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Investigations (March 30-April 5)
At the same time, Hays embarked on an investigation of police brutality both in the disorder and more broadly. While the MCCH had extended the subcommittee’s remit from the events of March 19 to crime, police brutality was not one of the topics under that umbrella in Randolph’s plan. It identified numbers gambling, ubiquitous in Harlem at this time, and juvenile delinquency, perceived to be increasing in the context of the Depression, as the topics to be investigated. While the NAACP was receiving complaints of police brutality about Black New Yorkers at this time, Hays’ concern with the topic more likely grew from the involvement of the ACLU in fighting the third degree and police violence against Communists and labor organizations. His intention was that the investigation of police brutality be a “separate project” of the subcommittee on crime, begun after the hearings on the events of March 19 had been completed and a report submitted to the mayor, he told members of the MCCH when they met on April 5. At that time, he reported that the subcommittee had decided another hearing on the events would be needed in addition to the one scheduled the next day. However, the two topics would prove to be intertwined. As a result, the subcommittee’s preliminary report would include both and argue that police brutality was a cause of the disorder as well as a feature of it.
Hays had Hyman Glickstein, an attorney from his law firm, write to senior police officers, the District Attorney, the Medical Examiner and Harlem Hospital seeking records about six cases. Four involved men who died during the disorder, Hobbs and James Thompson, Andrew Lyons and August Miller. Questions about those deaths had been raised during the testimony of Captain Rothengast at the hearing on March 30. The other two incidents had not occurred during the disorder. Edward Laurie had died at the hands of police soon after the disorder, a case that had been widely reported in the press. Thomas Aiken, blind in one eye after a beating by police just over a week before the disorder, had been brought to the MCCH's attention by Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., to who Aiken's mother had written. Glickstein asked that the police officers and physicians who had been involved in the cases be present at the next hearing. Witnesses to Aiken's beating and Laurie's family were also asked to be at the hearing.
To expand the investigation into police brutality, Hays again sought the assistance of the Communist Party. He had Glickstein write to the ILD lawyers James Tauber and Edward Kuntz, and James Ford, Robert Minor and Carl Brodsky of the Communist Party, seeking “all complaints of alleged police misconduct, not only on March 19th, but also on other occasions.” He told them to send him that information as soon as possible so he could have the police officers and physicians involved appear at the next hearing. At some point, the Communist Party sent the MCCH a list of seventeen "Cases of Police Brutality, Discrimination and Mistreatment of Negroes in Harlem.” While it included the incidents involving Laurie, Aiken, and Frank Wells, an attack on an unidentified man, the arrest of a boy for lighting a fire in a school and the eviction of an interracial couple, the list mostly consisted of clashes with police at Communist Party meetings and protests.
Glickstein wrote to Hays on April 4 that “evidence on behalf of the various persons arrested, shot or beaten seems to be considerably more difficult to obtain. I am, however, keeping at it, and I think that at least three or four of the cases, and, perhaps more, will be presented in complete detail before the Committee on Saturday.” His requests for evidence from the Police Department were initially more successful. “You have my assurance that both the men and records will be made available to the Committee at its next hearing as well as subsequent meetings,” Valentine wrote to Glickstein. However, the day before hearing, District Attorney Dodge intervened to disrupt the MCCH’s plans to have police officers testify. He directed police commanders to “instruct all police officers who may have cases pending not to reveal any of their testimony at any public hearing.” Those instructions restricted what police officers could say, not their ability to testify, so the officers requested to be present nonetheless attended the hearing.
Those officers joined a crowd of other witnesses called to appear at the April 6 hearing. As well as the new witnesses that Tartar and Glickstein worked to secure, the subcommittee still had unfinished business from the first hearing. Five witnesses on the list prepared for March 30 had not testified, Mrs Jackson, Ida Hengain, Effie Diton and Mr [Fred] Campbell, and from Steve Urban of the Kress store. There were also additional police officers on the scene and staff from the Kress store whose appearances had not been secured. Although twenty witnesses would appear at the hearing, more than at any of the subcommittee’s other hearings, testimony would be heard about only one of the cases that Hays had investigated, the killing of Lloyd Hobbs. At that time the evidence that the MCCH heard on the other fives cases would be limited to the medical records recounted by doctors on the staff of Harlem Hospital.
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- “Minutes of the Meeting of April 5th, 1935," Subject Files, Box 383, Folder 10 (Roll 184), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- William Dodge to Lewis Valentine, April 5, 1935, "Harlem, Mayor's Commission on Conditions in," Box 26, Folder 1, Arthur Garfield Hays Papers (Princeton University).
- Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 149-164.
- "Cases of Police Brutality, Discrimination and Mistreatment of Negroes in Harlem," "Harlem, Mayor's Commission on Conditions in," Box 25, Folder 19, Arthur Garfield Hays Papers (Princeton University).
- Arthur Garfield Hays to Eunice Carter, April 1, 1935, "Harlem, Mayor's Commission on Conditions in," Box 26, Folder 1, Arthur Garfield Hays Papers (Princeton University).
- Hyman Glickstein to Arthur Garfield Hays, April 4, 1935, "Harlem, Mayor's Commission on Conditions in," Box 26, Folder 1, Arthur Garfield Hays Papers (Princeton University).
- Lewis Valentine to Hyman Glickstein, April 3, 1935, "Harlem, Mayor's Commission on Conditions in," Box 26, Folder 1, Arthur Garfield Hays Papers (Princeton University).
- Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 122-148.