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

Margaret Mitchell arrested

Officer Johnson of the 6th Division arrested Margaret Mitchell, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, inside Kress’ 5, 10 and 25c store, sometime around 5.00 PM on March 19.  Police alleged that she was “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect,” according to Inspector Di Martini’s report on the disorder. Pots and pans, and glasses, were knocked off counters and women screamed, after the store was closed and police tried to clear out those inside, Jackson Smith, the store manager (7), Patrolman Timothy Shannon (54), and Louise Thompson (22-23) all testified. Only Thompson described the circumstances that produced that noise, most fully in New Masses. After a woman she could not see screamed, Thompson joined part of the crowd who rushed to where the noise came from, the rear of the store. Police there pushed that crowd back and refused to answer when women asked “if the boy was injured and where he is,” Thompson wrote in New Masses. The officers also “began to get rough.” A woman with an umbrella retaliated; she either hit an officer, according to Thompson’s testimony (22), or “knocked over a pile of pots and pans,” according to her article. Many of those in the store left once the noise and struggles with police began, both Thompson (22) and Smith (7) testified. Thompson remained with the woman she described knocking over pots and pans, who was not arrested, but she was clearly not the only person who knocked over merchandise in efforts to remain in the store until they had information about Rivera. Mitchell could also have been the woman whose scream drew Thompson and others to the rear of the store.

Margaret Mitchell appeared in many newspaper stories about what happened in Kress’ store, but almost all truncated the extended standoff between the Black women and store staff and police into a rapid sequence of events, in the process mistaking what Mitchell was alleged to have done and when she was arrested. [HN] reported that Mitchell “attempted to take the Rivera boy from the department store detectives and cried cut that the guards were beating the youth.” La Prensa also reported Mitchell trying to intervene (Racial conflict Will be Investigated). Although the HN went on to claim that Mitchell was the first person arrested, neither Hurley nor Donohue mentioned a woman being part of their struggles with Rivera, and Donahue testified he did not arrest anyone while at Kress’ store. AA, AN, NYEJ (and NYT on 3/24) reported that Mitchell was arrested after she screamed when the boy was being beaten. However, NYT, DN, Am, NYP, PT, AW, HT, DW did not specify when she screamed (or spread rumors in case of NYT or was “a leader of the disturbance” in the HT) – although the (Am, NYP, and DN) did elsewhere in their stories mention an unnamed woman running into street screaming at the time Rivera was grabbed. The NYS alone specified that Mitchell’s actions came later: “The woman whose cries that the boy had been murdered, rekindled the vandalism after the police had succeeded in quenching it earlier in the evening, is Margaret Mitchell, 18, of 283 West 150th street.” The next day, in reporting Mitchell’s arraignment in the Harlem Magistrate’s Court, the Home News combined its description of her trying to intervene when Rivera was grabbed with the later events mentioned in Di Martini’s report. While reiterating that she “attempted to take the Rivera boy from the department store detectives and cried cut that the guards were beating the youth,” the story added that after Rivera had been taken to the basement, she “urging other colored people in the store to demand the release of the boy, started throwing merchandise to the floor and upset many of the counter displays.” Inspector Di Martini's report, while containing few details of events in the store, did distinguish Mitchell from the woman who reacted to Rivera, whose actions he located slightly later than the newspaper stories, "upon the arrival of the ambulance [to treat Hurley and Urban]," when the "unknown female screamed that the boy had been seriously injured or killed and otherwise caused a commotion which attracted a large number of persons." Mitchell's arrest came later, after which "this commotion was soon quieted."

The more specific allegation of “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect” was recorded in the Police blotter as “Disorderly in Kresses 5 & 10c Store.” That language echoed the charge made against Mitchell, disorderly conduct. She appeared in lists of those arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in the AA etc, the NYEJ, Am and DN. Arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Mitchell was remanded in custody by Magistrate Renaud. The Times Union reported that she “denied hysterically she participated in the rioting. She stood up from the witness chair screaming, then collapsed.” No other newspapers included this scene.

Mitchell returned to the court on March 23, when Magistrate Renaud convicted her of disorderly conduct. In passing sentence Renaud commented that “he did not believe the girl acted maliciously,” the NYT and NYA reported. The sentence reflected that assessment: three days in the Workhouse or a fine of $10.  Mitchell was the only person convicted during the disorder who paid a fine. She was also one of the few to be represented by a lawyer, in her case Sidney Christian, a prominent West Indian attorney.

The lawyer was likely obtained with the help of Mitchell’s father, Thomas E. Thompson. A West Indian immigrant who had arrived in New York City in 1895, Thompson had been a postal worker for thirty-five years at the time of his daughter’s arrest, and an office holder in the Prince Hall Masons. He and his family were among the earliest Black residents of Harlem, recorded in the 1910 census living in 55 West 137th Street. While not featuring on the social pages as Sidney Christian did, Thompson would have had the resources and the standing in the West Indian community to have known of and involved the lawyer. Mitchell, one of the youngest of Thompson's twelve children, had married in April 1934, and at the time of the disorder lived with her husband, David Mitchell, a handyman in an apartment building, at 287 West 150th Street. That she was in a store twenty-five blocks south of her home indicated the distance from which the businesses on West 125th Street drew their customers.

As the only person arrested in Kress’ store, and named in newspaper stories about the disorder, Mitchell was one of the few identifiable sources of information about the beginnings of the disorder for the MCCH. However, when Lt. Battle called at her home and requested that she be at the public hearing, “she refused to come.” (March 30 16) Asked again about her testimony three weeks later, Battle reiterated that "she absolutely refuses to come to this hearing." (148)

Margaret Mitchell and her husband still lived in the same apartment when the census enumerator called in 1940. In January 1945, she was part of 200 family and friends celebrating her parents 50th wedding anniversary, photographed alongside her siblings in an image published in the New York Amsterdam News. Her husband David was not part of the celebration; he was a sergeant in the U.S. military serving overseas, as were two of Mitchell’s brothers and four nephews.

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