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

"Mayor Assailed by Clergymen in Riot Inquiry," New York World-Telegram, March 25, 1935, 3.

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Harry Gordon arrested Around 6:30 PM, Patrolman Irwin Young arrested Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white student, on the north sidewalk of West 125th Street near 7th Avenue. Gordon had climbed a lamppost to speak to the crowd that police had pushed east, away from Kress’ store; Young pulled him down. The patrolman alleged that Gordon then grabbed his nightstick and hit him with it; Gordon denied doing anything. He told a public hearing of the MCCH that Young and other officers dragged him thirty feet to a police radio car and drove him to the police station on West 123rd Street. Louise Thompson had seen Gordon "get on the mailbox to speak and...dragged down by a policeman," after which "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." Although Thompson was affiliated with the Communist Party and thus not an entirely objective witness, her account of the police violence was not disputed.

As soon as the radio car reached 7th Avenue, out of sight of the crowd on 125th Street, Gordon told the MCCH hearing that the police officer driving said “Go ahead and hit him" to the officer next to him, and both men “poked him in the ribs and kicked him.” When the car got to the station, Young pushed him up against the wall of the station and clubbed him in the stomach. Police officers continued to beat and kick Gordon when he was put in a cell, taken upstairs for questioning, and fingerprinted. As a result of these attacks, Gordon testified, “I had two black eyes. Had bumps on my head. My shins were bruised.” When he was bailed and released forty-eight hours after being arrested, his lawyer described Gordon’s face as “entirely discolored,” so much so that he took Gordon to his home so his mother would not see his injuries, he told the public hearing. The man identified as Gordon has no visible injuries in photographs taken a few seconds apart published in the Daily News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal that purported to show him and the three other white men police arrested in front of Kress’ store on their way to the Harlem Magistrates Court. However, one of the men was only partly visible, behind the other three, and could be injured. The caption to the Daily News photo suggests otherwise, labeling all the men "unmarked by the race riots."

Gordon was among the group of around ninety-six of those arrested put in a line-up and questioned by detectives in front of reporters downtown at Police Headquarters on the morning of March 20, before being loaded into patrol wagons and taken back uptown to the Harlem and Washington Heights Magistrates Courts. Gordon was brought to the platform together with Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators arrested at other times protesting in front of Kress' store, a New York Herald Tribune story noted, with police presenting the group as acting and arrested together. However, Gordon's actions overshadowed the larger group in stories about the line-up. While Gordon stood on the "klieg-lit platform," Captain Edward Dillon questioned him about his role in the disorder in an exchange reported in three newspapers. The briefest mention appeared in the Daily Mirror, which reported the details of the setting, but only that "under the grilling conducted by Acting Capt. Edward Dillon" Gordon declared "I am a student at City College of New York" and "refused to answer further questions." The reporter described Gordon's manner as "defiant." Other reporters conveyed a similar judgment in their portrayals of Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune described him as "a tall, lanky youth [who] thrust one hand in his pocket and struck an orator's attitude" during the questioning; the New York Sun described his pose as "Napoleonic." Neither of those stories mention Gordon identifying himself as a student; they instead quoted him as refusing to answer questions until he saw a lawyer. The Daily Mirror concluded that Gordon, in responding as he did, "had practically declared himself the inciter of the night's rioting" and the leader of the four other men arrested at the beginning of the disorder. Gordon himself, testifying at the MCCH hearing, set himself apart, as a passerby who had attempted to urge the crowd to go to the police for information. Inquiries by reporters from the New York Evening Journal found no evidence that Gordon was a City College Student, with the New York Herald Tribune reporting Dean Morton Gottschall did not find him in college records. The New York Evening Journal did confirm that he lived in the Bronx, at 699 Prospect Avenue.

Gordon did not appear in the MCCH transcription of the 28th Precinct blotter, nor did Miller and the two white Young Liberators arrested in front of Kress’ store. Margaret Mitchell, the Black woman arrested inside Kress' store before Miller's arrest and Claudio Viabolo, the Black Young Liberator arrested with two white companions soon after Miller, did appear in the transcription. That discrepancy suggests that the white men were omitted from the transcription, perhaps overlooked because they were somehow less readily identified as participants in the disorder among others arrested for unrelated activities at that time.

