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

"Mayor Blames Rioting Upon Need of Relief" New York American, March 26, 1935, 6.

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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.
Sam Jameson, Murray Samuels, and Claudio Viabolo arrested Shortly after 6:45 PM, Patrolman Timothy Shannon and other officers arrested two nineteen-year-old white men, Sam Jameson and Murray Samuels, and Claudio Viabolo, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man, who were picketing in front of Kress’ store at 256 West 125th Street. The three men had arrived a few minutes earlier, likely from 262 Lenox Avenue, the offices of the organization to which they belonged, the Young Liberators. The placards they carried read “Kress Brutally Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child and Negro Women. Negro and White Don’t Buy Here” and “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child.” An officer “told or asked [the men] to stop marching in front of Kress'," Patrolman Moran told a public hearing of the MCCH and when they did not leave “after about five minutes," police arrested them for unlawful assembly. Jackson Smith, the store manager, watched the arrest from inside the store. “The police took the placards and pushed the people carrying them into the vestibule,” he told a later public hearing. Around thirty minutes earlier, Patrolman Shannon had arrested another man in front of the store, twenty-year-old white man, Daniel Miller, pulling him down from a stepladder when he tried to speak to a crowd. A few minutes later, around 6:30 PM, other officers, including Patrolman Irwin Young, arrested a second white man, Harry Gordon, when tried to speak to the crowd by climbing a lamppost on 125th Street east of Kress’ store.

The testimony of Moran and Smith in the public hearings provided the only details of the arrests of Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo. The men themselves did not testify. Patrolman Shannon did testify, but was not asked about any of the arrests he made. Newspaper stories on the arrests grouped the men with Miller, and in some cases, Gordon, reflecting information from police that they had acted together to create the disorder. Two Hearst newspapers, the New York American and New York Evening Journal, published stories that described the arrest, but they included details that testimony in the public hearings indicate did not happen: Jameson and Samuels arrived with Miller and Gordon, not after them, in the newspaper narrative, picketed before Miller spoke, and with Harry Gordon came to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, battling Shannon and two other patrolmen before also being arrested. Viabolo was not on the picket line in those stories, but in the New York American was a member of the crowd who joined in efforts to prevent Miller’s arrest. Although the newspapers said their information came from police, the elements that did not happen seem to be a product of the anti-Communist stance and sensational style of the Hearst newspapers. The New York Times and, somewhat surprisingly, the Daily Worker, also published narratives in which the men picketed before Miller spoke, but without details of their arrest. The New York Times simply reported that the arrest of Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo, and Miller, 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.”

Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo all appeared in the lists of those arrested during the disorder published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York Evening Journal, the Daily News, the New York American, and the New York Herald Tribune, among those charged with inciting a riot. However, the white men, Jameson and Samuels, as well as Miller and Gordon, are not in the transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter in the MCCH records. Viabolo did appear, with Margaret Mitchell, the Black woman arrested inside Kress' store. 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. It may be that the charges against those men were not recorded as riot. The charge against Viabolo in the blotter is disorderly conduct, with the note that he was “Disorderly in Kress’ 5 & 10c store,” the same description recorded for Margaret Mitchell.

In a line-up on the morning of March 20 that included ninety-six of those arrested disorder, police put Jameson, Samuels and Viabolo in a group with Miller and Gordon, a New York Herald Tribune story noted. Police described the men as all "arrested at a demonstration in front of the Kress store." That grouping was not mentioned in the two other newspaper stories about the line-up, in the Daily Mirror and New York Sun. An unnamed Black man, presumably Viabolo, was quoted in the New York Sun “giving his version of the start of the trouble:” "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.” The man then told the officer questioning him that he “and his companions took turns on a soap box “informing the public.”” That last detail was not part of any other description of the picketing. The two other newspaper stories on the line-up did not include Viabolo’s comments, but focused, as the New York Sun did, on Harry Gordon’s exchange with police, in which he refused to answer questions until he saw his lawyer.

The Daily News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal published photographs taken a few seconds apart that are captioned as showing the four white men arrested outside Kress’ store in the West 123rd Street police station on their way to the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Surrounded on three sides by both uniformed police and detectives in plainclothes, three white men are visible, with another white man party visible behind them, all but the first, identified as Harry Gordon, looking at the ground. On the right of the image is a Black man, almost certainly Viabolo, as police had grouped him with these men in the line-up earlier that day, and would again in the courthouse. He is unmentioned in the captions, and, perhaps as a result, cropped out of versions of the photograph published by several regional newspapers. Reflecting its anti-communist focus, the New York Evening Journal placed the photograph on page one, across the whole width of the page, with a caption labeling the men “young college-bred Communists.” The next page featured photographs of two placards used in the picket, and the leaflets circulated by both the Young Liberators and the Communist Party. The Daily News photograph, taken at almost the same moment, appeared in the center of a two page spread of photographs of the disorder in the center of the newspaper. The caption did not identify the men as Communists but as inciting the riot, focusing on drawing a contrast between their uninjured appearances and the damage done during the disorder. (Gordon later testified he had been beaten and had injuries to his face; he may be the man whose face was not visible in that photograph, notwithstanding the caption.)

