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

Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 187.

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Members of the MCCH (13) 129 plain 2024-02-14T18:09:26+00:00
Most newspapers reported in the same edition both the statement that Mayor La Guardia released on the morning of March 20 and had distributed in Harlem and his afternoon announcement of whom he had appointed to the Commission. Only the appointment of eleven committee members was reported in the Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, while their names were included in the Home News, New York World-Telegram, and Atlanta World. The New York Age published the names of only the six Black members, while the Afro-American only identified the office holders, Roberts, Villard, and Carter, and Hays. The names and the occupations provided in the mayor’s press statement were published in the Daily Mirror, New York American, New York Times, Daily Worker, and the New York Amsterdam News. The New York Post and the Norfolk Journal and Guide combined that occupational information with information on the political affiliations of each member. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun published more extended biographies of all eleven members.

La Guardia announced the members had been selected “because of their distinct contributions in their several fields,” according to a story in the New York Sun. He would later say that the appointments had been made "by advice,” according to the New York Age. There was no direct evidence of who offered La Guardia that advice. That it had not come from the leaders of Harlem’s social organizations was clear from the pointed request that James Hubert, the executive director of the Urban League, made to the mayor in a letter on March 26, “that in the future you will avail yourself of such assistance as is very easily obtained in Harlem and other Negro sections of the City to the end that whatever is undertaken may be accomplished as I know you desire the work to be done.” Instead, La Guardia appeared to have relied on those with whom he had political ties. Hubert Delany was likely one source of advice. La Guardia, who had appointed him tax commissioner, treated him “as an unofficial ombudsman for the black community” according to historian Thomas Kessner. (Delany was a member of the NAACP). The NAACP did send La Guardia a list of names on March 20 that included three of those appointed — Hays, Ernst, and Carter — but there is no evidence to confirm that the Mayor received that list before announcing the Commission members. Historian Stephen Carter argued that Eunice Hunton Carter may have been appointed in recognition of her willingness to run for a state assembly seat for La Guardia’s Republican-Fusion party the previous year. He noted that the party machine “had a tradition of finding places for candidates willing to run in tough cases against incumbents.” An Associated Negro Press story published in the Norfolk Journal and Guide attributed Carter’s subsequent appointment to Thomas Dewey’s team of special prosecutors going after the Mob to that obligation.

La Guardia subsequently added two additional members, a Black clergyman and a white clergyman. Only the New York Amsterdam News reported those appointments, suggesting that the mayor's office did not announce them in press statements. The appointment of Rev. John W. Robinson, the retired pastor of St. Mark's, the city's largest AME church, was foreshadowed in newspaper stories about the mayor's visit to the Interdenominational Preachers Meeting of Greater New York and Vicinity on March 25. Robinson led that group. After their complainants about La Guardia's failure to appoint a minister, the mayor indicated he would consider appointing a nominee of the meeting. Stories in the Home News, New York Times, and New York World-Telegram and in the New York Amsterdam News and New York Age reported that the meeting chose Robinson. Evidence of an indirect political connection that may have made La Guardia receptive to that suggestion appeared in a New York Amsterdam News story on the couple's wedding: Robinson’s second wife, pharmacist Dr. Julia Coleman, was active in the Republican Party in Harlem.

That La Guardia told the Interdenominational Preachers Meeting that he would also appoint a second clergyman “chosen from a denomination not included in the Alliance” was reported only in the New York Age. It took until April 4, almost a week after Robinson's appointment, for the mayor to finalize that choice: Father McCann of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church on West 141st Street. The New York Amsterdam News made McCann's appointment the headline of the story it published on April 6 about the MCCH hearing. McCann had appeared in earlier newspaper stories as a result of a pastoral letter he made public on March 23 blaming Communists for the disorder and calling for a movement to keep them out of Harlem. The priest's anti-communism offered La Guardia a way to address those who had criticized those he had appointed as all liberals. However, La Guardia had clearly also decided the second clergyman on the committee should be Catholic as he had sought the advice of Edmund B. Butler, a prominent Catholic lawyer who was secretary of the city’s Emergency Relief Bureau, about whom to appoint immediately after he met with the Black ministers. Butler wrote to him the next day, to give him McCann’s name, which he had been unable to think of at that time: “He has always been very much interested in Negroes and volunteered for the work….I think that the appointment of him would be excellent.” A note on the letter recorded, “Father McCann is white,” likely another criteria for his selection given that the committee had two more Black members than white members after Robinson’s appointment. Several days later, on April 1, Butler spoke to La Guardia about McCann, after which he told the clergyman that La Guardia was going to appoint him. On April 4, La Guardia wrote to notify Roberts that he had appointed Father McCann. Even after the Communist Party wrote to both the MCCH and the Mayor to complain about McCann's appointment on April 25, the Daily Worker did not report it.

In the historical literature, only Lindsey Lupo identified all thirteen the members of the MCCH, in a chart that described their occupations in two or three words. Cheryl Greenberg named Delaney, Randolph, and, inexplicably, Cullen as examples of the "impressive range of experts" that La Guardia had appointed, also mistakenly including Frazier as a member of the commission. Naison only identified the number of "representative citizens" appointed, which he stated was eleven, neglecting the later appointments of Robinson and McCann. Johnson also mistakenly identified the MCCH as an eleven-member commission, without identifying any of the members. Kessner mentioned only Roberts, the chair, as did Watson.