Gordon appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, shortly after Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators with whom police had grouped him. The charge recorded in the Magistrates Court Docket book was assault, which was the charge reported by New York American, New York Evening Journal, New York Times, and New York Herald Tribune. A second list in the New York Evening Journal, a later story in the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Amsterdam News, Daily Mirror, and New York Sun reported Gordon had been charged with both offenses. The Home News, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, New York Age, and the list published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, reported the charge against Gordon as inciting a riot.

The mistaken information about the charge could result from police continuing to group Gordon with the Miller and the three Young Liberators when he appeared in court. The New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Times all described the men as the "ringleaders" of the disorder, which was likely the term police used, in stories on the court appearances. However, while the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily Mirror included all five men in that group, the New York American, Home News, and New York Times omitted Gordon. That difference appears to have resulted from Gordon being arraigned separately from Miller and the other three men. That separation was likely because he was charged with assault, the other men with riot, and the officer listed as arresting Gordon was Patrolman Irwin Young not Patrolman Shannon, the arresting officer recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book for Miller and the three other men.

The Daily Mirror claimed Gordon was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers. While being held, Gordon testified, he had not been not allowed to contact a lawyer or his family and was not fed until he had been in custody for more than twenty-four hours and had been arraigned in the Magistrate's Court. In the courthouse on March 20, Gordon was able to make contact with an ILD lawyer, Isidore Englander. The attorney testified that while he was speaking with Frank Wells, who he had learned had been arrested, he saw Gordon, who he claimed not to know, and spoke with him after his arraignment. Gordon asked him to communicate with Edward Kuntz, another ILD lawyer, whose son Gordon testified was a friend. Kuntz would represent him in subsequent court appearances. After Gordon was taken away, Englander heard him scream, the result, Gordon claimed, of being beaten again by police officer. The attorney made no mention of the visible injuries on Gordon’s face that Gordon and Kuntz described in their testimony.

Magistrate Renaud remanded Gordon to reappear on the March 25, on a bond of $1,000; the magistrate also remanded the other four alleged Communists, but for them set the maximum bail of $2,500. Around forty-eight hours after Gordon’s arrest, at 1 AM, Kuntz told a public hearing that he secured bail for Gordon, who was released from prison.

Gordon returned to court on March 25, at the same time as Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators, but there his treatment further diverged from them. While Renaud discharged the other four men as the grand jury had already sent them for trial in the Court of Special Sessions, in response to evidence presented by District Attorney Dodge as part of his investigation of the disorder, the magistrate again remanded Gordon, to appear on March 27, with the New York American and Home News reporting that police were planning to submit evidence to the grand jury seeking to have him indicted. (The only other newspaper to report this appearance was the New York World-Telegram.) That effort was unsuccessful. When Gordon appeared again in the Magistrates Court, the ADA reduced the charge against him from felony assault to misdemeanor assault; in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book a clerk struck out Fel[ony] Ass[ault] and wrote "Red[uced] to Simple Assault misd[emeanor]." Kuntz claimed credit for the reduced charge when he questioned Gordon about this legal proceeding in a public hearing of the MCCH. While Gordon testified that the ADA had said he was doing Gordon a “favor” by withdrawing the assault charges, Kuntz drew out that his cross examination of Patrolman Young established that the officer did not go to a doctor or a hospital, so did not suffer injuries justifying a felony charge, or even simple assault. He also testified that a new charge of unlawful assembly, the misdemeanor form of riot, had been made against him at that hearing, information not mentioned in any other sources. Magistrate Renaud transferred Gordon to the Court of Special Sessions for trial on the reduced charge, a decision reported only in the New York Amsterdam News, New York Times, and New York Herald Tribune.