Police continued to group Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo with Miller and Gordon when they appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court. In stories on the court appearances, 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. However, while the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, 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 the three Young Liberators and Miller. That separation would have resulted from the different arresting officer listed in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book for Gordon, Patrolman Irwin Young, not Patrolman Shannon, the arresting officer recorded for the four other men. The charge recorded for Gordon was also different, assaulting Young, not inciting riot. The Daily News claimed Gordon "was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers."

When the court clerk called the names of Jameson, Samuels, Viabolo, and Miller, two lawyers from the International Labor Defense Fund rose to represent them. The appearance of those attorneys was reported by the New York American, Daily Mirror, Home News, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, New York World-Telegram, and Daily Worker, but for some reason they were not recorded in the column for the name and address of a defendant's lawyer in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. The ILD's affiliation with the Communist Party would have been well known to readers of those newspapers, but the Daily Mirror explicitly made the connection in its story, stating that the men's "Communistic affiliations were declared" by the identity of their attorneys. The Daily Mirror and Daily Worker named the lawyers as Miss Yetta M. Aronsky and I[sidore] Englander, while the Daily News named only Aronsky, and the New York American, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Times reported only "a woman lawyer" who would not give her name to their reporters. (Englander later testified about being present in the court in a public hearing of the MCCH.)

Assistant District Attorney Richard E. Carey, the Black attorney Magistrate Renaud had requested prosecute those arrested in the disorder, according to the Daily News, asked that the men be held for a hearing on Friday on the maximum bail of $2,500. The men's lawyers protested that sum. Others arrested during the disorder charged with felonies had their bail set at $1,000, including Harry Gordon. Magistrate Renaud dismissed those protests, and complaints by Aronsky, reported by the Daily News and Daily Worker, that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest."

When Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo returned to the Harlem Magistrates Court with Miller, Magistrate Ford dismissed the charges against the group because their cases had already been decided by Dodge's grand jury. The Magistrates Court docket book recorded the deposition of the men's cases as "Dism[issed], def[endant] indicted." Stories in the Home News, Daily Mirror, and New York Amsterdam News also reported that they had been indicted by the grand jury. However, while the grand jury did send the men for trial, it was for a misdemeanor, not a felony, so an information, not an indictment, and to the Court of Special Sessions, not the Court of General Sessions. Other newspaper stories included elements of that distinction. The New York American reported that after being discharged, the men were "turned over to detectives with bench warrants based on the grand jury informations voted last week charging inciting to riot." The New York Herald Tribune also reported "two informations charging five persons with inciting riot" without naming them; so too did the Daily News, which alone specified that an information charged a misdemeanor and that the men were sent for trial in the Court of Special Sessions. The grand jury also sent all the other individuals charged with inciting a riot that appeared before it to the Court of Special Sessions to face trial for misdemeanors. If the men were being prosecuted for the form of the crime defined as a misdemeanor, unlawful assembly, their crime was being treated as involving disturbing the peace, not efforts to prevent the enforcement of the law or incite force or violence.

As other prosecutions resulting from the riot made their way through the courts there were no reports mentioning Jamison, Samuels, and Viabolo, or Miller. Finally, on June 20, the four men appeared in the Court of Special Sessions. The New York Amsterdam News reported an additional defendant, a "young sympathizer," Dave Mencher, not mentioned in any other sources, or in the Daily Worker story, the only other report of this trial located. Only one prosecution witness testified before the court's three judges, Sergeant Bauer of the West 123rd Street station (likely the sergeant who testified at the public hearings that he was involved in the arrest, although his name was recorded as Bowe in the transcript). It is not clear why Patrolman Timothy Shannon, the arresting officer, did not appear as a witness. International Labor Defense lawyers again represented the men, but not the same attorneys as the day after the disorder. Instead, Joseph Tauber and Edward Kuntz, who played prominent roles in the MCCH public hearings, represented the men. After cross-examining Bauer to establish that a crowd had collected in front of Kress' prior to the men arriving, they moved to have the charges dismissed. The judges agreed, and freed Jameson, Samuels, and Viabolo, as well as Miller.

