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• 1 2022-10-26T20:01:26+00:00 Members of the MCCH (13) 129 plain 2024-02-14T18:09:26+00:00 Most newspapers reported in the same edition both the statement that Mayor La Guardia released on the morning of March 20 and had distributed in Harlem and his afternoon announcement of whom he had appointed to the Commission. Only the appointment of eleven committee members was reported in the Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, while their names were included in the Home News, New York World-Telegram, and Atlanta World. The New York Age published the names of only the six Black members, while the Afro-American only identified the office holders, Roberts, Villard, and Carter, and Hays. The names and the occupations provided in the mayor’s press statement were published in the Daily Mirror, New York American, New York Times, Daily Worker, and the New York Amsterdam News. The New York Post and the Norfolk Journal and Guide combined that occupational information with information on the political affiliations of each member. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun published more extended biographies of all eleven members.
  
  La Guardia announced the members had been selected “because of their distinct contributions in their several fields,” according to a story in the New York Sun. He would later say that the appointments had been made "by advice,” according to the New York Age. There was no direct evidence of who offered La Guardia that advice. That it had not come from the leaders of Harlem’s social organizations was clear from the pointed request that James Hubert, the executive director of the Urban League, made to the mayor in a letter on March 26, “that in the future you will avail yourself of such assistance as is very easily obtained in Harlem and other Negro sections of the City to the end that whatever is undertaken may be accomplished as I know you desire the work to be done.” Instead, La Guardia appeared to have relied on those with whom he had political ties. Hubert Delany was likely one source of advice. La Guardia, who had appointed him tax commissioner, treated him “as an unofficial ombudsman for the black community” according to historian Thomas Kessner. (Delany was a member of the NAACP). The NAACP did send La Guardia a list of names on March 20 that included three of those appointed — Hays, Ernst, and Carter — but there is no evidence to confirm that the Mayor received that list before announcing the Commission members. Historian Stephen Carter argued that Eunice Hunton Carter may have been appointed in recognition of her willingness to run for a state assembly seat for La Guardia’s Republican-Fusion party the previous year. He noted that the party machine “had a tradition of finding places for candidates willing to run in tough cases against incumbents.” An Associated Negro Press story published in the Norfolk Journal and Guide attributed Carter’s subsequent appointment to Thomas Dewey’s team of special prosecutors going after the Mob to that obligation.
  
  La Guardia subsequently added two additional members, a Black clergyman and a white clergyman. Only the New York Amsterdam News reported those appointments, suggesting that the mayor's office did not announce them in press statements. The appointment of Rev. John W. Robinson, the retired pastor of St. Mark's, the city's largest AME church, was foreshadowed in newspaper stories about the mayor's visit to the Interdenominational Preachers Meeting of Greater New York and Vicinity on March 25. Robinson led that group. After their complainants about La Guardia's failure to appoint a minister, the mayor indicated he would consider appointing a nominee of the meeting. Stories in the Home News, New York Times, and New York World-Telegram and in the New York Amsterdam News and New York Age reported that the meeting chose Robinson. Evidence of an indirect political connection that may have made La Guardia receptive to that suggestion appeared in a New York Amsterdam News story on the couple's wedding: Robinson’s second wife, pharmacist Dr. Julia Coleman, was active in the Republican Party in Harlem.
  
  That La Guardia told the Interdenominational Preachers Meeting that he would also appoint a second clergyman “chosen from a denomination not included in the Alliance” was reported only in the New York Age. It took until April 4, almost a week after Robinson's appointment, for the mayor to finalize that choice: Father McCann of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church on West 141st Street. The New York Amsterdam News made McCann's appointment the headline of the story it published on April 6 about the MCCH hearing. McCann had appeared in earlier newspaper stories as a result of a pastoral letter he made public on March 23 blaming Communists for the disorder and calling for a movement to keep them out of Harlem. The priest's anti-communism offered La Guardia a way to address those who had criticized those he had appointed as all liberals. However, La Guardia had clearly also decided the second clergyman on the committee should be Catholic as he had sought the advice of Edmund B. Butler, a prominent Catholic lawyer who was secretary of the city’s Emergency Relief Bureau, about whom to appoint immediately after he met with the Black ministers. Butler wrote to him the next day, to give him McCann’s name, which he had been unable to think of at that time: “He has always been very much interested in Negroes and volunteered for the work….I think that the appointment of him would be excellent.” A note on the letter recorded, “Father McCann is white,” likely another criteria for his selection given that the committee had two more Black members than white members after Robinson’s appointment. Several days later, on April 1, Butler spoke to La Guardia about McCann, after which he told the clergyman that La Guardia was going to appoint him. On April 4, La Guardia wrote to notify Roberts that he had appointed Father McCann. Even after the Communist Party wrote to both the MCCH and the Mayor to complain about McCann's appointment on April 25, the Daily Worker did not report it.
  