Information on the attendance of the MCCH members at their meetings and public hearings was collated by their staff. The MCCH included its own appraisal of each members contribution to its work in the foreword of the version of its report it submitted to Mayor La Guardia. Who signed, and thereby endorsed the report of the subcommittee on crime and the MCCH's final report, was documented in the MCCH records.
Black members:
Eunice Hunton Carter
- Press statement: “social worker and lawyer"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Lawyer and social worker, holds degrees from Smith College and Columbia and Fordham Universities, Republican-Fusion candidate for Assembly from 19th Manhattan District in 1934"
- New York Post: “lawyer and social worker and Fusion political leader”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a social worker, lawyer and leader in every important progressive movement in the community, who knows Harlem in its gladness and sorrow"
- Meeting Attendance: 17
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (missed May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Countee Cullen
- Press statement: "author"
- New York Herald Tribune: "poet, graduate of New York University; contributor to magazines and newspapers and winner of several poetry awards"
- New York Post: “the poet”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a young Negro pedagogue and poet, brought to the commission the point of view of the youth"
- Meeting Attendance: 11
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (missed May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Hubert T. Delany
- Press statement: "Tax Commissioner of the City of New York"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Negro, lawyer, graduate of the College of the City of New York and New York University Law School, Assistant United States Attorney under former United States Attorney Charles H. Tuttle, Republican candidate for House of Representatives from 21st Manhattan District in 1920. Commissioner of Board of Taxes and Assessments by appointment of Mayor LaGuardia in February 1934."
- New York Post: “lawyer and Republican leader"
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "Commissioner of Taxes and Assessments of the City of New York, was well-qualified to anlayze the employment situation in Harlem. Mr Delany, a lawyer and former public official, was well-equipped to analyze the problem of unemployment with as little intellectual bias as anyone in the community."
- Meeting Attendance: 12
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed May 4, May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
A. Philip Randolph
- Press statement: "Natl. President, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters"
- New York Herald Tribune: "general organizer and president of National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, attended College of City of New York, founder of a magazine, 'The Messenger'"
- New York Post: “president of the National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a great leader in the labor movement displayed his keen sense of understanding as President of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Mr Randolph brought to the Commission a greater understanding of labor problems as they affect the Negroes than any other man that could be found in the community. Harlem respects and admires A. Philip Randolph."
- Meeting Attendance: 7
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
- Reports signed: MCCH report (not in New York when the Subcommittee report was submitted)
Charles Roberts
- Press statement: "dentist"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Negro, dentist, graduate of Lincoln University, Republican candidate for House of Representatives from 21st District in 1924, member of Board of Aldermen, 1931-1933"
- New York Post: “dentist, Republican leader and former Alderman”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "selected for the reason that he has lived in the community of Harlem for over a quarter of a century. His life has been devoted to the development of the social, economic and cultural advancement of the community, both as a former public official and as a professional man. His unquestioned interest and knowledge of the community needs make him an outstanding representative of Harlem."
- Meeting Attendance: 20
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Rev. John Robinson
- No press statement or newspaper stories about his appointment
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a representative of the Interdenominational Ministers Alliance, symbolizes the opinion of Negro clergymen of Harlem. It is useless to state the churches of Harlem exercise the most vitalizing influence that can be found in this area."
- Meeting Attendance: 13
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Charles Toney
- Press statement: "Municipal Court"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Justice of Municipal Court; graduate of Syracuse University, Tammany Democrat"
- New York Post: "justice of the Municipal Court and Democratic political leader”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a Justice of the Municipal Court of the City of New York, was of great assistance in that by reason of his experience in what is known as the poor man's court, brought a legal understanding to the commission that was valuable."
- Meeting Attendance: 13
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 1 (missed April 6, April 20, May 4, May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
White members:
Morris L. Ernst
- Press statement: "lawyer;" “writer and publisher” in the Daily Mirror and New York American
- New York Herald Tribune: "lawyer, graduate of Columbia University, member of American Civil Liberties Union, counsel in many liberal causes, represented Mrs. Margaret Sanger, birth-control advocate; mediator in recent taxicab strike by appointment of Mayor LaGuardia"
- New York Post: "of the Civil Liberties Union,” and grouped with Hays
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "an eminent attorney, did yeoman service relative to the housing situation"
- Meeting Attendance: 6
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 2 (missed April 20, May 4, May 18)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime
John J. Grimley
- Press statement: "doctor"
- New York Herald Tribune: "physician, lieutenant-colonel of 369th Infantry, National Guard of New York, crack Negro regiment"
- New York Post: “lieutenant-colonel of the Negro 369th Infantry, National Guard”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "brought to the Commission intimate contact with the manhood of Harlem through his experience as commanding officer of the 369th Infantry. Col. Grimley also rendered technical advice relative to the problem of health, having spent years as superintendent and director of various hospitals."
- Meeting Attendance: 5
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (recorded as missing May 18, but was referred to as present in transcript)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime
Arthur Garfield Hays
- Press statement: "lawyer"
- New York Herald Tribune: "Lawyer, graduate of Columbia University, counsel to American Civil Liberties Union, appeared as defense counsel in many cases involving civil liberties - coal strike in Pennsylvania, 1922; Scopes evolution trial in Tennessee, 1925; Countess Cathcart immigration case; Sacco-Vanzetti case in 1927, and most recently in defense of John Strachey, English lecturer threatened with deportation"
- New York Post: “of the Civil Liberties Union,” and grouped with Ernst
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a champion of civil liberties, conducted with astuteness and patience the public hearings concerning the police and their treatment of Harlem. The information so adduced was of invaluable worth to the study."
- Meeting Attendance: 12
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5 (chair)
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Father McCann
- No press statement or newspaper stories about his appointment
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "represented the Catholic opinion of the community"
- Meeting Attendance: 5
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed March 30 [not appointed at that time], May 18)
- Reports signed: Neither
William J. Schieffelin
- Press statement: "Trustee of the Tuskegee Institute”
- New York Herald Tribune: "Chemist, graduate of Columbia School of Mines and University of Munich, chairman of Citizens Union, trustee of Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute, schools for the education of Negroes"
- New York Post: “chairman of the Citizen's Union and of Tuskegee Institute, the Negro university”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "a trustee of Tuskegee Institute, a contributor and benefactor of the Negro race, a director of the Citizen's Union, and an exponent of social justice, contributed calm understanding of the perplexing problems that this committee dealt with."
- Meeting Attendance: 9
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed May 4, May 18)
- Reports signed: MCCH report (not in New York when the subcommittee report was submitted)
Oswald Garrison Villard
- Press statement: "publisher"
- New York Herald Tribune: "owner of 'The Nation'; graduate of Harvard University, liberal crusader, grandson of William Lloyd Garrison, founder of 'The Liberator,' and apostle of abolition of slavery"
- New York Post: “editor of the Nation”
- Foreword to the MCCH report: "former editor and owner of a metropolitan daily, former professor at Harvard University and contributing editor to the Nation, a member of the NAACP, writer and lecturer, a keen student of American social problem, not excepting the oftern referred to Negro problem, brought a wealth of understanding and experience. It has been said of Mr Villard that his merciless scrutiny and analysis make him one of the foremost social philosophers of America."
- Meeting Attendance: 12
- Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
- Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report
Two men speak to a crowd & Patrolman Irwin Young assaulted Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white man in his senior year at City College, was walking along West 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues about 6:00 PM, he told a public hearing of the MCCH, when he noticed groups of “excited” people “milling around the street.” While Gordon claimed to have been simply passing by, it seems likely he was one of the Communist Party members who came to Kress’ store in response to rumors a boy had been attacked. He did identify himself at the hearing as a member of the New York Students League, a Communist-led organization. Gordon gave his address as 699 Prospect Avenue in the Bronx.

Gordon testified that he asked several people on the street what was happening, but he “couldn’t get anything at all from them.” He then saw a Black man, James Parton, set up a ladder in front of Kress' store and briefly speak to the crowd before Daniel Miller stepped up to speak. A window then smashed and police officers immediately seized Miller. Other officers chased Gordon and other people who had been listening to Miller across West 125th Street to the opposite sidewalk and then pushed them away from the store, east toward 7th Avenue. About 300 feet from Kress’ store, Gordon estimated, Parton climbed a lamppost and again spoke to those on the street, saying “that a boy had been killed and that a crowd should gather in protest,” according to Gordon’s testimony. Then he climbed the lamppost, intending, he told a public hearing, “to get a committee from the crowd” “to go to the police to find out if a child was killed.” He was only able to say “Friends” before Patrolman Irwin Young pulled him down from the lamppost. Gordon’s alleged assault on Young came when he “grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer,” according to a story in the New York Times. That story was the only source that mentioned the nature of the assault in reporting Gordon’s second appearance in the Magistrates Court. After arresting Gordon, Young and other officers dragged him to a police radio car and drove him to the police station on West 123rd Street.

