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Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted (Part 2)
Stories in the New York Evening Journal, Home News, La Prensa, and Daily Worker misidentified Hurley and Urban as store detectives. None mentioned the store detective, Smith, perhaps because he was not bitten and therefore not identified in any official records. He may also have been confused with Jackson Smith, the store manager. Many stories gave the manager a larger role than he played, involved in grabbing Rivera and making the decision to release him with Rivera in this office. That expanded role came at the expense not only of the store detective but also the police. Only the Daily News, and a vague statement in the New York Post story of what Rivera said mentioned that officers were at the store. The Daily News included only Eldridge, misidentifying him as the officer who released Rivera. Rivera said “two policeman came in” after he bit the men, the New York Post reported. The New York Evening Journal, Daily News, Atlanta World, and Philadelphia Tribune stories quoting Rivera omitted that statement.
Several newspaper stories included a Black woman interceding or screaming when the store staff grabbed Rivera, which some accounts claimed precipitated broader disorder. The statements of those on the scene suggest any outcry came when Donohue and Urban took Rivera into the basement. Rivera testified in the public hearing that a woman screamed “They’re going to take him down the cellar and beat him up!” While Hurley made no mention of that scream, L. F. Cole, a thirty-year-old Black clerk, did testify that when he saw Donohue and Urban taking Rivera to the basement “a woman made a statement that the boy had been struck.” Cole's choice not to describe the woman as screaming suggests the possibility that the woman simply called out, with the gendered language of the press rendering any shouting by a woman as a scream. "They're beating that boy! They're killing him!" were the “screams” reported by the New York Evening Journal. Speeding up events, the New York American, New York Post, and Atlanta World, and the New Republic, describe the woman as running into the street, screaming "Kress beat a colored boy! Kress Beat a colored boy!" according to the New York American. The New York Sun made this response collective: “Emotional Negro women shouted that the boy was being beaten and this information was quickly relayed to the curious crowds which had gathered in front of the store.” Rather than reacting, the woman intervened in the narrative presented in Home News and La Prensa, and was pushed aside by Hurley, after which she screamed.
Margaret Mitchell was identified as the woman who reacted to Rivera being grabbed in the New York Evening Journal, Home News, Philadelphia Tribune, and La Prensa (and later in stories about those arrested in the New York Amsterdam News, Afro-American, New York Post, and New York Times). Here journalists with a truncated timeline of events were assuming that as she was arrested in Kress’ store it must have been when Rivera was grabbed. However, Donahue told the public hearing he had not made an arrest, and none of the store staff mentioned an arrest at this time. The circumstances of Mitchell's arrest recorded by police, the testimony of Louise Thompson, and the New York Sun story suggest that it took place after the store was closed, as police tried to clear out the women who remained inside, with an officer named Johnson making the arrest. Similarly, in describing customers struggling with Hurley and Urban or attacking displays as Rivera was taken away, the narratives of the New York Sun, La Prensa, and the Home News collapsed together events that took place at different times. Testimony in the public hearings identified that struggle as coming later, when Kress’ manager decided to close the store and police cleared out those inside.
Several newspapers also published statements by Rivera made either at the West 123rd Street station after Eldridge, awoken at 1:30 AM, had located him and brought him to a police station around 2:00 AM, or in his home the next day that provided more details of what happened before and when he was grabbed than the broad narratives. The New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Post, New York Sun, Atlanta World, and Philadelphia Tribune quoted Rivera at the police station describing biting the men and the threat to beat him that had precipitated that struggle. In an ANS agency photograph of Rivera standing with Lt. Battle taken at that time, journalists can be seen taking notes. It’s not clear if they questioned Rivera directly, or recorded answers he gave to police officers: the Daily News reported his statements as told to Deputy Chief Inspector Frances Kear, the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun reported he talked to Captain Richard Oliver, and the New York Herald Tribune quoted Eldridge rather than Rivera. The New York Evening Journal story also mentioned the reporter speaking with Rivera. The New York World-Telegram and New York Herald Tribune published stories quoting statements made by Rivera at this home later on March 20; a New York American story combined statements from the station and at his home. The information that before entering Kress', Rivera had gone to Brooklyn looking for work, having left high school six months earlier, that his mother needed help because his father was dead, was reported in the interviews published in the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. His father's death was also reported in La Prensa and the Brooklyn Citizen. Only the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, and New York Sun reported that Rivera went to a show after returning from Brooklyn. Only La Prensa reported that Rivera had a job when he first left school. That interview with Rivera in his home focused on emphasizing his lack of responsibility for the disorder and willingness to try to pacify the crowds had he been asked, and contained no details of what had happened in the store as he did not want to talk about them. That focus was in line with La Prensa's concern to distance Puerto Rican residents from the disorder. Rivera gave an account of what happened in the store again when he appeared in the Adolescents Court on March 23 for inserting slugs in a subway turnstile before the disorder, in answer to questions from the magistrate.