  In the historical literature, only Lindsey Lupo identified all thirteen the members of the MCCH, in a chart that described their occupations in two or three words. Cheryl Greenberg named Delaney, Randolph, and, inexplicably, Cullen as examples of the "impressive range of experts" that La Guardia had appointed, also mistakenly including Frazier as a member of the commission. Naison only identified the number of "representative citizens" appointed, which he stated was eleven, neglecting the later appointments of Robinson and McCann. Johnson also mistakenly identified the MCCH as an eleven-member commission, without identifying any of the members. Kessner mentioned only Roberts, the chair, as did Watson.
  
  Information on the attendance of the MCCH members at their meetings and public hearings was collated by their staff. The MCCH included its own appraisal of each members contribution to its work in the foreword of the version of its report it submitted to Mayor La Guardia. Who signed, and thereby endorsed the report of the subcommittee on crime and the MCCH's final report, was documented in the MCCH records.

  Black members:

  Eunice Hunton Carter

  • Press statement: “social worker and lawyer"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "Lawyer and social worker, holds degrees from Smith College and Columbia and Fordham Universities, Republican-Fusion candidate for Assembly from 19th Manhattan District in 1934"
  • New York Post: “lawyer and social worker and Fusion political leader” 
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "a social worker, lawyer and leader in every important progressive movement in the community, who knows Harlem in its gladness and sorrow"
  • Meeting Attendance: 17
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (missed May 18)
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report

  Countee Cullen

  • Press statement: "author"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "poet, graduate of New York University; contributor to magazines and newspapers and winner of several poetry awards"
  • New York Post: “the poet”
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "a young Negro pedagogue and poet, brought to the commission the point of view of the youth"
  • Meeting Attendance: 11
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (missed May 18)
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report

  Hubert T. Delany

  • Press statement: "Tax Commissioner of the City of New York"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "Negro, lawyer, graduate of the College of the City of New York and New York University Law School, Assistant United States Attorney under former United States Attorney Charles H. Tuttle, Republican candidate for House of Representatives from 21st Manhattan District in 1920. Commissioner of Board of Taxes and Assessments by appointment of Mayor LaGuardia in February 1934."
  • New York Post: “lawyer and Republican leader"
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "Commissioner of Taxes and Assessments of the City of New York, was well-qualified to anlayze the employment situation in Harlem. Mr Delany, a lawyer and former public official, was well-equipped to analyze the problem of unemployment with as little intellectual bias as anyone in the community."
  • Meeting Attendance: 12
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed May 4, May 18)
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report

  A. Philip Randolph

  • Press statement: "Natl. President, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "general organizer and president of National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, attended College of City of New York, founder of a magazine, 'The Messenger'"
  • New York Post: “president of the National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters”
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "a great leader in the labor movement displayed his keen sense of understanding as President of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Mr Randolph brought to the Commission a greater understanding of labor problems as they affect the Negroes than any other man that could be found in the community. Harlem respects and admires A. Philip Randolph."
  • Meeting Attendance: 7
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
  • Reports signed: MCCH report (not in New York when the Subcommittee report was submitted)

