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

James Tartar, "Interview with Asst. District Attorney Saul Price, 4-2-35," "Harlem, Mayor's Commission on Conditions in," Box 25, Folder 19, Arthur Garfield Hays Papers (Princeton University).

Arthur Garfield Hays Papers

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The MCCH investigation of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs The MCCH learned of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs from the New York Urban League. His father, Lawyer Hobbs, went several times to the 28th Precinct police station on West 123rd Street trying to get the name and shield number of the patrolman who had shot Lloyd, which the family had been too upset to get when they encountered him at Harlem Hospital. He also wanted to file a complaint against the officer. Although Hobbs "was told by the inspector that he could not file a complaint because he did not witness the affair, and knew nothing about it," no one at the precinct mentioned that Detective O'Brien was investigating the shooting. As police kept him "running up and down with no satisfaction," Lawyer Hobbs also went to the offices of the New York Urban League on West 136th Street. The Urban League was a social work and civil rights organization focused on the social and economic conditions of Black residents. James Hubert, the executive director, told Hobbs that they would look into it and to come back later. Although Hobbs did not mention it, someone at the Urban League also recorded his statement. Hobbs recounted what his son Russell had told him, that the boys had stopped to see what a crowd was looking at when a patrolman appeared telling them to "break it up." The boys joined everyone else in running; the patrolman then shot Lloyd. Hobbs also added the exchange he and his wife had with the patrolman at Harlem Hospital, when he told them he had shot the boy because he had not stopped when told to. Lawyer Hobbs returned on Monday, March 25, to find that Hubert had no results for him. However, three days later, on March 28, the Urban League sent a letter sent to the MCCH, which enclosed the statement by Hobbs and asked for ”cooperation” and “assistance.” The MCCH had appealed for information in the statement it gave the press after its first meeting on March 25.

The MCCH responded to the information from the Urban League by including “Mr Lloyd Hobbs and family" on the list of eyewitnesses asked to give testimony to the first public hearing on March 30. Near the end of the day-long hearing, as Captain Rothengast was being questioned about who had been shot during the disorder, the chairman, Arthur Garfield Hays, asked did he "know anything specifically about a boy by the name of Hobbs?" Hays then had Mrs. Carrie Hobbs stand up, to ask her if her son Russell was present, and called the boy up to testify. Rothengast knew nothing beyond what was in the arrest report, so Hays excused him so Russell could be questioned. His testimony, or at least as recorded by the stenographer, was a somewhat garbled version of what he had told his parents. He talked of stopping on 125th Street, not 7th Avenue, and the patrolmen running up on the pavement on a horse, not in a patrol car. Few newspapers stories about the hearing mentioned Russell's testimony, even as they reported Lloyd's death later that night. Hays, however, did pay attention to the testimony, not only because Lloyd had died. Hays made investigating deaths during the disorder and victims of police brutality the next focus of his subcommittee's hearings.

On April 1, Hays wrote to the MCCH's secretary, Eunice Carter, telling her to have the Hobbs family attend the next hearing, on April 6, and to "have our investigators find out all they can about [the Hobbs case]." He also had an attorney at his law firm assisting him, Hyman Glickstein, write to Police Inspector Di Martini and the superintendent of Harlem Hospital to obtain their records relating to Lloyd Hobbs. Carter assigned the investigation to James Tartar, one of the staff who had sought witnesses to the causes of the disorder the previous week. He did what Detective O'Brien had not; he interviewed the Hobbs family "as the first source," having the advantage of knowing that Russell had been with Lloyd when Mcinerney shot him. Tartar complied a "social and economic history of the family" and took statements from Russell and his mother. He also learned from Lawyer Hobbs that he had been contacted by two eyewitnesses, Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore.

Tartar met with the men at 213 West 128th Street, the apartment building in which they both lived, and recorded "their story." Malloy said he had walked past the automobile store almost two hours before McInerney alleged he had heard the window breaking and Hobbs taking items and the windows had been entirely broken with no merchandise remaining inside them. Not long before the Hobbs brothers arrived, he and Moore had come out to get ice cream for their wives, who were in the Moores apartment. As they arrived at the northwest corner of 128th and 7th Avenue, they saw a "commotion" on the block of 7th Avenue to the south. As they watched, people began to move toward them, breaking into a run. When Lloyd Hobbs turned west on 128th Street, they saw the patrolman shoot the boy without calling on him to halt. Nothing fell to the ground when the shot hit the boy. They also contradicted the officers' claim that objects had been thrown at them, saying that seeing both men had guns caused people in the area to stay away.