The MCCH public hearings elicited more details of the assault, with Rivera, the two police officers, and Hurley all testifying, together with Jackson Smith, the store manager. Provided in five separate hearings spread over nearly six weeks, that testimony described the roles of Officers Donahue and Eldridge, which were missing from the initial newspaper reports. Few newspapers included these new details in their stories about the hearings. The most extensively reported hearing was the first, on March 30, in which Donahue testified. A majority of newspapers highlighted Donahue’s decision to release Rivera through the rear of the store rather than in view of concerned customers as a mistake, with several reporting that Donahue had admitted that mistake. However, the hearing transcript did not include such a statement. Instead, it was Edward Kuntz, one of the ILD lawyers in the audience, who offered that assessment while questioning the officer. After Donahue testified that crowds on 125th Street caused him to take Rivera into the store, Kuntz commented, “If you had let the boy go at that time there would not have been any excitement.” Eldridge and Hurley did not testify until three weeks later, and Jackson Smith until two weeks after that, when they were not given any attention in the briefer newspaper stories about those hearings.
This page references:
- "1 Dead, 7 Shot, 100 Hurt as Harlem Crowds Riot over Boy, 16, and Hearse," New York Herald Tribune, March 20, 1935, 1.
- "5 Dying and Scores Wounded as Race Riots in Harlem Subside," Home News, March 20, 1935 [clipping].
- [Photograph] "Lino Rivera with Police Lieutenant Samuel J. Battle and a group of newspaper reporters...," March 20, 1935, ANS Photo.
- "Snipers Fire on Police from Harlem Rooftop," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 20, 1935, 1, 2.
- "Police Still on Riot Duty," New York Amsterdam News, March 30, 1935, 1, 2.
- "Mobs Rove Harlem After Riot; 1 Dead, 100 Hurt in Harlem Riot; Snipers Routed, Mobs Rove Area," New York World-Telegram, March 20, 1935, 1.
- Oakley Johnson, "The Truth about the Harlem Events of March 19: Article 1," The Daily Worker, March 29, 1935, 1.
- G. James Fleming, "700 Officers, 25 Radio Cars Quell Rioters," Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 23, 1935, 1, 2.
- "Trivial Incident Is Riot's Starting Spark," Atlanta World, March 24, 1935, 1.
- Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 22, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- Percy Gould, "20,000 Fight Police in Orgy of Looting," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 1.
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- Hamilton Basso, "The Riot in Harlem," The New Republic (April 3, 1935): 209.
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- Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 20, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- "Machine Guns Set Up in New York Streets. False Rumor Causes Death of One, Wounding of 50, and Looting of 300 Stores," Afro-American, March 23, 1935, 1.
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- "Boy—Cause of Riot, Says: DIDN’T KNOW I WAS STARTIN’ ANYTHING," New York American, March 21, 1935, 4.
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- Lorrin Thomas, Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Political Identity in Twentieth-Century New York City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 76-77.
- "Grabbing Knife Just a Whim to Riot Starter," New York Herald Tribune, March 21, 1935, 2.
- "One Dead, Scores Hurt in N. Y. Riot," Chicago Defender, March 23, 1935, 1.
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- "False Report Held Cause of Harlem Race Riot," Pittsburgh Courier, March 23, 1935, 1.
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- "Harlem Race Riot: 1 Dead; Cops Fire; Women Join Mob of 4,000 in Battering Stores," Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3.
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- "'Let's Beat Hell Out of him,' Boy Charges Clerks Menaced Him," Philadelphia Tribune, March 21, 1935, 19.
- "Communists Blamed for Bitter Feud," Indianapolis Recorder, March 23, 1935, 1.
- "2d Victim Dead in Harlem Riot," New York Sun, March 23, 1935, 11.
- "Trouble Flares Anew as Officers Discover Snipers on Roof Trying to Pick Off Lone Cop - Man Falls to Street During Raid," Brooklyn Citizen, March 20, 1935 [clipping].
- "Twelve-Year Old Lad Starts Riot On 125th Street," New York Age, March 23, 1935, 1.
- Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 4, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- "Youth Accused in Harlem Riot in Court Here," Brooklyn Citizen, March 22, 1935, 1.
- Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 8, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives)
- "Harlem Upset; Hundreds Riot," Atlanta World, March 21, 1935, 1.