Lists of the injured variously described the injuries Young suffered as “cuts on hands,” in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal, “lacerations of right hand” in the New York Herald Tribune, and "bruised on the hand" in the New York American. No version represented a sufficient injury to constitute a felony assault, which was the charge police initially made against Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune reported Young received medical treatment at the scene, but when Gordon’s lawyer cross-examined him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, Young testified that he did not go to a doctor or the hospital, Gordon told the public hearing. Young did not appear in the hospital records, as the other police officers injured around this time did, confirmation of those statements. Moreover, Young was back on the streets by 10:10 PM, when he arrested Leroy Gillard at 200 West 128th Street, allegedly for looting. He was the first police officer allegedly assaulted in the disorder; five others would be assaulted around 125th Street before 10:30 PM, after which time the crowds had moved to other parts of the neighborhood.

Gordon denied he assaulted Young. He was grabbed from behind, he testified in a public hearing of the MCCH, and then “a rain of blows descended on me such that I have never experienced before" against which he could do nothing. Louise Thompson, part of the crowd on 125th Street, offered a more detailed account, although as a member of the Communist Party, she was not an entirely disinterested observer. She described to a public hearing of the MCCH how “a cop kicked him, another knocked him over the head with his billy and another slapped him in the face and punched him in the ribs.” Thompson more clearly stated that Gordon did not assault Young when interviewed earlier by a reporter for the Daily Worker for a story published on the same day she testified in the public hearing: "I was standing a few feet from Harry Gordon when he was arrested. He did not strike any policeman. He did nothing.” In the same story in the Daily Worker, Gordon denied committing assault, implying that Young made the charge to justify his violence: “I did not strike any policeman. He struck me over the head with his club before I even saw him. He said, 'So you'll hit a cop, will you?' as he struck me.”

As was the case with events inside Kress’ store, testimony in the public hearings of the MCCH provided the most detailed evidence of the events outside the store in the early evening of March 19. Louise Thompson testified on March 30 and Harry Gordon on May 4. (Thompson only mentioned the first speaker, Miller, in her article in New Masses.) The MCCH subcommittee report and final report both describe a second person trying to speak in front of Kress who was arrested, without naming that person, but make no mention of his alleged assault on a police officer. More striking, Inspector Di Martini’s report names Gordon without mentioning an alleged assault on one of his officers. That report has no reference to Daniel Miller, presenting Gordon as the only person to speak in front of the store: “At about 7PM, one Harry Gordon, #699 Prospect Avenue arrived in front of Kress’ Store with a number of others carrying placards and made a speech to a group which was attracted and incited a number of colored persons to break windows of the store. He was immediately arrested by Ptl. Young #3203, 32nd Precinct.”

No newspaper stories explicitly reported the narrative in the MCCH hearings and reports, as they truncated events outside the store and presented Gordon, Daniel Miller, and the three Young Liberators who picketed the store as a single group arriving and acting together. Only some described Gordon as speaking, and only three of the initial stories about the disorder describe him as assaulting Young, in different circumstances that were both unlike what was described in the MCCH public hearings. Even later stories about Gordon’s first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court do not all mention the assault charge, and several describe him as picketing Kress’ store, not trying to speak to the crowd. When Gordon testified in a public hearing of the MCCH, newspaper stories described him speaking, and being arrested by Young, but omitted the context he provided for those events as coming after Miller had tried to speak and been arrested.

Only some newspapers described Gordon as speaking in front of the store. The New York Age accurately captured the event, if not its context: “Harry Gordon, white Communist, was arrested when Patrolman Young of the 123rd Street police station found him addressing a group. He was taken to the station house charged with inciting a riot.” The New York Post more briefly described Gordon, Miller, and the two other white men as having been arrested for “haranguing crowds, urging them to fight.” The Daily Mirror identified Gordon as a speaker, describing him as “a 'Red' orator,” but with no details of circumstances of his speaking or arrest. The New York World-Telegram included Gordon in a group obliquely described as being arrested for being “Communist agitators.”

Only three of the initial stories about the disorder described Gordon assaulting Young, in different circumstances that were unlike what was described in the MCCH public hearings. Gordon came to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, joined by the three Young Liberators, and battled Patrolman Shannon and two other officers before also being arrested, according to the New York American and New York Evening Journal. That story also mistakenly had Gordon picketing the store. The New York Times relocated the encounter between Gordon and Young to the rear of Kress’ store on West 124th Street. In the struggle between police and a crowd that took place there, the story reported, Young “was cut on the right hand by a rock” thrown by Gordon. That clash occurred around thirty minutes after Gordon was arrested, and involved officers other than Young being injured.

Later stories about Gordon’s first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court did not all mention the assault charge, and several described him as picketing Kress’ store, not trying to speak to the crowd. Gordon was described as charged with assault in the New York Sun, in a story about a line-up of those arrested, and in the New York American and New York Amsterdam News, which had him picketing the store. Four other papers did not mention the assault charge: the Daily Mirror described Gordon and the others grouped with him as “curb-stone orators who had deliberately incited the 125th St. mobs;” in the Home News, the charge was inciting a riot, for “making a speech in front of Kress’ store;” in the Daily News it was an unspecified “separate charge” from that made against the other men, which was inciting riot; and in the New York Evening Journal Gordon and three others were charged with “circulating false placards to the effect that a Negro boy had been beaten to death.” Gordon’s subsequent appearances in the Harlem Magistrates courts were generally not reported. Only the New York World-Telegram, Home News, and New York American mentioned his appearance on March 25, with no details of his alleged offense. The New York Times story of Gordon’s appearance on May 27 provided the only details of the assault, that he “grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer.” The New York Herald Tribune story on the same hearing not only made no mention of those details, but omitted the assault entirely and instead made Gordon only indirectly responsible for Young’s injuries: his speech telling the crowd “that a Negro boy had been killed in the store… so excited the neighborhood that Patrolman Irving Young, of the West 123d Street station, and several others were hurt in the ensuing riot.”

Stories about Gordon’s testimony in the MCCH public hearing on May 4 published in the New York Times, New York Age, and Associated Negro Press described him speaking, and being arrested by Young, but omitted the context he provided for those events as coming after Miller had tried to speak and been arrested. The New York American and Afro-American had an even narrower focus, mentioning only that Gordon alleged he had been beaten by police, with no description of the circumstances of his arrest. The only story about Gordon’s allegation published before the hearing was in the Daily Worker on March 30, reflecting his association with the Communist Party. Reporters for the New York Evening Journal had been unable to locate him. When the Daily Worker’s journalist spoke to Gordon, “his left eye [was] still black from the police beating more than a week ago.” However, in a Daily News photograph published on March 20 captioned as showing Gordon and the other men grouped with him by police, none of the men have visible injuries. As there are only three men, the image may be of the Miller and the Young Liberators without Gordon, perhaps around the time he was arraigned separately.

Harry Gordon did not appear in the MCCH's transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter; Claudio Viabolo, the Black Young Liberator, is the only one of the five speakers and picketers in that record. Gordon appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, shortly after the other white men arrested at the start of the disorder. Magistrate Renaud remanded him to reappear on March 25, and then again on March 27. While Miller and the three Young Liberators that police grouped with Gordon as the instigators of the riot were sent by the grand jury to the Court of Special Sessions, the ADA reduced the charge against Gordon to misdemeanor assault in the Magistrates Court, with his ILD lawyers claiming credit in the public hearing of the MCCH, as they had elicited testimony from Young that he had not needed medical treatment for his injury. Magistrate Renaud then transferred Gordon to the Court of Special Sessions. For some reason, the trial did not take place until November, when the judges convicted him.