For some reason, the trial did not take place for almost eight months. Sometime in early November the judges convicted Gordon and sentenced him on November 15. Arthur Garfield Hays, who had chaired the MCCH hearing at which Gordon testified, wrote to the Chief Judge of the Court of Special Sessions on November 13 after hearing of the conviction, the only evidence of that outcome. Expressing surprise about the conviction, Hays urged that Gordon be given a suspended sentence as he was "certainly not a criminal and was exercising what he deemed to be his right of free speech." Judge William Walling responded, telling Hays that he "did not have all the facts." As far as the judge was concerned, "There was not the slightest doubt but that Gordon assaulted the officer who was in uniform. Thereafter, of course, the officer hit back and subdued Gordon." That assessment made it unlikely Walling and his colleagues would have imposed the suspended sentence Hays favored. However, what sentence they imposed on Gordon is unknown.
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.
Reactions to Appointments to the MCCH The Home News, which had an anti-Communist editorial position, prefigured one strand of criticisms of La Guardia’s appointments when it described the Commission members as “all of distinct liberal leanings” in reporting their names. The New York Sun and New York American, also anti-Communist newspapers, expanded those criticisms. Both reported complaints by unnamed “anti-Red organizations.” The New York American story described them as “openly dissatisfied with the make-up of the Mayor’s committee,” while the New York Sun reported more specifically that they considered “that the Mayor's investigating committee is composed largely of men whose names have been associated with radical movements in this country.” The targets of the complaints were Randolph, Hays, Ernst, Villard and Cullen. In Randolph’s case these critics pointed to him being named in the Lusk Committee report, an investigation of radicalism conducted by the state legislature fifteen years earlier. Hays’ recent work defending John Strachey, “avowed English Communist,” which is why he was in Chicago at the time of the disorder, was singled out. Despite their more well-known affiliations, Ernst and Villard were criticized for their membership in the United Action Campaign Committee of the League for Independent Political Action, an obscure group trying to create a political organization that united workers, farmers and intellectuals that was largely defunct by 1935, with the New York American quoting two selections from a pamphlet that committee published two years earlier. Notwithstanding the uncompelling nature of the specific charges made against those four men, they were well-known for their involvement in a range of liberal causes and organizations. Not so Cullen. In his case, the charge reported in the New York American was that the poet’s writings were “quoted regularly and enthusiastically by communist publications.”

While those criticisms were reported only in avowedly anti-Communist newspapers, and did not appear in later stories, criticisms of the Black members of the Commission appointed by La Guardia were more widely and extensively reported. While stories in Black newspapers described the criticisms in the most detail, they also appeared in the white press, particularly in stories about the Mayor’s attendance at a meeting of Black clergymen on March 25. As Black newspapers were published weekly, those stories did not appear until March 30, after those in the white press, and after the Mayor had added an additional Black member to the Commission, Rev. John Robinson.

The first reported criticism of the Black members came from Charles Hanson of the Harlem Committee on Public Policy, which organized a meeting at the YMCA on March 22. The New York Age described that organization as “made up of business and professional men and women and welfare workers,” and “James H. Hubert, executive secretary of the New York Urban League, several prominent local clergymen and others” as giving addresses. Walter White of the NAACP was in the audience. (NAACP, 0267, 16) The New York Times reported that Hanson said Randolph “was the only Negro on the committee who had practical knowledge of conditions in Harlem.” No other white newspapers mentioned that meeting or Hanson’s criticism. They were reported in New York Amsterdam News, which added that “special censure” was directed at the appointment of Cullen and Delany, dismissed as a “poet” and a “Fusion Republican,” and hence affiliated with La Guardia, or as the paper's columnist J. A. Rogers put it, “[held] a position under the mayor." Neither criticism was mentioned in the New York Age and Norfolk Journal and Guide reports of that meeting. Bennie Butler of the NAACP also wrote to specifically complain about Cullen and Delany, as having little in common with the rank and file, were not equipped to analyze conditions in and did not come into daily conduct with the masses.. <[Correspondence, M-Z, 1-3>] The Daily Worker echoed that criticism of the appointment of Delany in an editorial on March 23 that described him as “only too eager to foster the Hearst-La Guardia plot against the Communist Party.”

Even as he announced the committee, La Guardia had Charles Roberts reach out to Harlem’s clergy, apparently anticipating criticism that none had been appointed. He proved to be correct. “The absence of the name of even one minister on the whole body” was the first criticism mentioned in the New York Age, which it reported “was considered by many as a slight to the colored clergy and an oversight on the part of the authorities.” The mayor’s subsequent meeting with the Interdominational Preachers Meeting of Greater New York and Vicinity, had been planned to take place in secret, according to the New York Sun and but someone provided the press with the location. Only the New York Times reported that Charles Roberts, appointed the MCCH chairman only hours earlier, and Hubert Delany accompanied him. About fifty clergymen attended the meeting according to the New York Herald Tribune or seventy-five according to the Home News and New York Times. Several of them criticized La Guardia for not appointing a clergyman to the committee, stories in the New York World-Telegram and Daily News, and the New York Amsterdam News, New York Age, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, reported. The New York Herald Tribune reported that La Guardia had tried to preempt those criticisms when he spoke, explaining that he had not appointed a minister because “If I had appointed one I would have had to appoint many others.” The story then quoted three complaints about that decision:
"There ought to be a minister on that committee!" shouted a parson in the front row, as soon as the Mayor ended. "There is not a minister in this community who is not in touch with more persons than any member of your committee. Since we are recognized as leaders we should have representation."