Claudio Viabolo lived in Harlem, at 202 West 132nd Street; the two white men did not. Sam Jameson lived at 967 East 178th Street in Washington Heights, north of the Black neighborhood, although when a reporter from the New York Evening Journal went to the address, the tenants denied knowing him. Murray Samuels lived at 8621 Twentieth Avenue, Brooklyn. However, he was not a student at City College, as the New York Evening Journal reported on March 21. A week later the New York Evening Journal acknowledged that the Murray Samuels a reporter had identified as attending evening classes was not the man arrested during the disorder, in a story headlined, "Far From Red, and Riot! Says C. C. N. Y. Man."

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.
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.
Daniel Miller arrested Daniel Miller stepped up on a ladder in front of Kress' store about 6:15 PM and began to speak to a crowd he estimated at 100-200 people. The twenty-four-year-old white man who identified himself as a member of the Nurses and Hospital League had said only "Fellow workers" when someone in the crowd threw an object at the windows of the store, breaking one. Patrolman Timothy Shannon of the 28th Precinct, one of about five officers stationed in front of Kress' store, immediately pulled Miller from the ladder and arrested him. Sergeant Bowe testified in a public hearing of the MCCH that he was a "witness" to that arrest. James Parton, the Black man who had carried the ladder, and an American flag banner, to the front of the store and spoke briefly before Miller, was not arrested. Nor was Parton arrested when he climbed a lamppost on the opposite side of 125th Street and spoke to the crowd. However, Harry Gordon, a white man who followed Parton in climbing up the lamppost to speak, was, like Miller, immediately arrested.

Miller's testimony in a public hearing of the MCCH provided the most detailed description of his arrest. Patrolman Shannon also testified in an earlier public hearing, but he was not questioned about the arrest. Louise Thompson testified that she saw Miller begin to speak and the window broken. She did not see his arrest. Patrolman Moran did. Officers stationed with him in front of the store moved to arrest Miller and disperse the crowd listening to him as soon as the window was broken, he told a hearing of the MCCH. Two Hearst newspapers, the New York American and New York Evening Journal, published stories that described the arrest, but they included details that other sources indicate did not happen: Shannon arresting Miller after he refused an order to move on, with no mention of the widely reported broken window; and two white Young Liberators and Harry Gordon coming to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, and battling Shannon and two other patrolmen before also being arrested. Although the newspapers said their information came from police, these elements that did not happen seem to be a product of the anti-Communist stance and sensational style of the Hearst newspapers.

The lists of those arrested during the disorder published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York Evening Journal, the Daily News, the New York American, and the New York Herald Tribune all included Miller among those charged with inciting a riot. However, Miller, and the three other white men arrested in front of Kress' store, are not in the transcript of the 28th Precinct police blotter in the MCCH records. 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, do 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.

Miller was among around eighty-nine men and women arrested put in a line-up and questioned by detectives in front of reporters at Police Headquarters downtown on the morning of March 20, before being loaded into patrol wagons and taken back uptown to the Harlem and Washington Heights Magistrates Courts. Police put him on the platform in a group with Gordon and the three Young Liberators, Samuels, Jamison and Viabolo, a New York Herald Tribune story noted; it reported that police described them as all "arrested at a demonstration in front of the Kress store." That grouping was not mentioned in the two other newspaper stories about the line-up, with the Daily Mirror and New York Sun, as well as the New York Herald Tribune focusing on Harry Gordon refusing to answer questions until he saw his lawyer.

The Daily News and New York Evening Journal published photographs taken a few seconds apart that are captioned as showing the four white men arrested outside Kress’ store in the West 123rd Street police station on their way to the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Surrounded on three sides by both uniformed police and detectives in plainclothes, three white men are visible, with another white man party visible behind them, all but the first, identified in the caption as Harry Gordon, looking at the ground. Miller was the man on the right of the group, according to the captions. To his right is a Black man, almost certainly Viabolo, as police had grouped him with these men in the line-up earlier that day, and would again in the courthouse. He was not identified in the captions, and, perhaps as a result, cropped out of versions of the photograph published by several regional newspapers. Reflecting its anti-Communist focus, the New York Evening Journal placed the photograph on page one, across the whole width of the page, with a caption labeling the men “young college-bred Communists.” The next page featured photographs of two placards used in the picket, and the leaflets circulated by both the Young Liberators and the Communist Party. The Daily News photograph, taken at almost the same moment, appeared in the center of a two-page spread of photographs of the disorder in the center of the newspaper. The caption did not identify the men as Communists but as inciting the riot, focusing on drawing a contrast between their uninjured appearances and the damage done during the disorder. (Gordon later testified he had been beaten and had injuries to his face; he may be the man whose face was not visible in that photograph notwithstanding the caption.)

Police continued to group Miller with the other four men when they were appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court. In stories on the court appearances, 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. However, while the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram 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 charged separately from Miller and the other three men. That separation would have resulted from the different arresting officer listed in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book for Gordon, Patrolman Irwin Young, not Patrolman Shannon, the arresting officer recorded for the four other men. The charge recorded for Gordon was also different, assaulting Young, not inciting riot. The Daily News claimed Gordon "was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers."