In the narratives of historians Mark Naison, Cheryl Greenberg, Marilynn Johnson, Lorrin Thomas, and Nicole Watson, Gordon and Miller are grouped together as “speakers” pulled down by police. Historian Thomas Kessner named Miller in his narrative as the only speaker in front of the store. None of those historians mention Gordon's alleged assault of Young. They all follow the narrative provided by police that presents the speakers as part of a single group protesting in front of Kress’ store, stepping up to speak to the crowd after picketing of the store had begun. That framing implicitly introduces the idea that the disorder was orchestrated by those men, while offering no details of how the crowds of women and men around them acted to weigh against that evidence. Weight is added to that implication by the failure to fully identify the men involved in the protests. While Greenberg and Thomas do not identify the men, Naison, Kessner, Johnson, and Watson describe them as members of the Young Liberators. None of those historians mention that four of the five, and both the speakers arrested, were white men. Naison did describe the Young Liberators as an interracial group; so too did Watson, however she did not identify the men in front of the store as members of the Young Liberators. Neglecting their race makes those men appear more representative of the crowd than they were, particularly in Greenberg and Watson’s narratives, which do not identify them as Young Liberators. Naison, Kessner, Greenberg, Thomas, Johnson, and Watson all follow the chronology that has the picketing begin before the speakers were arrested. Grouping the men places an organized Communist protest at the center of the outbreak of disorder, and makes the window being broken and the men’s arrest a response to the feeling they built in the crowd. Recognizing that the protests occurred in a less coordinated way highlights that police responded immediately to any sign of protest, not just to a window being broken. They may also have acted so quickly because they recognized the men as Communists; the men’s language and appeals would have given them away. Communist protest in Harlem, and across the city, drew violent responses from police in the months prior to the disorder. Recognition of the fragmented nature of the protests and the identity of those involved directs attention away from those events to the crowds of Black men and women around them. Crowd members gathered in groups, talked amongst themselves, sought answers from police about what had happened to the boy, and responded to police efforts to clear the street. Rather than organized or orchestrated by the Young Liberators, those behaviors appear more spontaneous, in line with the interpretation offered in the MCCH’s final report.
Picketing in front of Kress' store Around 6:45 PM, three men arrived at the sidewalk of West 125th Street in front of Kress’ store carrying placards and began walking back and forth, picketing the store. A photograph published in the Daily News of the front of the store taken on March 21 shows the area the men would have walked, a wide sidewalk which would have allowed other people to still move past the store or gather in front of it.

About thirty minutes earlier, a window in the store had been broken as Daniel Miller had tried to speak from a ladder on the same stretch of sidewalk, after which he been arrested by Patrolman Timothy Shannon. The three men who walked the picket line were nineteen-year-old Sam Jameson and nineteen-year-old Murray Samuels, both unemployed white men, and Claudio Viabolo, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man. "We were picketing in front of the store. I heard that a child had been killed inside. I thought it ought to be called to the attention of the public, about the child being killed," an unnamed Black man, presumably Viabolo, explained when questioned the next day during a police line-up of those arrested reported in the New York Sun. However the signs the men carried referred to a beating not a killing, reading “Kress Brutally Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child and Negro Women. Negro and White Don’t Buy Here” and “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child."

Jackson Smith, the manager of Kress’ store, summoned to the front door earlier when James Parton had set up the stepladder that Miller climbed to speak, told a public hearing of the MCCH that he was still there when the three men began to picket. Louise Thompson testified in an earlier public hearing that she encountered the picketers on her return to the front of the store after being pushed east by police after the arrest of Miller, and witnessing the arrest of Harry Gordon about 300 feet from the store. Patrolman Timothy Moran, who had been stationed across West 125th Street from the store when the window was broken and Miller arrested, told a public hearing that “three other men with placards draped over their shoulders” arrived a few minutes after those events and began walking up and down in front of the store.

The police officers stationed at the store had been instructed to “keep the crowd moving in from of the store, Moran testified. They were likely standing in a similar location to those in the above photograph of Kress' store on March 21. An officer “told or asked [the men] to stop marching in front of Kress’” and when they did not leave “after about five minutes," police arrested them for unlawful assembly. Sgt. Bauer testified he was involved in the arrest, as again was Patrolman Shannon, who had arrested Miller and was recorded as the arresting officer. “The police took the placards and pushed the people carrying them into the vestibule,” Jackson Smith told a public hearing. By 7:00 PM, crowds around Kress’ store had been pushed to 8th and 7th avenues.

A second version of the placard that read “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child,” photographed for the Daily News in an image available at Getty Images, had “Young Liberators” added at the bottom. That organization, which had ties to the Communist Party, had led a successful boycott campaign in 1934 to force the Empire Cafeteria to employ Black workers. The appeal not to shop at Kress’ store on one sign evoked that campaign and the more extensive boycott campaign undertaken by a coalition of Black organizations that had made pickets in front of stores on West 125th Street a familiar sight in 1934. More broadly, the Young Liberators were “a group of young people who are struggling for Negro rights,” Joe Taylor, the organization's president, told a public hearing of the MCCH, with about 140 Black and white members. A Black man came to their nearby office, at 262 Lenox Ave near 126th Street, about 5 PM, and said “Did you know that a Negro boy had been beaten nearly to death in the Kress store?” Taylor did not, and went to investigate, arriving after Kress’ store was closed. He then went to the police station on West 123rd Street before returning to West 124th Street. Later Taylor went to an address he heard was the home of Lino Rivera, but could find out nothing. Back at the office, other members of the Young Liberators produced a leaflet that was distributed on West 125th starting around 7:30 PM. Headed “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman Attacked By Boss and Cops = Child near Death,” the final line urged people to “Join the Picket Line.” That reference to a picket line provided further evidence that the men arrested for picketing came from the Young Liberators. The first public hearing of the MCCH devoted time to establishing who had produced that leaflet and when it was distributed. Since the leaflets did not appear on the streets before 7:30 PM, the MCCH Final Report concluded that the actions of the Young Liberators “were not responsible for the disorders and attacks on property which were already in full swing.”

The place of the picketing in the sequence of events outside Kress’ was described most clearly in testimony given in the public hearings of the MCCH. However, those details did not become well known as neither the MCCH subcommittee nor final reports mentioned the picketing. Those narratives included only the two men arrested for trying to speak in front of the store, Miller and Gordon, who were not named. Newspaper stories truncated and confused the events established in the public hearings, as police told reporters that Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo had arrived and acted together with Miller and Gordon to cause the disorder.