On April 2, Tartar also spoke with ADA Saul Price, who told him "that the officer had not been exonerated, due to the fact that he was waiting to hear the story from the Hobbs family, particularly Russell Hobbs." An interview with the police department's ballistic expert produced no information as he had not received the bullet that hit Lloyd. Tartar's visit to Harlem Hospital was more successful, as Dr. Steinholz shared the boy's chart, which the investigator copied. An additional interview with Inspector Di Martini not mentioned in Tartar's report allowed him to make a copy of a report to Commissioner Valentine from commander of the 28th Precinct, Captain George Mulholland, on the subject of "The shooting of prisoner by Patrolman." It described McInerney observing Hobbs leaving the store window "with several objects in his hands," giving that evidence a far more prominent and specific place than they had in O'Brien's reports. Threats to the patrolman also received more attention, with allegations that "the colored people in the immediate vicinity threw bottles and other objects from the windows with the intent to strike the officer” and that the officers "dispersed a large crowd of colored men and women who had threatened them" before they could leave the scene.

Tartar was among those who testified at the MCCH's April 6 public hearing, with Russell Hobbs and both his parents, Malloy and Moore, and a third man who had been with them when Lloyd Hobbs was shot, Samuel Pitts. Pitts' name was added in pencil to the MCCH's typewritten witness list, indicating they had not known he would be present. He likely came with Malloy and Moore, although he lived some distance from them, at 112 West 127th Street. Pitts witnessed the shooting from the same corner as those men, where he had been since about 10:00 PM, "looking after people and cops shooting[, and] talking about the riot." Russell's testimony was more in line with his statement than the previous week. Having continued to run up 7th Avenue fearing a beating by police, he had not, however, seen his brother shot. His parents testified that when they found Lloyd in the hospital, he told them, “Mother, the officer shot me for nothing. I was not doing anything.” McInerney, guarding the boy, said "Why didn't you halt when I told you to?" Malloy, Moore, and Pitts, who all had seen the shooting, described the same details. Arthur Garfield Hays had also expected Patrolman McInerney to testify, but although he was at the hearing, District Attorney Dodge had refused to allow officers involved in cases in the legal system to give evidence. The police officer who did testify, also not on the MCCH list of witnesses, was Detective Thomas McCormick, the stenographer who recorded Lloyd's statement at Harlem Hospital. He read that statement, which echoed what the boy had told his parents when they found him in the hospital: he had done nothing but run when the patrol car pulled up but McInerney had shot him. The hearing also heard from medical staff from Harlem Hospital. The case of Lloyd Hobbs was the first about which Hays asked them. All Dr. Arthur Logan could tell him was the nature of the boy's injuries; he had not said anything in the doctor's presence and no items had been found in his clothing. While the Black press (except for the New York Amsterdam News) highlighted the testimony on the case, among white publications only the radical Daily Worker and New Masses gave it similar prominence in reporting the hearing, and only the New York Times and Home News among the mainstream white press even mentioned Lloyd Hobbs.

Hays announced plans to continue hearing evidence about the killing of Lloyd Hobbs at his subcommittee's next public hearing, in two weeks, the New York Times, New York Age, and Afro-American reported. However, Detective O'Brien delivered subpoenas to the three eyewitnesses after they appeared before the MCCH. Two days later, ADA Saul Price drew the men into the police investigation.
James Tartar's investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs On April 1, Hays wrote to the MCCH's secretary, Eunice Carter, telling her to have the Hobbs family attend the next hearing, on April 6, and to "have our investigators find out all they can about [the Hobbs case]." Carter assigned the investigation to James Tartar, one of the staff who had sought witnesses to the causes of the disorder the previous week. The thirty-year-old Black former shipping clerk was an investigator for the Department of Public Welfare who lived on the western boundary of Harlem, at 448 West 151st Street. Born in Tennessee, he had lived in North Carolina at the time of the 1920 census, moving later to Ohio, where he worked as a secretary and married in 1924. The family was living in New York City by 1926, and at 759 St. Nicholas Avenue in 1930. As a Black Harlem resident, Tartar reinforced the Black presence on the MCCH and would have received a less hostile reception from residents than the white police detective investigating the shooting. At the same time, his occupation put him among the upper ranks of the Black population, different from most of the witnesses he interviewed.

The records of Tartar's investigation should have been in the files of the MCCH in the records of Mayor La Guardia, but were retained by Arthur Garfield Hays, for whose subcommittee he investigated the shooting, and E. Franklin Frazier, who led the MCCH's research. Several reports by Tartar from his early investigations are filed in the Hays Papers. A narrative summary of his investigation and the case are in the Frazier Papers. Tartar also testified in the MCCH hearing on April 7 about his investigation up to that point. He mentioned details of the investigation in correspondence with Frazier after the MCCH investigation was completed.