In the Harlem Magistrates Court Miller was charged with inciting a riot, as were Jameson, Samuels and Viabolo. When their names were called, two lawyers from the International Labor Defense Fund rose to represent them. The appearance of those attorneys was reported by the New York American, Daily Mirror, Home News, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, New York World-Telegram and Daily Worker but for some reason they were not recorded in the column for the name and address of a defendant's lawyer in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book (a section completed for Harry Gordon). The ILD's affiliation with the Communist Party would have been well-known to readers of those newspapers, but the Daily Mirror explicitly made the connection in its story, stating that the men's "Communistic affiliations were declared" by the identity of their attorneys. The Daily Mirror and Daily Worker named the lawyers as "Miss Yetta M. Aronsky and I[sidore] Englander," while Daily News named only Aronsky, and the New York American, New York Herald Tribune and New York Times reported only "a woman lawyer" who would not give her name to their reporters. (Englander later testified about being present in the court in a public hearing of the MCCH).

Assistant District Attorney Richard E. Carey, the Black attorney Magistrate Renaud had requested prosecute those arrested in the disorder, according to the Daily News, requested the men be held for a hearing on Friday on the maximum bail of $2500. The men's ILD lawyers protested that sum. Other arrested during the disorder charged with felonies had their bail set at $1000, including Harry Gordon. Magistrate Renaud dismissed those protests, and complaints by Aronsky, reported by the Daily News and Daily Worker that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest."

When Miller returned to the Harlem Magistrates Court with the three Young Liberators, Magistrate Ford dismissed the charges against the group because the grand jury had indicted them in response to evidence presented by District Attorney Dodge as part of his investigation of the disorder. The Magistrates Court docket book records the deposition of the men's cases as "Dism[issed], def[endant] indicted." Stories in the Daily Mirror and New York Amsterdam News also reported they had been indicted by the grand jury. However, while the grand jury did send the men for trial, it was for a misdemeanor, not a felony, so an information that sent them to the Court of Special Sessions, not an indictment that would have sent them to the Court of General Sessions. Other stories included elements of that distinction. The New York American reported that after being discharged the men were "turned over to detectives with bench warrants based on the Grand Jury informations voted last week charging inciting to riot." The New York Herald Tribune also reported "two informations charging five persons with inciting riot" without naming them; so too did the Daily News, which alone specified that an information charged a misdemeanor and that the men were sent for trial in the Court of Special Sessions. The grand jury also sent all the other individuals charged with inciting a riot that appeared before it to the Court of Special Sessions to face trial for misdemeanors. Testifying in a public hearing of the MCCH, Miller said he was charged with unlawful assembly. That crime involving disturbing the peace, not efforts to prevent the enforcement of the law or incite force or violence.

As other prosecutions resulting from the riot made their way through the courts there were no reports mentioning Miller, or Jameson, Samuels and Viabolo. Finally, on June 20, the four men appeared in the Court of Special Sessions — the New York Amsterdam News reported an additional defendant, a "young sympathizer," Dave Mencher, not mentioned in any other sources or in the Daily Worker story, the only other report of this trial located. Only one prosecution witness testified before the court's three judges, Sergeant Bauer of the West 123rd Street station (likely the sergeant who testified at the public hearings that he was involved in the arrest, although his name was recorded as Bowe in the transcript). It is not clear why Patrolman Timothy Shannon, the arresting officer, did not appear as a witness. International Labor Defence lawyers again represented the men, but not the same attorneys as on the day after the disorder. Instead, Joseph Tauber and Edward Kuntz, who played prominent roles in the MCCH public hearings, represented the men. After cross-examining Bauer to establish that a crowd had collected in front of Kress' store prior to the men arriving, the attorneys moved to have the charges of inciting a riot dismissed. The judges agreed, and freed Miller and the three other men.

Miller's home address is recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book as 1280 South Boulevard in the Bronx. That address is also published by the Daily Mirror, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York American, New York Times, and New York Age. However, the New York Evening Journal reported that address did not exist. A different address was published in the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York American, and New York Amsterdam News: 35 Morningside Avenue, between West 117th and 118th Streets, two blocks west of 8th Avenue. That address fits the information he gave in the MCCH public hearing. All those newspaper stories are reports of Miller's appearance in court, suggesting that the Morningside Avenue address was mentioned at that time even if it was not recorded in the docket book. Miller's organization, the Nurses and Hospital League, had an office downtown at 799 Broadway, identified in the New York Post, New York American, and Daily Worker as raided by police investigating the disorder that was outside Harlem.
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.”