The most common version of that narrative had the group picketing the store before Daniel Miller attempted to speak. The New York Times, New York Sun, New York Evening Journal, New York American, and Daily Worker all published stories with that chronology, with different descriptions of who was involved. The New York Times reported "Two white and two Negro pickets paraded back and forth in front of the store, bearing placards of the Young Liberators League with the inscription: 'Kress Brutality Beats Negro Child' and 'Kress Brutality Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child.'" The New York Sun used similar phrasing: “a group of agitators, two white and two Negroes, arrived in front of the establishment and took up picket posts carrying placards of the Young Liberators League, which shouted in type that 'Kress brutally beats and seriously injures Negro child.'” The Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal and New York American, identified Samuels, Jameson, and Harry Gordon as picketing, and omitted Viabolo or any mention of Black men among those carrying placards. The Daily Worker more vaguely referred to an unspecified number of Young Liberators forming a picket line. The New York Age substituted Gordon for Miller but otherwise followed the same narrative in which “several Communist leaders gathered and began a picket movement before the store,” before Gordon was arrested for “addressing a group” and Samuels and Viabolo arrested for “acting in concert with Gordon.” The arrests of Jameson, and Miller, were reported separately without any details of the circumstances.

The consistent reporting of what was written on the placards likely resulted from police displaying them to reporters as well as photographers, with images published in the New York Evening Journal (and taken by the Daily News). The Daily Mirror did describe a placard that read, "Avenge the death of this little colored boy!" Given that the photographed placards, and the leaflet distributed by the Young Liberators soon after the picket, refer to a beaten boy, that placard is likely an invention that fit the sensationalized tone of the tabloid's reporting. However, stories in the Home News and New York Age about the men’s appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court the next day, had them distributing placards, not picketing, placards which read "Kress store is resorting to lynching.” Jackson Smith, the manager of Kress’ store, told a public hearing of the MCCH that he saw a placard that read “Kess brutally beats Negro child.” Patrolman Moran’s testimony was less certain: “As I can recall, they referred to a child being beaten in Kress in the earlier part of the afternoon.”

Several of the narratives that mistakenly had the three Young Liberators picketing before Miller spoke also included inaccurate accounts of the circumstances of the men’s arrests. The New York American and the New York Evening Journal had Jameson and Samuels, together with Gordon, going to Miller’s aid when Patrolman Shannon arrested him. Viabolo was missing from the New York Evening Journal story and appeared in the New York American’s narrative as a bystander who also obstructed Miller's arrest. The New York Times simply reported that the arrest of Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo came “later,” after Miller spoke. The Daily Worker did not report specific arrests, but rather that “police broke up the picket line, arresting the leaders.”

Mentions of the picketing were vaguer and more fragmentary in the Afro-American, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York Post. The Afro-American reporter who arrived in front of Kress store around 7:14 PM noted that before he “got on the spot, the screaming of the girl and the flying rumors had brought forth four youngsters, three white, with sandwich signs telling of ''Boy Brutally Beaten.'” “[F]rom somewhere pickets had appeared," the New York Herald Tribune reported, "bearing placards reading: 'Kress Brutality Beats Negro Child.' Neither story mentioned the arrest of those picketing, although the New York Herald Tribune story later noted that “Police seized members of the mob who appeared to be its leaders as they drove it back.” Neither of the other two stories described picketing. The Daily News came closest, reporting “the Young Liberators marched through various streets with red and black smeared placards on which in tremendous letters was the legend: 'CHILD BRUTALLY BEATEN: WOMAN ATTACKED BY BOSS AND COPS: CHILD NEAR DEATH.' The New York Post, while naming the three men among those arrested, described them only as speaking to the crowd.

Unlike those initial stories, newspaper stories about proceedings in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 consistently grouped Viabolo with the four white men arrested in front of Kress’ store. Police presented the five men as a group first in a line-up before they were taken to court, the New York Herald Tribune reported, and then at the courthouse, describing the men as the "ringleaders" of the disorder. When Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo were arraigned with Miller in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge recorded in the docket book for all of them was riot. Assistant District Attorney Carey requested each man be held for a hearing on March 23, on the maximum bail of $2,500. When the four men returned to court, the charges against them were dismissed as they had already been indicted as a result of District Attorney Dodge's investigation. While the Magistrates Court docket book recorded the deposition of each of the men's cases as "Dism[issed], def[endant] indicted," Dodge announced the day after their indictment that he was instead sending them for trial on misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions, not felony charges in the Court of General Sessions. The men's trial did not take place until June 20. After hearing evidence that that a crowd had collected in front of Kress' prior to the men arriving, the men's ILD lawyers moved to have the charges dismissed, the New York Amsterdam News and Daily Worker reported. The judges granted that motion and freed the four men.

Claudio Viabolo’s name was spelled in a variety of ways in these sources. Viabolo is used here as it was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories about his appearances in the Harlem Magistrates Court published in the Afro-American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, New York American, and New York Age. The name was spelled Diabolo in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and stories in New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal. In the edition the New York Age rushed to print on March 23, the name was Bilo. In the Daily Worker on March 21, the name was Viano. Sam Jameson's name was also misspelled, but was not corrected over time as Viabolo's name was. Jameson is used here as it was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories published in New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and stories about court appearances published in the Home News and New York Sun. The name was spelled Jamieson in the Daily News, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Guide, and New York American.

Historians’ descriptions of the protests outside Kress’ store follow the narrative provided by police, treating all those arrested as part of a single group. That framing implicitly introduces the idea that the disorder was orchestrated by those men, while offering no details of how the crowds of women and men around them acted to weigh against that evidence. Weight is added to that implication by the failure to fully identify the men involved in the protests. While Cheryl Greenberg and Lorrin Thomas do not identify the men, Mark Naison, Thomas Kessner, Marilynn Johnson, and Nicole Watson describe them as members of the Young Liberators. None of those historians mentions that four of the five, and both the speakers arrested, were white men. Naison did describe the Young Liberators as an interracial group; so too did Nicole Watson, however she did not identify the men in front of the store as members of the Young Liberators. Neglecting their race makes those men appear more representative of the crowd than they were, particularly in Greenberg and Watson’s narratives, which do not identify them as Young Liberators. Naison, Kessner, Greenberg, Thomas, Johnson, and Watson all follow the chronology that has the picketing begin before the speakers were arrested. Grouping the men places an organized Communist protest at the center of the outbreak of disorder and makes the window being broken and the men’s arrest a response to the feeling they built in the crowd. Recognizing that the protests occurred in a less coordinated way highlights that police responded immediately to any sign of protest, not just to a window being broken. They may also have acted so quickly because they recognized the men as Communists; the men’s language and appeals would have given them away. Communist protest in Harlem, and across the city, drew violent responses from police throughout the early 1930s. Recognition of the fragmented nature of the protests and the identity of those involved directs attention away from those events to the crowds of Black men and women around them. Crowd members gathered in groups, talked among themselves, sought answers from police about what had happened to the boy, and responded to police efforts to clear the street. Rather than organized or orchestrated by the Young Liberators, those behaviors appear more spontaneous, in line with the interpretation offered in the MCCH’s final report.
Crowd inside Kress 5, 10 & 25c store After Patrolman Donahue released Lino Rivera and then himself left Kress’ store around 3:30 PM, groups of shoppers remained. They wanted to know what had happened to the boy and to see that he had not been harmed. Over the next two hours, the manager and several police officers unsuccessfully tried to reassure them and others who came into the store to investigate what was happening. During that time Clara Crowder, a twenty-year-old white clerk, fainted and was attended by an ambulance, and Margaret Mitchell, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, was arrested for disorderly conduct. Sometime around 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM, the manager decided to close the store, and police cleared out all those inside.