"The people here believe the ministers have been slighted by the Mayor," another pastor commented gloomily. "A minister is necessary for psychological reasons."

An emotional touch was contributed by the last protest, when another minister demanded:

"Why should we get up here and beg for a place - we, who have been suffering for many long years?"

The opening of the story framed those reactions in terms that suggested that the reporter had not taken them entirely seriously, that the clergymen “told him he had outraged their feelings and prestige by failing to appoint one of their profession to the committee named to investigate the riot.” The Home News reported only one minister questioning La Guardia about “why he had not appointed one of their members to the investigating committee, pointing out that they were in close touch with the residents of the district and that one clergyman should be on it for psychological reasons.” That clergyman was “Rev. D. Ward Nichols, pastor of the Emanuel A.M.E. Church,” according to the Afro-American story, which described him as saying that “not one of [the members of the committee] has the psychological influence which comes within the power of any one of the ministers present.” Rather than reporting any criticisms from the group, the New York Times story reported only the Mayor’s speech, referring to comments he made about criticisms in general terms, “that he had been criticized for his selection of the committee, some saying it was too small, others demanding a larger body. He also admitted that he might have been at fault in not appointing one clergyman to the committee.” The Am reported the meeting without any mention of the criticism of the Mayor.

The Mayor did not respond to his critics according to all but one white newspaper. The New York Herald Tribune and Daily News emphasized that La Guardia had no reaction to the complaints. The Home News reported that La Guardia asked the clergy to form a committee to advise the investigation, which was part of his speech, and that the group instead elected Robinson to represent them. The New York Times also mentioned Robinson’s selection after La Guardia left. Only the New York World-Telegram story reported that the group’s selection was a response to a statement by the Mayor, who, “Obviously nettled toward the end,” “announced he would consider the names of Negro clergymen submitted to him for membership.”

La Guardia’s commitment to add a Black clergyman was also reported in Harlem’s two black newspapers. In the New York Amsterdam News story “the mayor promised to consider the appointment of one minister to his body,” while the New York Age added that he “promised to appoint one of their body to the committee if a name would be sent to him immediately” and “offered the body the opportunity to name one of their number who they felt most capable. If this name were sent to him immediately, he said, he would appoint the man to the committee. A second additional appointment, chosen from a denomination not included in the Alliance, would also be named, he added.” Rev. Robinson was appointed to the Committee several days later, on March 29, attending their meeting that day. At La Guardia’s request, he was added to the subcommittee investigating “the disturbances of March 19.” [“Re app’t of Robinson on Harlem Committee,” Roll 76, F3, 13] Only the New York Amsterdam News (4/6) reported Robinson’s appointment. There is no evidence of how the Harlem community reacted to the choice of Robinson. A second clergyman was not appointed until April 4, when La Guardia wrote to notify Roberts he had selected Father McCann of St. Charles Borromeo on West 141st Street. It is not clear if McCann attended the Committee meeting on April 5 as no attendance was recorded in minutes, but he was present at the subcommittee hearing on April 6. An outspoken anti-Communist who had blamed Communists for the disorder and called for a movement to drive them out of Harlem, McCann’s appointment was likely intended to address those critics. Again, only the New York Amsterdam News reported this appointment, under the headline, “Mayor Places Radicals' Foe On Riot Body.” Predictably, the CP criticized McCann’s appointment, writing to both the MCCH and La Guardia about the priest’s call to drive white Communists out of Harlem (but not until April 25, to say “we understand that Reverend McCann has been appointed a member of your commission,” which seems to confirm that the appointment was not widely announced). They claimed his appointment represented an effort “at stirring up further animosity between white and Negro people in Harlem and still further trying to place the blame for the March 19 events on the Communist Party.”

