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

Investigations (April 20-May 3)

The hearings on April 20 concluded the MCCH’s investigations of several events during the disorder. As no witnesses had been found to challenge the autopsy report that August Miller had died from natural causes, the testimony at the public hearing on April 20 apparently ended the MCCH investigation of that case. James Thompson’s landlady's purported statement to his aunt that he had brought home canned goods during the disorder, which implied that he had been looting prior to the shooting, appeared to put an end to the investigation of his death. The decision not to further investigate whether police had been justified in shooting Thompson was somewhat surprising given that, like Lloyd Hobbs, he had allegedly being fleeing after being caught looting. However, Thompson did not have family members demanding justice as Hobbs did, and the two officers had likely fired warning shots before shooting at him given that stray police bullets hit two white men.

However, the subcommittee still had not heard the testimony of witnesses to other incidents. Even as Hays obtained the MCCH's approval to write to Commissioner Valentine asking that the police department bring disciplinary charges against Patrolman McInerney for killing Lloyd Hobbs, he was also writing to Louis Eisenberg, the owner of the store that police alleged Lloyd Hobbs had looted, requesting that he appear at the next hearing on May 4. In a sign of how concerned he was to finish the hearings on the events of the disorder, Hays offered to arrange a private hearing so Eisenberg did not have to "testify before a crowded courtroom," the approach he otherwise favored.

Hays was far less solicitous of the other witness to the events of March 19 that he wanted to testify, Jackson Smith, the manager of the Kress store. Having twice been told by Smith that he was too busy to attend a hearing, Hays secured the approval of the MCCH members to go over his head to the management of the company and ask them to instruct Smith to attend. For good measure, he sent Smith a copy of the letter. Applying pressure, he wrote that the manager’s “failure to appear has created a very bad impression," "as it is thought that if nothing serious occurred in Kress’s store on March 19th, he would be glad to give his version of the incident.” While the letter did not secure Smith’s attendance at the next hearing, it did provoke a response from the company’s attorneys that asked to “discuss the matter.”

As the Subcommittee on Crime tried to bring the hearings on the events of the disorder to an end, they continued the investigation of police brutality. On April 30, the MCCH approved delegating the the Harlem Lawyer’s Association to investigate of some of what Eunice Carter described as the “numerous cases of police brutality [that] are being brought to our attention daily." With testimony on only one of the initial six cases the MCCH had investigated remaining to be heard, the killing of Edward Laurie, Hyman Glickstein worked with the ILD to arrange testimony about incidents of police brutality the Communists had reported to the MCCH. But again it proved impossible to separate the investigations of police brutality and the events of the disorder. The two men who appeared at the public hearing to give testimony about their mistreatment by police proved to be Daniel Miller and Harry Gordon, the white men arrested when they tried to speak to the crowds on 125th Street at the beginning of the disorder. They were not on the list of cases of police brutality that Communist groups had sent to the MCCH, but as the subcommittee had heard testimony that the Young Liberators had not been responsible for the disorder, Communist leaders had likely become more willing to have them questioned in public.

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