  Charles Roberts

  • Press statement: "dentist"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "Negro, dentist, graduate of Lincoln University, Republican candidate for House of Representatives from 21st District in 1924, member of Board of Aldermen, 1931-1933"
  • New York Post: “dentist, Republican leader and former Alderman”
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "selected for the reason that he has lived in the community of Harlem for over a quarter of a century. His life has been devoted to the development of the social, economic and cultural advancement of the community, both as a former public official and as a professional man. His unquestioned interest and knowledge of the community needs make him an outstanding representative of Harlem."
  • Meeting Attendance: 20
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report

  Rev. John Robinson

  • No press statement or newspaper stories about his appointment
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "a representative of the Interdenominational Ministers Alliance, symbolizes the opinion of Negro clergymen of Harlem. It is useless to state the churches of Harlem exercise the most vitalizing influence that can be found in this area."
  • Meeting Attendance: 13
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report

  Charles Toney

  • Press statement: "Municipal Court"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "Justice of Municipal Court; graduate of Syracuse University, Tammany Democrat"
  • New York Post: "justice of the Municipal Court and Democratic political leader”
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "a Justice of the Municipal Court of the City of New York, was of great assistance in that by reason of his experience in what is known as the poor man's court, brought a legal understanding to the commission that was valuable."
  • Meeting Attendance: 13
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 1 (missed April 6, April 20, May 4, May 18)
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report

   

  White members:

  Morris L. Ernst

  • Press statement: "lawyer;" “writer and publisher” in the Daily Mirror and New York American
  • New York Herald Tribune: "lawyer, graduate of Columbia University, member of American Civil Liberties Union, counsel in many liberal causes, represented Mrs. Margaret Sanger, birth-control advocate; mediator in recent taxicab strike by appointment of Mayor LaGuardia"
  • New York Post: "of the Civil Liberties Union,” and grouped with Hays
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "an eminent attorney, did yeoman service relative to the housing situation"
  • Meeting Attendance: 6
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 2 (missed April 20, May 4, May 18)
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime

  John J. Grimley

  • Press statement: "doctor"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "physician, lieutenant-colonel of 369th Infantry, National Guard of New York, crack Negro regiment"
  • New York Post: “lieutenant-colonel of the Negro 369th Infantry, National Guard”
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "brought to the Commission intimate contact with the manhood of Harlem through his experience as commanding officer of the 369th Infantry. Col. Grimley also rendered technical advice relative to the problem of health, having spent years as superintendent and director of various hospitals."
  • Meeting Attendance: 5
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 4 (recorded as missing May 18, but was referred to as present in transcript)
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime

  Arthur Garfield Hays

  • Press statement: "lawyer"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "Lawyer, graduate of Columbia University, counsel to American Civil Liberties Union, appeared as defense counsel in many cases involving civil liberties - coal strike in Pennsylvania, 1922; Scopes evolution trial in Tennessee, 1925; Countess Cathcart immigration case; Sacco-Vanzetti case in 1927, and most recently in defense of John Strachey, English lecturer threatened with deportation"
  • New York Post: “of the Civil Liberties Union,” and grouped with Ernst
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "a champion of civil liberties, conducted with astuteness and patience the public hearings concerning the police and their treatment of Harlem. The information so adduced was of invaluable worth to the study."
  • Meeting Attendance: 12
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5 (chair)
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report

  Father McCann

  • No press statement or newspaper stories about his appointment
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "represented the Catholic opinion of the community"
  • Meeting Attendance: 5
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed March 30 [not appointed at that time], May 18)
  • Reports signed: Neither

  William J. Schieffelin

  • Press statement: "Trustee of the Tuskegee Institute”
  • New York Herald Tribune: "Chemist, graduate of Columbia School of Mines and University of Munich, chairman of Citizens Union, trustee of Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute, schools for the education of Negroes"
  • New York Post: “chairman of the Citizen's Union and of Tuskegee Institute, the Negro university”
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "a trustee of Tuskegee Institute, a contributor and benefactor of the Negro race, a director of the Citizen's Union, and an exponent of social justice, contributed calm understanding of the perplexing problems that this committee dealt with."
  • Meeting Attendance: 9
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 3 (missed May 4, May 18)
  • Reports signed: MCCH report (not in New York when the subcommittee report was submitted)