La Guardia made no moves to address the other criticisms of the Black members reported extensively in a story in the New York Amsterdam News, and in less detail in the New York Age and Norfolk Journal and Guide, on March 30. The Consolidated Tenants League, like the HCPP, judged only A. Philip Randolph fit for the task of investigating the disorder and “sufficiently free from political and other affiliations and views to render them capable of obtaining the proper economic-social view of the problem,” a story in the New York Amsterdam News reported. New York Amsterdam News columnist, J. A. Rogers, wrote that “in naming the routine inquiry he, or his advisers, chose among them two or three routine names and left out some who would be more effective on it. The three most outspoken critics against conditions in Harlem are James W. Ford, Frank Crosswaith and the Rev. A. C. Powell, Jr., yet none of them is on the commission.” Bennie Buter had also suggested Frank Crosswaith, together with Rev. King and Dalmus Steele, when he wrote to ?<[Correspondence, M-Z, 1-3>]

For others, the issue was that those on the Commission did not represent all of the Harlem community. The New York chapter of the National Association of College Women proposed adding social worker Mrs C. C Saunders, Amsterdam News editor Obie McCullum and Rev Johnson, who had led the boycott movement. The Consolidated Tenants League suggested “Frank Crosswaith, labor organizer; Dr. Cyril Dolly, physician; the Rev. A. Clayton Powell, Jr., of Abyssinian Baptist Church, and Mrs. Minnie Green of the Tenants' League.” Individuals interviewed for a “Man on the Street” story in the New York Amsterdam News were asked, "Do you feel that the committee appointed by Mayor LaGuardia is sufficiently representative of the people to report on their needs?" Only two of the thirteen men and women were satisfied with the Mayor’s appointments. In the opinion of the others the members were too removed from the realities of life in Harlem. New York Amsterdam News columnist J. A. Rogers had also heard the complaint “that they, themselves, are not in the breadline.” While three of the men interviewed offered no suggestions for who should have been appointed, six men and women suggested an unemployed person or someone “up against it,” and one suggested “William H. Davis (general manager of the Amsterdam News) and the Rev. James W. Brown (pastor of the Mother A. M. E. Zion Church).”

James Hubert of the Urban League [indirectly?] suggested the need for a social worker in letter to La Guardia. “nor do I wish to suggest that a social worker be included on the committee; notwithstanding the fact that if anybody is supposed to know anything about these problems, surely it is the social worker. I understand that there is a person on the committee who is supposed to represent social workers, but I have not been able to discover who it might be since there is no one named up to now who is thought of as a social worker.” <2 Urban League to LaG, 26 March 1935> It seems unlikely that he did not know that the social worker was Eunice Carter, who had a degree in social work from Smith College. However, he would also have known that it was ten years since Carter had worked in the field, during which time she had shifted into the practice of law. <Carter 43, 48>Hubert clearly wanted someone more centrally defined by social work expertise on the Commission. The Norfolk Journal and Guide included the absence of "an outstanding colored social worker" among the complaints it reported.

While this criticism was “considerable” in the assessment of the New York Age, and less “mild” than that offered by the ministers “in every section of Harlem,” according to James Hubert < 2 Urban League to LaG, 26 March 1935>, it was not the universal reaction of the Black community. Allyn Grenville, a correspondent for the Norfolk Journal and Guide, certainly thought the criticism was largely the work of “a score of leaders trying to use the rioting as a peg upon which to lift themselves to prominence.” In his opinion, “as commissions go, it is a representative one with more than the usual number of men of integrity. Another story in the same issue of the newspaper reversed the terms in which the New York Amsterdam News and New York Age had assessed the situation, stating “On the whole, the city has received the commission as being representative of both the city and of Harlem, and above the average, perhaps, in having a full membership of trained and capable people.” Channing Tobias offered a slightly more restrained endorsement in the New York World-Telegram: “While the committee might have been more representative in spots, still it is a committee of reputable citizens that can be depended upon to run down the facts and make a dispassionate presentation of them to the mayor.” More narrowly, New York Amsterdam News columnist J. A. Rogers defended Hubert Delany against the charge that as a member of the city government he was not willing to stand up to whites. He recounted hearing Delany “speak on the race question to a group in downtown New York, which was composed largely of white people, and it would be difficult to find any more outspoken than he was.”

Among the white newspapers, La Guardia’s appointments received editorial endorsements from the New York Post, New York World-Telegram and New York Herald Tribune. All noted the Black members, whose presence the New York World-Telegram said showed “good sense,” while the New York Post referred to the Black majority as something that was “proper.” The New York Herald Tribune merely noted that the commission was made up of “distinguished men, both white and Negro.” The New York Post also described the commission members as “distinguished.” Referring to the white men La Guardia appointed, the New York World-Telegram described them as “highly intelligent humanitarians.” A story in the New York Post offered an alternative description of the white members as “men who have the confidence of Negro leaders.”