Events inside Kress 5, 10 & 25c store after Lino Rivera had been grabbed by store staff moved far more slowly than newspaper narratives portrayed. Whereas reporters strung together the specific incidents they identified into a tight sequence, testimony to the MCCH’s public hearings provided additional information that spread those events over almost two hours.

The Black women and a few men who remained in the store did not immediately start shouting and overturning displays, nor was Margaret Mitchell immediately arrested. They gathered in small groups of two or three. A few minutes after Donahue had released Rivera and left the store, Smith, the manager, as he told a public hearing of the MCCH, had become concerned about their presence and went to the shop floor to investigate. “Some women were going around saying a boy had been beaten, an ambulance had come and she knew it. I went to two groups trying to explain to them that nothing had happened to cause any excitement.” Having no success, Smith went out to 125th Street, where he found Patrolman Miller, a Black officer who had earlier called for the ambulance to treat Hurley and Urban, who he asked to “come in and see if he could not explain to those people.” The women “didn’t pay much attention” to Miller. By 4:00 PM, “the thing was getting to be worse,” Smith testified. That likely meant both that the number of people inside and outside that store was growing, and that, as Thompson later described happening inside the store, as they waited for proof the boy had not been harmed, “patience began to give way to indignation. Their voices rose.” Smith found additional police on 125th Street. Patrolman Timothy Shannon arrived in the store at 4:00 PM. By 4:20 PM he decided he needed to call for radio cars with additional police officers, who arrived within five minutes. Those officers had no more success than those before convincing the women and men in the store that Rivera had been let go, the message Hurley said they were delivering. Ten minutes later, Smith called the station and told them “the thing was beginning to get out of control and to do something.” Like the manager of the neighboring Woolworth's store, he clearly felt "under considerable tension" when a "commotion takes place with a [Black] customer." Sgt Bauer was sent. At some point Shannon claimed that he formed a committee of three shoppers, two men and one woman, whom he took to the basement to see that Rivera was not there, and then went with “from one crowd to another but they would not listen.” No other witness or source mentioned such a committee, and Shannon could not identify its members.

The situation had not improved after 4:30 PM, when Smith testified the number of people in the store had grown to around 100, and Sgt Bauer told him, “'I don’t know what we can do.' We didn’t want to start a riot. We didn’t want to excite them.” Smith decided that he needed to close the store and called the police station again and “pleaded for enough men to close the doors without causing trouble.” Around the same time, Louise Thompson, a Black Communist activist and journalist with many friends among the authors and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, entered the store. She had been shopping at the Woolworth’s store further along 125th Street when she saw groups of people gathered on the sidewalk. Asking around to find out what was going on, a man told her “something was going on in the store and that a boy was beaten,” she testified. Thompson then went into Kress’, which she would describe later in her autobiography as a store “where you have all of these small counters throughout the store,” and found “little clusters of people standing here and there in the store,” with “most of the girls behind the counter ... still in their places but no floor-walkers or officials were in evidence,” she wrote in a version of her testimony published in the New Masses. Approaching the largest group, standing by the candy counter, Thompson learned that they believed a boy had been beaten up by store staff, and that they intended to “stand here until they produce him.”

More police officers then arrived and went to the rear of the store, where Smith’s office was located, Thompson wrote. They were the additional officers that the manager had had requested. At this time, Smith told a public hearing, he closed the store doors. His testimony was that happened at 5:30 PM, but other evidence suggests that Smith might have been mistaken about the time. Around 5 PM, Clara Crowder, a twenty-year-old white clerk, fainted while “aiding another employee,” according to the records of the ambulance that attended her. That ambulance, the second sent to the store, arrived at 5:05 PM. Thompson testified that she was outside on West 125th Street when she saw it arrive, having been one of the last to leave the closed store. It seems likely that Crowder was behind a counter, and fainted during the struggles between the people in the store and police that began after a woman inside the store screamed and pots, pans and glasses were knocked off displays. Smith testified that damage happened as the door was closed. Thompson also described hearing the closing bell as part of the noise in the store in her article in New Masses.

Jackson Smith and Patrolman Timothy Shannon testified that a woman screamed and knocked merchandise off counters after the store was closed, but only Thompson described the circumstances that produced that noise. She did not see the woman who screamed, but was part of the crowd who rushed to where the noise came from, the rear of the store. Police there pushed those women and men 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, or “knocked over a pile of pots and pans,” according to her article. Many of those in the store rushed to leave once the noise and struggles with police began, both Thompson and Smith testified. It is likely that it was around this time that police in the store arrested Margaret Mitchell, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, although none of those who testified about this period of time in the store mentioned the arrest. Police charged her with “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect,” according to Inspector Di Martini’s report on the disorder. It was only once the store was closed that merchandise was knocked off displays, according to the testimony of those in the store.

A small number of people resisted leaving the store, “refusing to move until they got some information about the boy,” Thompson wrote. Gradually police officers pushed them too out of the store; Thompson was one of the last to leave, about half an hour after she entered. On the street at that time, she testified, were several hundred people, most “in front of the Apollo Theatre,” opposite Kress’ store across 125th Street. By the time Inspector Di Martini, in charge of the four precincts that made up the Sixth Division, arrived at 5:40 PM, to investigate the reports of disorder, the store was closed and only a few employees remained inside. He interviewed Jackson Smith and Charles Hurley, he testified. “After finding out that no assault had been committed and thinking that something might occur, I stationed Sergeant Bauer, two foot policeman, one mounted policeman in the rear to prevent a riot.” Di Martini then spent some time talking to groups of people gathered on West 125th Street, telling them Rivera had not been beaten. As he saw no “indications of further trouble,” the inspector testified that he left around 6:00 PM.

Newspaper narratives truncated the extended standoff between the Black women and men and store staff and police into a rapid sequence of events, eliding the role of Black residents’ distrust of a police force that routinely disregarded their rights and subjected them to violence in fueling the disorder. The New York American, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Daily News, and Daily Mirror included none of the events in the store in their narratives of the disorder, jumping from Rivera being grabbed to the crowds outside Kress’ store. Those in the store, reported to be mostly Black women, began to damage displays immediately after Rivera had been taken to the basement in the narratives published in the Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, and La Prensa. The New York Times, New York Sun, and Time greatly inflated the size of that crowd, from 50 to 500 customers. The Home News reported they “started to wreck the store, pulling dishes off of the counters and, in some instances, tipping over tables on which merchandise was displayed,” the New York Times that they “went on the rampage, overturning counters, strewing merchandise on the floor and shouting,” La Prensa that “All the people of color who were in the store at the time began to throw all the articles that were on the tables to the floor and to shout in protest.” The New York Sun opted for the most sensational language, that they “had been galvanized into a frenzy of sabotage. Glass in the counters was shattered, tables overturned and merchandise torn and hurled about.” By contrast, the New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily Worker (on March 29) reported crowds jamming the store after rumors about a boy being beaten or killed circulated, demanding he be released (the Daily Worker had earlier reported, on March 21, the involvement of a member of the ILD, Reggie Thomas, in leading the women’s protest. He was not mentioned in subsequent stories, and did not testify in the MCCH public hearings, suggesting that he was not in fact present in the store.) Patrolman Shannon was identified by the New York Times and New York Sun as one of the police officers who investigated what was happening in the store, and summoned the reinforcements who cleared the store (Time identified him as "an Irish policeman;" the New York Evening Journal and New York American mentioned Shannon arresting Miller.) The Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Evening Journal simply had police notified, then appearing and clearing the store.