  Oswald Garrison Villard

  • Press statement: "publisher"
  • New York Herald Tribune: "owner of 'The Nation'; graduate of Harvard University, liberal crusader, grandson of William Lloyd Garrison, founder of 'The Liberator,' and apostle of abolition of slavery"
  • New York Post: “editor of the Nation”
  • Foreword to the MCCH report: "former editor and owner of a metropolitan daily, former professor at Harvard University and contributing editor to the Nation, a member of the NAACP, writer and lecturer, a keen student of American social problem, not excepting the oftern referred to Negro problem, brought a wealth of understanding and experience. It has been said of Mr Villard that his merciless scrutiny and analysis make him one of the foremost social philosophers of America."
  • Meeting Attendance: 12
  • Subcommittee on Crime Hearing Attendance: 5
  • Reports signed: Subcommittee on crime; MCCH report

   
• 1 2020-02-25T18:03:35+00:00 Lloyd Hobbs killed 127 plain 2024-05-30T21:16:33+00:00 Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black teenager, was shot and killed by Patrolman John McInerney, who claimed Hobbs had been looting an auto supply store.
  
  

  Around 7:30 PM, Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell had made the short trip from their home on St. Nicholas Ave to the Apollo Theater on 125th Street for a show, not emerging until 12:30 AM. When they stepped back onto 125th St, they saw crowds down the block at the intersection with 7th Ave, and went to investigate. They followed as police pushed the crowd north on 7th Ave. As people milled in front of a damaged auto parts store at 2150 7th Avenue near 128th Street, a police radio car pulled up, and one of the officers inside, Patrolman John McInerney got out. Fearing that they would be beaten by the police, the boys and the others in front of the store ran up 7th Avenue. Here the accounts of the boys and seven Black eyewitnesses and those of the two white patrolmen diverged.
  
  McInerney and his partner, Patrolman Watterson, claimed that as they were driving south, their attention had been drawn to the auto parts store by the noise of breaking glass, and they had seen Lloyd in the window handing items out to those on the street. Three of the eyewitnesses, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Marshall Pfifer, said all the windows of the store had been broken at least an hour earlier and nothing remained in the display by the time the Hobbs brothers arrived there. The patrolmen said that Lloyd climbed out of the window with items in his hands as they pulled up, and when McInerney pursued him up 7th Avenue and called on him to halt, continued to run. When those running from the patrolman got to 128th Street, Lloyd broke away from the group and turned west on to 128th Street. McInerney then shot the boy. Warren Wright, standing in the entrance of the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue, south of the store, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Samuel Pitts standing on the corner across 128th Street from the auto supply store, in front of Battle's Pharmacy, to which the crowd was running, John Bennett, in 201 West 128th Street toward which Lloyd turned and ran, and Marshall Pfifer, standing on the corner of West 128th Street on the other side of 7th Avenue, all testified that the boy had nothing in his hands as he ran and that McInerney did not call to him to halt before shooting him. After the bullet hit Hobbs and he fell to the ground, McInerney and Watterson, who had remained in the car, backing it into 128th Street, said Lloyd dropped a car horn and socket set, which McInerney picked up. Seven witnesses said that there was nothing on the ground next to the boy.
  
  The two patrolman loaded Lloyd Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital. Russell Hobbs had kept running up 7th Avenue and had not seen the shooting. He learned from the crowd at the scene that it was his brother who had been shot and driven away and immediately ran home to tell his parents, Lawyer and Mary Hobbs. The family rushed to Harlem Hospital. When they found Lloyd, he told them, “Mother, the officer shot me for nothing. I was not doing anything.” McInerney, guarding the boy, said "Why didn't you halt when I told you to?" Lloyd offered the same account when questioned in the hospital by Homicide Bureau detectives, in a statement recorded by a police stenographer.
  