As they debated who should be represented in the investigation of the disorder, neither the Mayor nor both white and Black newspapers made any mention of the group in Harlem’s population from which the boy grabbed in Kress’ store came. Lino Rivera was Puerto Rican, part of a community that predominated in the blocks of Harlem south of 125th Street, centered on 116th Street. In the plan of work for the MCCH Randolph proposed Puerto Ricans appeared only in a list of groups to have testify in public hearings late in the investigation. Suggestions from Walter White of the NAACP considered at the same time likewise included only one mention, the need for a “study of the origin of and interrelation of the various groups making up the Negro community of Harlem – West Indians, Puerto Ricans, Virgin Islanders etc, etc.” However, Puerto Rican leaders did not see themselves in that way, Insisting that their community had not participated in the events that followed Rivera’s release from the store, the city’s Spanish-language newspaper La Prensa attributed the disorder to the “colored elements” of the neighborhoods around 125th Street; “entirely separate from this is the Spanish-speaking group of the neighborhood, with distinct problems, absolutely different interests, and ethnic characteristics that disassociate Hispanics from their colored American neighbors.” [cited in Thomas, 78] The newspaper portrayed this Puerto Rican Harlem as a target of violence rather than a participant, publishing lists of damaged Hispanic-owned businesses that are not identified in any other source.

Despite those stories, there were some nationalist groups in the Puerto Rican community that did seek representation on the MCCH. Jesús Flores, head of Unidad Obrera (Workers’ Unity) on March 25, and Antonio Rivera, secretary of the Liga Puertorriqueña e Hispana and Isabel O’Neill, secretary of the Junta Liberal Puertorriqueña de Nueva York in June, wrote to La Guardia complaining that Puerto Ricans had been ignored, which Rivera labeled “unfair” and O’Neill an act of political and civic indifference and unmindfulness.” In addition, Ralph Bosch, a lawyer and former Republican state assembly candidate, wrote to La Guardia on March 21 advocating adding a Puerto Rican member to the MCCH: “Although the Portorican [sic] part of the population may have such needs as may call for slightly different remedies, yet when analized [sic] it all is the same social problem of racial relations.” While there are no replies to the PR groups in the Records of the Mayor, Bosch did receive a response, saying that “it is not deemed advisable to enlarge the membership or scope of program of the present committee.” (April 5, after Robinson and McCann added – LaGCC_01.004.0000.3146.09.pdf)
In Harlem court on March 25 (18) Newspaper stories reporting the hearings in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 25 focused on the appearance of the four Young Liberators. Although Harry Gordon also appeared in the court that day, the stories no longer grouped him with the other four men as they had on March 20. Police identified the Young Liberators as "ringleaders," a term attributed to them in the New York Sun, New York Times, to District Attorney Dodge in the New York Post, and used without attribution in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, New York Evening Journal, Home News, and Daily News, and in the Afro-American. The New York World-Telegram alone did not name the four men or describe their alleged role in the disorder, while the New York Age described them as charged with starting the riot.

The New York Times, New York Sun, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal, and the Afro-American all only published stories anticipating the four men's appearance; they did not report the outcome. Those newspapers may have been anticipating a spectacle at the hearing, which often accompanied the appearance of Communists. Police certainly thought that a possibility, as the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Daily News reported a heavy police presence. The hearing apparently did not deliver either disorder or any new information about the disorder. Stories in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, Daily News, Home News, and New York World-Telegram, and the New York Age, simply reported that detectives presented the Magistrate with bench warrants, after which he discharged the men as they had already been indicted and police turned them over to the detectives.

Journalists paid little attention to the other fourteen men who appeared. The adjournment of Harry Gordon's case while police continued their investigation of his alleged assault on Patrolman Young was reported in the Home News, New York American, and New York World-Telegram. The Home News identified two of the other men discharged as having already been indicted by Dodge's grand jury, Carl Jones and Milton Ackerman. Those men are likely the two unnamed Black men indicted for looting that the New York Herald Tribune reported were dealt with in that way. Neither story made any mention of the other four men who went through the same process, Nelson Brock, Reginald Mills, William Grant, and Douglas Cornelius. Only the New York Herald Tribune made mention of any other men, reporting three other unnamed individuals as having been convicted and had their sentences suspended and one who was released. Legal records indicate the later was Aubrey Patterson, the only person released on March 26. Only two people, Louise Brown and Warren Johnson, appear in the legal records as having been convicted and sentenced. Information on the remaining defendants comes only from legal records.