In the week leading up to the MCCH hearing on April 7, Tartar interviewed the Hobbs family "as the first source." He recorded statements by Russell and his mother. Notes from undated conversations appear in another document, describing Lloyd's funeral, their belief that Lloyd would not have committed a burglary, and the information Lawyer Hobbs had received from Howard Mallloy and Arthur Moore about what they had witnessed. The funeral took place on April 2; those conversations took place after that date. Tartar was also assigned to do a "Social and Economical History of the Hobbs Family," submitting a page and a half summarizing the family's origins in Virginia and life in New York City.

Tartar contacted the two eyewitnesses identified to him by Lloyd's father, Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore. He met with the men at 213 West 128th Street, the apartment building in which they both lived, and recorded "their story." That document is dated April 5, but Tartar's signature is dated April 4. Both dates provided sufficient time for the MCCH staff to organize the men's presence at the hearing on April 7.

A second strand of the investigation included Tartar gathering information from a variety of law enforcement sources. His records include notes on a series of interviews conducted on April 2. He spoke with ADA Saul Price, who told him he "that the officer had not been exonerated, due to the fact that he was waiting to hear the story from the Hobbs family, particularly Russell Hobbs." An interview with the police department's ballistic expert produced no information as he had not received the bullet that hit Lloyd. Tartar's visit to Harlem Hospital was more successful, as Dr. Steinholz shared the boy's chart, which the investigator copied. Sometime during the week he also visited the 28th Precinct, and recorded the contents of the police blotter, where officers recorded a summary of an arrest. Lieutenant Greenberg read him that material as at that time there was no definite understanding between the Commission and the police department with regards to taking transcripts of confidential police records, he later informed Frazier. That information appears in the records in the Hays Papers; however, there was no record of the interview with Inspector Di Martini that he mentioned in his testimony to the MCCH hearing on April 7. At that time he made a copy of a report by the commander of the 28th Precinct, Captain George Mulholland, "The shooting of prisoner by Patrolman," submitted to Commissioner Valentine on March 30, immediately after the death of Lloyd Hobbs. Tartar's notes did mention the report as being incorporated in his records but it was not in the files in the Hays Papers (a transcription appeared in the transcript of the MCCH hearing on April 20). Tartar was among those who testified at the MCCH's April 6 public hearing, recounting his interview with ADA Price and introducing a copy of the report from the 28th Precinct to Commissioner Valentine so Hays could have details in it contradicted by Russell Hobbs and the three eyewitnesses, Malloy, Moore, and Samuel Pitts.

Hays announced plans to continue hearing evidence about the killing of Lloyd Hobbs at his subcommittee's next public hearing, in two weeks. However, those plans were overtaken by grand jury hearing on April 10, which led Hays to focus on having witnesses who appeared before the grand jury testify in a public hearing. The only further investigation Tartar did before the April 20 hearing was to interview the owners of the businesses on the same block as the automobile supply store, and draw a sketch of the storefronts on the block, to obtain information on when their windows were broken and what losses they suffered. Both those documents are dated April 20, the day of the MCCH hearing. The information they contained provided some support for testimony that the automobile supply store's windows were broken before Hobbs arrived, by Malloy and Moore on April 20 (and by another eyewitness, Marshall Pfifer, on May 18).

After the hearing on April 20, Tartar made further attempts to identify eyewitnesses and "to get information concerning the whereabouts of the stolen items." An interview with ADA Price confirmed that McInerney brought the horn and socket set to the DA's office on April 1st, while a visit to the property clerk's office at police headquarters revealed that those items were not delivered there until April 8, 1935. That meant that the patrolman had those items in his possession for nineteen days after the shooting. There are no records of those investigations in Hays' files; Tartar mentioned them in his narrative summary. Hays relied on Tartar's investigation when he questioned Detective O'Brien about where the horn and socket set had been when the officer produced them at the MCCH public hearing on May 18.

Three additional eyewitnesses also testified in the MCCH hearing on May 18. Tartar reported that they had been found as a result of a survey of the neighborhood, implying that he had found them. However, at the hearing, Clarence Wilson testified that he had obtained the addresses of two witnesses from Lawyer Hobbs at the request of a member of the MCCH. One did not respond when called on, but Wilson encountered another man who was an eyewitness, Marshall Pfifer, when looking for John Bennett, the second witness. Bennett was too sick to attend the hearing, so Wilson recounted what he had seen. Warren Wright, the third man, provided no details of how he had been found.