  Lloyd Hobbs appeared in all seven published lists of those injured in the disorder, in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
  
  In the following days, Lawyer Hobbs went to the 28th Precinct several times trying to make a complaint against the officer who had shot his son. He also sought help from the New York Urban League, giving them a statement about what had happened to his son on March 28, which they sent to the MCCH. As a result, Hobbs and his family were among the witnesses asked to come to the MCCH's first public hearing on March 30. Only Russell testified that day, briefly describing how his brother had been shot. A few hours later, at 6:30 PM, Lloyd Hobbs died in Harlem Hospital, the fourth death resulting from the disorder. While the New York Times, Daily News, New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and Afro-American referred to Russell's testimony in reporting Hobbs' death, the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, Home News, Daily Mirror, New York American, and Chicago Defender reported only the boy's death in their stories.
  
  The next week, at the MCCH hearing, Lawyer, Mary, and Russell Hobbs testified, together with three Black men who had witnessed the shooting, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Samuel Pitts, Dr. Arthur Logan, one of the physicians who treated Lloyd Hobbs, the police stenographer who had recorded a statement from the boy soon after he arrived at Harlem Hospital, and James Tartar, a Black investigator for the MCCH. Assistant District Attorney Saul Price heard the testimony of the three eyewitnesses soon after the hearing and had them appear before the grand jury on April 10 so they could consider charges against Patrolman McInerney. The grand jury also heard from Russell Hobbs, both his parents, McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, the police stenographer, the detective who investigated the shooting, John O'Brien, and the owner of the automobile supply store. Patrolman McInerney also offered to testify, but the grand jury opted not to hear him. They dismissed the case.
  
  The MCCH nonetheless continued to investigate the boy's killing, hearing testimony from McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, and Detective O'Brien, who investigated the shooting, at a hearing on April 20 marked by angry interjections from the audience. Four additional witnesses to the shooting testified at an MCCH hearing on May 18. James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, also obtained information that McInerney had not turned in the items he claimed to have found next to Lloyd Hobbs until April 8, more than two weeks after he shot the boy. That interval raised the possibility that the patrolman had not found the items at the scene but had obtained them later, when he needed to justify the shooting. As a result of that information and the testimony of additional eyewitnesses, Assistant District Attorney Saul Price presented the case to the grand jury for a second time on June 10. After hearing from the new witnesses, and from Tartar about the absence of the allegedly stolen items from police records and the Police Property Department until April 8, the grand jury again dismissed the case without hearing testimony from McInerney.
  
  The police department had committed to an internal hearing on the case before ADA Price had decided to resubmit it to the grand jury. The hearing took place on June 14; in attendance were James Tartar and E. Franklin Frazier, the Howard University sociologist who had recently started work leading the MCCH's investigation of Harlem. It was the first time that anyone outside the police department and the district attorney's office heard Patrolman McInerney's testimony. While Tartar and Frazier were unpersuaded, senior police officers found the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs was justified, reprimanding the patrolman only for his delay in handing in the items he claimed to have found at the scene.
  
  While two grand juries and a police department hearing exonerated McInerney, the MCCH and the Black press did not share that view. Arthur Garfield Hays and Oscar Villard gave a central place to McInerney killing Hobbs in the report of the subcommittee submitted to Mayor La Guardia on June 11, 1935. The report of the subcommittee characterized the killing of Lloyd Hobbs as "inexcusable." E. Franklin Frazier included that material in the final report of the MCCH, framed in even harsher terms: the killing of the boy was "a brutal act on the part of the police." Police Commissioner Valentine was unmoved by that censure. He responded to both reports by asserting that Lloyd Hobbs had been looting the store and that two grand juries had exonerated McInerney.