The lack of attention to those arrested in the disorder on this date reflected both the lack of spectacle in the hearings and in the details of the disorder revealed in prosecutions for relatively minor offenses, which contributed to the attention the press gave to statements District Attorney Dodge made on this date. However, Dodge would not deliver on his claims, leading journalists to turn instead to the public hearings of the MCCH.
Dodge grand jury hearing, March 25 (1) While the grand jury was not in session over the weekend, Dodge affirmed his commitment to the investigation to several reporters on Saturday, March 23. He emphasized his concern with a specific target, those who advocated the overthrow of government by force and violence, according to stories in the New York American, New York Times, Daily News, and Home News. Although the statement did not appear to directly reference Communists, most of those newspapers identified them as the target in their headlines: “Dodge Plans War on Reds in Harlem” in the Daily News; “Dodge Declares War on Red Leaders” in the Home News; and “Dodge Expects Arrest of Red Leaders” in the New York Times. The anti-Communist New York American predictably reported the DA’s comments in more detail and attempted to link them to further charges as it had previously in posing questions about the criminal anarchy statute. Its story quoted Dodge as invoking the Constitution and posed questions to him about involving federal authorities, which he declined to answer. That story, and those in the New York Times and Daily News, also reported that books and papers seized in the raid on the ILD offices were being examined for evidence.

When Dodge spoke to the press on Monday, he affirmed he was in fact following the path that the New York American reporter had raised two days earlier. He mentioned charges of criminal anarchy, which carried a sentence of up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000, in connection with the disorder. However, newspaper stories differed on just what he said, with the New York American, Home News, and New York Sun reporting such charges “might be returned,” the New York Herald Tribune that the DA had evidence that “would justify” such charges, the Daily News, Times Union, and New York Post that indictments would be sought, and the New York World-Telegram that indictments were being sought. The New York Times did not publish a story about Dodge or the grand jury. There is no evidence that Dodge actually presented such charges; certainly, the grand jury did not vote for any indictments for criminal anarchy.

In raising criminal anarchy, Dodge told reporters that his investigators had found “some good clues,” a phrase reported in the New York American, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, Times Union, and Home News. The New York World-Telegram substituted “splendid new leads.” As examples, he displayed pamphlets seized in the earlier raids on the offices of Communist Party organizations, saying although he could no reveal their content, they were “hot stuff.” His claim that the documents were advocating the overthrow of the government was widely reported, in the New York Post, New York Sun, Home News, Times Union, New York Herald Tribune, and New York World-Telegram, as was the assertion that they had been "distributed to young school children.” Curiously given their anti-Communist focus, none of the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal, New York American, and the Daily Mirror, mentioned the pamphlets.

Instead, the New York American (in a separate, earlier story) and New York Evening Journal, joined only by the New York Post, reported Dodge again speaking about the grand jury considering new legislation so “irresponsible agitators would be prevented from goading thoughtless people toward the overthrow of the American form of government, by violence.” The New York Evening Journal summarized its purpose as “designed to curb Communistic activities in the interests of the public safety.” The New York Post described the legislation as “defining” free speech, with all three stories reporting that he insisted it would not be a restriction on free speech. The two Hearst newspapers were also alone in including in their stories that Dodge had met with federal officials and planned to turn his evidence over to them.

For all of Dodge’s bravado, the day’s grand jury hearing resulted in only one additional indictment related to the disorder. Unreported in the Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Evening Journal, the indictment charged a man with taking goods worth 15 cents. Only the Times Union reported the value of the goods. The New York American described the alleged offense as “theft of toilet articles,” the New York World-Telegram as “stealing several rolls of paper towels from a shop window.” The Daily News simply identified the charge as burglary. Only the New York Post, continuing its criticism of Dodge’s anti-Communist focus, made a connection between the case and the DA’s rhetoric, describing the indictment as “for nothing spectacular.”
In the Court of General Sessions on March 25 (6) Only the New York Sun and New York World-Telegram reported the first appearance of individuals arrested during the disorder before the Court of General Sessions. Their names and charges were reported in the New York Sun, together with brief descriptions of their alleged looting. That story also mentioned the pending arraignment of the four Communists but otherwise did not report the Magistrates Court hearing. The New York World-Telegram simply reported that six men appeared and were released on bail. (The only person named in that story was Harry Gordon.)