The second ambulance that arrived at the store, to attend Clara Crowder, was mentioned only in the Daily News. That story somewhat vaguely claimed that the appearance of the ambulance inflamed rumors that Rivera had been killed. The New York Herald Tribune also mentioned Crowder was attended by an ambulance, but mistakenly identified it as the same one that had come to attend Hurley and Urban. That ambulance had returned to Harlem Hospital two hours earlier. Similarly, the Home News and La Prensa reported Margaret Mitchell as being arrested in Kress’ store, but identified her as having intervened when Rivera was grabbed. The Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, and New York Evening Journal (and New York Times on March 24) reported Mitchell was arrested having run screaming into 125th Street immediately after Rivera had been grabbed. Only the New York Sun’s story allowed for Mitchell’s arrest to be later, as the store was being closed: “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. Her cry was taken up and passed to the milling crowd outside the store.” 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 out that the guards were beating the youth,” the story added that after Rivera had been taken to the basement, she was “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.”

The historians who have described these events have not identified the leading role played by women in protests inside Kress’ store, even as the MCCH report noted that the shoppers in the store were women. Mark Naison, Thomas Kessner, and Marilynn Johnson summarized events in the store, adding details about merchandise being thrown on the floor from newspaper stories to the narrative in the MCCH report. Cheryl Greenberg simply described the crowd as having dispersed, discounting protests in the store. So too did Lorrin Thomas, who attributed that response to the arrest of a woman for “inciting the disturbance,” implicitly making that arrest occur soon after Rivera was released, not later when police cleared the store. (No other narratives mention that arrest). Naison identified those involved as "black shoppers," while Kessner identified two Black women as crying out, but not who else was in the crowd. The other historians simply referred to crowds. Jonathan Gill and Nicole Watson include no details of events inside the store in their descriptions of the events at the beginning of the disorder. That the shoppers in Kress' store were women is unsurprising given the gendered nature of consumption in the 1930s. However, the role of those women in the early stages of the disorder is more unexpected given historians' attention to men's role in initial outbreaks of violence. As Marilynn Johnson has pointed out, women's experiences in the racial disorders of the first half of the twentieth century extended beyond that looting with which they were associated in the 1960s to include not just being victims of violence but also protectors. Where Johnson's examples of women acting in that role were trying to protect family or loved ones from white violence, in 1935 Black women sought to protect a boy unrelated to them. While, as Johnson notes, those actions were within societal expectations of women's roles, they did represent a broader scope, echoing the extension of women's role in consumption to include the political act of picketing white businesses the previous year. In Kress' store, Black women once again stood up to white businessmen.
Two men speak to a crowd in front of Kress' store Around 5.30 PM, Daniel Miller, a twenty-four-year-old white man who identified himself as a member of the Nurses and Hospital League, left the Empire Cafeteria at 306 Lenox Avenue, just north of 125th Street, he testified in a public hearing of the MCCH. Walking along 125th Street toward his home at 35 Morningside Avenue, a man he knew named James Parton approached him, carrying a ladder and an American flag. Although Miller did not mention it, other witnesses identified Parton as a Black man. He told Miller, “there had been a little trouble and would you mind calling the Negroes and whites to boycott Kress store.” Parton then set up the ladder at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, “a corner frequently used for such purposes” according to the report of the MCCH subcommittee. However, on this occasion when he started speaking the traffic officer at the intersection allegedly told him to “take that ladder in front of Kress’ store,” Miller testified. While a traffic police officer might have been concerned to avoid having speakers attract a crowd that blocked traffic, it seems unlikely he would tell the men to instead go to the store, where the officers charged with guarding the store would have to deal with them. The men may instead have decided it would be more effective to speak in front of the location they were targeting.

By the time the Parton and Miller arrived in front of the store it was around 6:15 PM. Inspector Di Martini told a public hearing of the MCCH that he had left Kress’ store about fifteen minutes earlier, when the area seemed quiet to him. He left a sergeant and four patrolmen stationed in front of Kress’ store, according to his report on the disorder. Patrolman Moran testified in a MCCH hearing he was stationed across 125th Street opposite Kress’ store. Patrolman Timothy Shannon, who had been in the store since 4:00 PM, must have been one of the officers stationed directly in front of the store, given his later involvement in arresting Miller, along with Sergeant Bauer, who testified he was a witness to that arrest.

Climbing the ladder, Parton said “there had been some trouble in Harlem and [he?] would like to have the Negroes and whites come together,” Miller told a MCCH public hearing. Louise Thompson wrote in New Masses that she heard him speak of "'Negro and white solidarity against police-provoked race-rioting." Other witnesses and newspaper stories simply reported that Parton introduced Miller. About 150-200 people were on 125th Street around Kress when he climbed the ladder, according to Miller. As he began speaking, someone in the crowd threw an object that broke a window in Kress’ store, behind Miller. At that moment Patrolman Shannon pulled Miller down from the ladder and arrested him. (Although Shannon testified in the public hearing, he was not asked to provide details about the arrest of Miller.) Other police officers then "cleared the crowd from the front of the Kress store," Patrolman Moran testified in a MCCH hearing. The people who had been listening to Miller scattered, many moving across 125th Street to the opposite sidewalk. There James Parton again attempted to speak to the crowd, but was moved on by police. Further east on 125th Street, he was able to climb a lamppost and speak, after which he introduced another white man, twenty-year-old Harry Gordon. He too would be dragged down and arrested by police around 6:30 PM.

As was the case with events inside Kress’ store, testimony in the public hearings of the MCCH provide the most detailed evidence of the events outside the store in the early evening of March 19. Louise Thompson testified on March 30, Patrolmen Shannon and Moran testified on April 6, and Miller and Harry Gordon testified on May 4. (Thompson’s article in New Masses mentioned only Miller speaking, without naming him.) The MCCH subcommittee report summarized that testimony briefly, a paragraph that appeared revised and slightly expanded in the final report. Neither narrative named the speakers.

By contrast, newspaper stories truncated the events and presented Miller as arriving and acting together with the three members of the Young Liberators, two white men and one Black man, arrested about half an hour later picketing in front of Kress, and in some cases with Harry Gordon. In those stories, the men’s speeches and actions were responsible for moving the crowd to violence. That portrayal reflected what police told reporters. (The MCCH final report argued to the contrary that “It was probably due in some measure to the activities of these racial leaders, both white and black, that the crowds attacked property rather than persons.”)

The New York American focused on Miller’s arrest by Shannon, triggered not by the broken window but after he refused an order to move on, and added a second episode that other evidence indicates did not happen: the two white Young Liberators and Gordon came to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, and battled Shannon and two other patrolmen before also being arrested. (That story relied on information from the police and misidentified Gordon as picketing the store and portrayed the Black man who did picket, Viabolo, as a bystander “who had offered the boys help.”) A briefer version of that inaccurate narrative appeared in the New York Evening Journal, without the names of the other officers involved, and omitting Viabolo. Both Hearst newspapers shared an anti-Communist stance and a sensational style.