  In assessing the case, the two reports gave significant weight to the character of Lloyd Hobbs and his family. The subcommittee argued that "the record of Lloyd Hobbs and that of his family are presumptive evidence that he was not the kind of boy who would engage in looting." The final report of the MCCH described the boy as "having a good record in school and in the community, and being a member of a family of good standing and character." Lloyd Hobbs had been born in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1916, the second youngest of five children of Mary and Lawyer Hobbs. (The story published in the New York Amsterdam News on April 6, 1935, accompanied by a photograph of Mrs. Hobbs, gave her first name as Carrie, but it was recorded as Mary in the census in 1930, 1940, and 1950). The boy's name was recorded as Lawyer in the 1930 census and as Lawyer, Jr in the "Social and Economical History" of the family written by James Tartar, but elsewhere in that document and in all other sources as Lloyd. The family farmed in Virginia until 1927, and still owned 83 acres there, when Lawyer's ill health required him to get work "which would not necessitate his being in the sun," according to his wife. He had worked previously in New York City, so the family relocated there. Lawyer found work first as a sexton at Union Baptist Church, then for a construction company. Mary Hobbs worked first as a domestic servant, the most common occupation for Black women, before becoming one of a much smaller group employed in factory work, in her case at a lampshade company. That was her occupation in the 1930 census; Lawyer's occupation was recorded as chauffeur. At that time the family lived at 228 West 140th Street, their home since they arrived in New York City. By April, 1931 both parents had lost their jobs, and the family joined many in Harlem applying for work and relief from private and government agencies. Sometime in the intervening years Lawyer Hobbs found some work as a helper on a truck owned by Charles Bell (perhaps a brother-in-law; a sister-in-law named Senora Bell lived with the family in 1930).
  
  Lawyer Hobbs' income allowed the family to settle in a fourth-floor apartment at 321 St. Nicholas Avenue in 1932, having moved twice in the preceding year, as many in Harlem did during the Depression. A lodger helped pay the rent in 1935. James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, described the residence as "a comfortable apartment, clean, nicely arranged, nicely furnished and well ventilated."
  
  Throughout their time in the city, the Hobbs children attended school. By 1935 the eldest, twenty-year-old Cassie, was working, but her twin sisters Hazel and Zenobia remained students at the Textile High School, Lloyd was a student at Haaren High School, and his younger brother Russell a student at Frederick Douglas Junior High School. Lloyd would have graduated in June, according to a story in the New York Amsterdam News.
  
  After Lloyd's death, the family continued to live at 321 St. Nicholas Avenue until at least 1950. All the family members resided there in 1940. Fifty-six-year-old Mary, who provided the information to the census enumerator, did not identify an occupation. Lawyer was working as a laborer in a sugar refinery, Cassie and Zenobia as seamstresses in a dress factory, Hazel in a lampshade factory, and Russell as a clerk in a food store. All but Zenobia were still living in the apartment in 1950, although as Cassie was recorded as divorced she had likely not resided there for all of the intervening ten years. Neither Lawyer nor Mary, who was listed as sixty years old, were working by that time. Hazel had joined Cassie working as a seamstress, while Russell now worked as a driver for a construction company.
   
• 1 2022-11-10T16:14:30+00:00 Reactions to appointments to the MCCH 73 plain 2024-02-14T20:37:52+00:00 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. 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. 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 Dr William Lloyd Imes about meeting with 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, but someone provided the press with the location. Only the New York Times reported that Charles Roberts was 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 New York American 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.” Only the New York Amsterdam News 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 Communist Party 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.”
  
  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 suggested the need for a social worker in letter to La Guardia: “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.” 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. 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, 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 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.” 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) wrote to La Guardia 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, complaining that Puerto Ricans had been ignored. Rivera labeled that omission “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 Puerto Rican groups in the records of the mayor, Bosch did receive a response from his secretary saying that “it is not deemed advisable to enlarge the membership or scope of program of the present committee.”
   
• 1 2022-11-09T23:43:21+00:00 The public hearing on March 30 53 plain 2024-02-14T21:00:12+00:00 There is no reliable record of what was said in the public hearing. A transcript of the hearings was recorded but it did not consistently identify who asked questions of witnesses or the reactions of the audience (nor the recess taken for lunch on March 30). Arthur Garfield Hays, who chaired the hearing, considered them a “poor report." By the same token, newspaper stories on the hearing varied widely in their emphases and detail. Reporters also appeared to have frequently misattributed comments made during the hearing. None of the newspaper stories reported testimony about events after disorder broke out on 125th Street or events beyond 125th Street described by witnesses.
  