The evidence heard at the May 18 hearing was presented to the grand jury on June 10. Tartar claimed a prominent role in ADA Saul Price's decision to re-examine the case in the narrative of his investigation. After being notified by inspector Di Martini that he was resubmitting the case to the district attorney, Tartar attended the conference in the district attorney's office about the case and 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 arrangement set up by Hays. After hearing from Bennett, Hughes, Pfifer, and Wright, Price agreed to take the case to the grand jury again. Tartar himself also testified in the grand jury hearing. 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." Tartar clearly spoke to journalists from 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.

Tartar recounted 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. Tartar, with E. Franklin Frazier, attended the hearing when it took place, on June 14. The account in his narrative summary was the only source of information on the hearing, which went unreported in the press.
Preparation for the public hearing on April 6 The report of the secretary for March 30th to April 5th contained less detail of the staff’s investigative work than Carter’s first report. The one activity that was included was that “Investigations were made of the facts in the Hobbs case and witnesses interviewed in order that this case might be heard at the hearing of the Commission on the events of March 19th, on Saturday.” Hays had written to Eunice Carter on April 1 asking to "have our investigators find out all they can about [the Hobbs case]" and to have the Hobbs family attend the next hearing, on April 6. Carter assigned the investigation to James Tartar, a Black staff member who had sought witnesses to the causes of the disorder the previous week. Copies of his reports are in both the Hays Papers and the records of Mayor La Guardia, and a narrative summary is in the Frazier papers. He interviewed the Hobbs family "as the first source," complied a "social and economic history of the family" and took statements from Russell and his mother. He also learned from Lawyer Hobbs that he had been contacted by two eyewitnesses, Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore. Tartar met with the men at 213 West 128th Street, the apartment building in which they both lived, and recorded "their story." On April 2, Tartar also spoke with ADA Saul Price, who told him he "that the officer had not been exonerated, due to the fact that he was waiting to hear the story from the Hobbs family, particularly Russell Hobbs." An interview with the police department's ballistic expert produced no information as he had not received the bullet that hit Lloyd. Tartar's visit to Harlem Hospital was more successful, as Dr. Steinholz shared the boy's chart, which the investigator copied. An additional interview with Inspector Di Martini not in Tartar's report but mentioned in his testimony in the MCCH hearing allowed him to make a copy of a report to Commissioner Valentine from commander of the 28th Precinct, Captain George Mulholland, on the subject of "The shooting of prisoner by Patrolman."

Hyman Glickstein, an attorney at Hays' law firm, undertook the work of gathering other evidence for the hearing. Copies of his correspondence are in both the Hays Papers and the records of Mayor La Guardia. It indicated that the investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs was part of a shift in the subcommittee’s focus from the events of March 19 to police misconduct and brutality, which Hays described in the MCCH meeting on April 5. Letters dated April 2 to Inspector Di Martini and Commissioner Valentine, the district attorney, and the medical examiner and Harlem Hospital asked for the records of six cases. Four cases involved men who died during the disorder, Hobbs and James Thompson, Andrew Lyons, and August Miller. Questions about those cases had been raised during the testimony of Captain Rothengast at the hearing on March 30. The other two cases 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 whom 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.

Glickstein also wrote to the ILD lawyers James Tauber and Edward Kuntz and James Ford, Robert Minor, and Carl Brodsky of the Communist Party seeking more cases, “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 at the hearing. The requests continued the collaboration with the Communists that Hays had initiated the previous week. The Communist Party at some point sent the MCCH the "Cases of Police Brutality, Discrimination and Mistreatment of Negroes in Harlem" in the Hays Papers. While that list of seventeen cases included 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, it mostly consisted of clashes with police at Communist Party meetings and protests. Moreover, 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.”

The 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. 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. At the beginning of the hearing, Hays read Dodge's letter to Commissioner Valentine, and his brief letter to Glickstein, the MCCH attorney, summarizing what he had instructed the Commissioner, so those in attendance would know why police did not testify.

Although there was no record of efforts to secure their attendance, during the hearing Hays sought testimony from three women and one man listed as witnesses for the previous hearing who had not testified, Mrs. Jackson, Ida Hengain, Effie Diton and Mr. [Fred] Campbell, and from Steve Urban of the Kress store. Battle had said early in the day that he would get Effie Diton to the hearing, but clearly was unable to do so. Hays also tried on the day of the hearing to secure the testimony of two more witnesses to events in the Kress store. During the hearing, James Tauber of the ILD requested a letter be sent Mrs. Williams of 2010 7th Ave, with the text of the letter read in the hearing. At some point on that day, a similar letter was sent to Mrs. DePass of 460 West 147th Street.