Unreported in the Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Journal, the indictment charged [a man] with taking goods worth 15 cents. Only the Times Union reported the value of the goods. The New York American described the alleged offense as “theft of toilet articles,” the New York World-Telegram as “stealing several rolls of paper towels from a shop window,” and the Daily News simply identified the charge as burglary. Only the New York Post, continuing its criticism of Dodge’s anti-Communist focus, made a connection between the case and the DA’s rhetoric, describing the indictment as “for nothing spectacular.”
In the Court of General Sessions on March 25 (6) Only the New York Sun and New York World-Telegram reported the first appearance of individuals arrested during the disorder before the Court of General Sessions. Their names and charges were reported in the New York Sun, together with brief descriptions of their alleged looting. That story also mentioned the pending arraignment of the four Communists but otherwise did not report the Magistrates Court hearing. The New York World-Telegram simply reported that six men appeared and were released on bail. (The only person named in that story was Harry Gordon).