  Unsurprisingly, Harlem’s two Black newspapers provided the most extensive accounts of the hearing. The New York Age published the most detailed story, summarizing the testimony of all but two witnesses — Russell Hobbs and Inspector Di Martini (it did offer details of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs elsewhere in the story). The New York Amsterdam News took a different approach, providing a summary of what it judged to be the key information: that Patrolman Donahue chose to release Rivera out of sight of those in the store; that the leaflets distributed by the Young Liberators and Communist Party did not appear until two hours after the disorder began; and that Rivera was the boy grabbed in the store. Only three other newspapers highlighted several of those issues: the New York Age, without giving Donahue’s testimony the same significance; and the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, without attention to the identification of Rivera. Other newspapers emphasized only one of those topics.
  
  In the largest group of newspapers, it was Patrolman Donahue’s decision to release Rivera out the rear exit and so out of sight of those in the store which was the focus. While the Home News, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Associated Negro Press reported Donahue had admitted that was a mistake, the transcript did not record such a statement. Instead, it was Edward Kuntz, one of the ILD lawyers in the audience, who offered that assessment while questioning the officer. After Donahue testified that crowds on 125th Street caused him to take Rivera into the store, Kuntz commented, “If you had let the boy go at that time there would not have been any excitement.” Rather than Donahue or Kuntz, it was unnamed “witnesses” to whom the New York Times and Afro-American attributed evidence that had there been “no mystery” about what happened to Rivera, there would have been no rioting. Both those stories, and the New York Amsterdam News, were the only accounts that also reported Inspector Di Martini had testified “he would have released the boy where all could see.” Again, that statement is not in the transcript. Instead, it records that Di Martini said, “The policeman who was there did not take those people into his confidence. I am of the opinion that the people did see this boy led from the store.” As Hays questioned Donahue, both ILD lawyers, Tauber and Kuntz, and James Ford, the head of the Communist Party (CP) in Harlem, all interjected with questions of their own, likely leading some of those listening to confuse who was speaking and what was being said. As the MCCH's stenographer would have sat at the front of the courtroom, it was likely the reporters who were mistaken. It is striking given how those eight newspapers interpreted Donahue’s testimony that the New York Herald Tribune and New York Age reported Donahue’s testimony without mentioning its implications — and that the Daily News, Daily Mirror, and Daily Worker did not include it at all.
  
  Testimony about the leaflets distributed by the Young Liberators (YL) and CP were the focus of stories in the New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York Age. That evidence provided the headline in the New York Herald Tribune: “Reds' Handbills Are Cleared As 'Chief Cause' of Harlem Riot - Came Out Two Hours After Peak of Fighting, Mayor's Board Learns at Outset.” The story did not identify the source of that testimony (Louise Thompson); it simply reported that “the committee learned” that information. The story also somewhat misleadingly described the source of the leaflets as the concern of “most of the hearing.” (The testimony of the leaders of the YL and CP constituted eleven of the fifty-one pages of testimony; in addition, several other witnesses — Battle, Cole, and Thompson — were briefly asked about the pamphlets. When Di Martini mentioned them, Hays responded by saying they were not distributed until after disorder, referencing Thompson's earlier testimony.) The Daily News, in a story under the byline of their crime reporter Grace Robinson, omitted the testimony about the time the leaflets appeared that became central to the MCCH’s narrative of events, instead continuing to cast them as “having brought the riot into being” and focusing on who was responsible for them. That story, which appeared in early editions, was headlined “Blank Drawn at Probe of Harlem Riot,” focusing on Taylor’s statement that “somebody upstairs” at the YL’s office had composed and distributed the leaflet while he was seeking information on what had happened to Rivera. The reporter characterized Taylor as having “neatly shrugged off” “blame for the riot.” (In later editions the headline was changed to “Harlem Riot Takes Its Fourth Victim” and the story was revised to not only lead with Hobbs’ death but to highlight an exchange between Hays and Di Martini about whether the police should put out leaflets of their own in the future, the Inspector’s testimony about the hearse that arrived at the rear of Kress’ store and other elements of Taylor’s testimony with only a passing mention of the pamphlets.) The New York Age also reported only that the testimony confirmed that the groups were the source of the pamphlets; it made no mention of the evidence that they were distributed too late to have triggered the disorder. Instead, the New York Age pointed to Louise Thompson’s testimony that the first window was broken in the Kress store before any speech was made as having “refuted” “reports that the Communists had taken the first steps in starting the actual violence.”
  