The New York Sun identified Miller as speaker, but described an extended speech that aroused a crowd that other sources indicate did not happen: “Miller's exhortations played upon their credulity until whispers that the boy had been murdered began to creep around the fringe of the restive mob.” Only after being “harangued” by Miller did someone in the crowd break a window (harangue was also the word used by the New York Times, New York Post, Afro-American, and New York Evening Journal). The story did not mention the circumstances of his arrest. The New York Times more briefly described a similar scene and also mentioned Miller’s arrest. Neither newspaper included Gordon in the group of men. The New York Post more briefly described Miller, Gordon, and the two other white men as having been arrested for “haranguing crowds, urging them to fight.” The New York Age reported the arrest of the four men in front of the store without details of what police alleged they had done. The New York Herald Tribune, Home News, Daily News, and Afro-American initially reported only the presence of unnamed speakers, to whom the Daily News, Afro-American and Home News gave an inflated role in moving those on the street to act, and did not mention that police arrested them.

Additional stories featuring Miller appeared when he was arraigned in the Magistrates Court on March 20, including in the papers who the previous day had not named him and the others who spoke and picketed. Again, Miller was grouped with the three Young Liberators who picketed, following police presenting them as a group in court, with Patrolman Shannon as the arresting officer of all four men. In court, Gordon appeared separately, and charged with assaulting the police officer who arrested him. Gordon was also alone in speaking out in the police line-up, attracting attention from reporters. The Daily Mirror reported Gordon identified himself as a college student, apparently leading that reporter to assume that Miller and the other men were also students. The New York Times and New York Sun instead recorded Miller as unemployed, while other newspapers did not list his occupation. Police told reporters that Miller and the other men were all members of the Young Liberators and Communists, according to the New York Sun, a label also employed by the Daily News and New York Age, and unsurprisingly, the three Hearst newspapers, the New York American, Daily Mirror, and New York Evening Journal,. Lawyers from the ILD who appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court to represent them provided further confirmation of that association (Gordon refused that representation in favor of getting himself a lawyer, but that man was also an ILD attorney, Gordon revealed in the public hearing, whom he claimed he knew through his son, not political activities.)

In the public hearing, Miller testified he was a member not of the Young Liberators but of the Nurses and Hospital League. Nonetheless the goal of that organization, “to fight for Negro workers and Hospitals” still associated him with the Communist Party. So too did his choice of restaurant in Harlem. The Empire Cafeteria had been the target of a Communist Party campaign to force the owners to hire Black staff six months earlier, after which it became a regular advertiser in the Daily Worker. That Communist Party newspaper would report that the Empire Cafeteria was one of the businesses not damaged during the disorder.

On March 29, several days after Miller and the other men appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, and before the first public hearing of the MCCH, the Daily Worker published a detailed narrative of the events in and outside Kress at the beginning of the disorder. It was the only newspaper to revisit these events after the initial reporting. Police dragging Miller down and arresting him are included in that narrative. However, before the arrest, the story described an “orderly” meeting in which the “speakers urged unity of black and white workers in the fight against Negro oppression. They pointed out the discrimination in jobs, in housing, in relief. They referred to Scottsboro. They urged particularly that the workers guard against boss incitement to race riot, which would be the opposite of workers' solidarity in the struggle for Negro rights and for working class rights in general.” While that is likely what the Communist speakers would have said, Miller testified a little over a month later that no such meeting took place. “Fellow Workers” was all he said before a window was broken and police arrested him. The Daily Worker did not publish a story about the MCCH hearing in which Miller appeared. The newspapers that did publish stories on that hearing did not mention Miller. It was at that hearing on May 4 that Gordon testified about how police beat him while he was in custody, and denied him food and access to a lawyer. His testimony was widely reported, effectively overshadowing what Miller said. Neither man's testimony was reported in stories in the New York World-Telegram, New York Evening Journal, which focused on the upheaval in the audience, or the New York Post, which focused on another police brutality case.

Daniel Miller did not appear in the MCCH's transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter; Claudio Viabolo, the Black Young Liberator, is the only one of the five speakers and picketers in that record. When Miller appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge recorded in the docket book was riot. Assistant District Attorney Carey requested Miller be held for a hearing on March 23, on the maximum bail of $2,500, like the three Young Liberators arrested after Miller for picketing Kress' store. The police grouped the four men together, telling newspaper reporters they were the "ringleaders" of the disorder. When Miller and the three other men returned to court, the charges against them were dismissed as the grand jury had already sent them for trial. While the Magistrates Court docket book recorded the deposition of the men's cases as "Dism[issed], def[endant] indicted," the grand jury had actually voted informations against them, sending them for trial on misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions, rather than indictments for more serious felony charges, a distinction most clearly reported in the Daily News. The men's trial did not take place until June 20. After hearing evidence that that a crowd had collected in front of Kress' prior to the men arriving, the judges found the men not guilty of inciting a riot, the New York Amsterdam News reported.

Only one historian, Thomas Kessner, names Miller in his narrative of the beginning of the disorder. He mentions him as speaking, at more length than he did, immediately before the window in Kress' store was broken. Miller's arrest was not part of Kessner's account, nor was Harry Gordon speaking. Mark Naison, Cheryl Greenberg, Marilynn Johnson, Lorrin Thomas, and Nicole Watson group Miller and Gordon together as “speakers” pulled down by police. All these historians follow the narrative provided by police that presents the speakers as part of a single group protesting in front of Kress’ store, stepping up to speak to the crowd after picketing of the store had begun. That framing implicitly introduces the idea that the disorder was orchestrated by those men, while offering no details of how the crowds of women and men around them acted to weigh against that evidence. Weight is added to that implication by the failure to fully identify the men involved in the protests. While Greenberg and Thomas do not identify the men, Naison, Kessner, Johnson, and Watson describe them as members of the Young Liberators. None of those historians mention that four of the five, and both the speakers arrested, were white men. Naison did describe the Young Liberators as an interracial group; so too did Watson, however she did not identify the men in front of the store as members of the Young Liberators. Neglecting their race makes those men appear more representative of the crowd than they were, particularly in Greenberg and Watson’s narratives, which do not identify them as Young Liberators. Naison, Kessner, Greenberg, Thomas, Johnson, and Watson all follow the chronology that has the picketing begin before the speakers were arrested. Grouping the men places an organized Communist protest at the center of the outbreak of disorder, and makes the window being broken and the men’s arrest a response to the feeling they built in the crowd. Recognizing that the protests occurred in a less coordinated way highlights that police responded immediately to any sign of protest, not just to a window being broken. They may also have acted so quickly because they recognized the men as Communists; the men’s language and appeals would have given them away. Communist protest in Harlem, and across the city, drew violent responses from police in the months prior to the disorder. Recognition of the fragmented nature of the protests and the identity of those involved directs attention away from those events to the crowds of Black men and women around them. Crowd members gathered in groups, talked among themselves, sought answers from police about what had happened to the boy, and responded to police efforts to clear the street. Rather than organized or orchestrated by the Young Liberators, those behaviors appear more spontaneous, in line with the interpretation offered in the MCCH’s final report.