  Seven additional newspapers mentioned the pamphlets without making them a focus. The New York Times included a subheading “Source of Pamphlet Sought” that drew attention to Tauber’s testimony that he did not know who printed the pamphlet. The story went on to note that “testimony” “indicated” that the pamphlets did not reach the street until after the disorder started, in the process noting that there had been two pamphlets, from the YL and CP, the only story to note that detail. Taylor’s testimony that the YL produced the leaflets was also reported by the New York American, without the detail that he did not know by who, and the Afro-American, which included his statement that it been “somebody upstairs.” Neither newspaper mentioned the time the pamphlets were distributed. It was Ford’s testimony about the second pamphlet, produced by the CP, that was reported in the Home News and in the Chicago Defender and Associated Negro Press stories. Those stories mentioned the time the pamphlets were distributed; they did not make clear that Ford was referring to the second and later of the two pamphlets nor report Taylor’s testimony. Unsurprisingly, the Daily Worker also noted testimony that the leaflets were distributed too late to have caused the disorder, attributing that evidence to "witnesses, including some of the police."
  
  The stories in the New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and New York Post that made no mention of the pamphlets reported only testimony from the morning session of the hearings, suggesting that those reporters had left when the hearings recessed for lunch. The Daily Mirror reporter may have thought the hearing ended at the recess, as the paper’s story mistakenly claimed that “the inquiry into the origin of 5,000 incendiary pamphlets advocating Revenge for the murder of Martyr Rivera, which, distributed to milling pedestrians in 125th St., aroused them to their riot frenzy,” had been delayed to the next hearing, which it reported would be on Monday instead of the next Saturday.
  
  Anti-Communist Hearst newspapers the New York Evening Journal, New York American and Daily Mirror that might have been expected to highlight testimony about the pamphlets circulated by radical groups chose to instead focus on clashes between lawyers affiliated with the Communist Party and witnesses and members of the MCCH. They likely did so because the testimony on the leaflets relieved the CP of blame for starting the disorder, as those publications had charged. The New York Post, which rejected efforts to blame CP for the disorder, also focused on those clashes. Other papers mentioned instances of conflict without focusing attention on them; for eg, the Daily News noted that the hearings “developed at times into a field day for Communist exponents and cop-baiting attorneys for the International Labor Defense.” There was no mention of such incidents in the New York World-Telegram and Times Union.
  
  The most widely reported exchange involved ADA Kaminsky, the third witness to testify, and ILD lawyers. It was the focus of the New York Evening Journal and New York Post stories and their headlines, and mentioned with details in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Age, and New York Amsterdam News, and the Daily Worker, and in passing in the Chicago Defender. The New York Evening Journal led with the “verbal clash,” but described only Tauber demanding to question the ADA and him responding "I prefer not to be a party to a field day by irresponsible persons." The story also mentioned Tauber’s claim that police had raided the offices of several organizations affiliated with the CP after the disorder, targeting those groups because of their political views — hence the story’s headline: “RIOT TERROR CHARGED TO POLICE.” Kaminsky’s response to Tauber’s effort to question him and the charges made by Tauber were also reported by the New York Post, which extended the exchange to include protests by the ILD lawyers and an exchange between Hays and Kaminsky: “'I don't think you ought to call these men irresponsible because their views are different from yours,' Mr. Hays told Mr. Kaminsky, who shrugged and said: 'That's your viewpoint.'” The Daily Worker reported Kaminsky's statement and the same retort from Hays without a further response from Kaminsky. The Home News story included the same exchange, while the New York Amsterdam News included elements of it, Hays “chiding” Kaminsky without a response from the ADA. The elements in those exchanges appeared differently in the transcript. Before Tauber sought to question the ADA, Hays asked Kaminsky about whether those indicted before the DA’s grand jury had been charged “for their political views?” Kaminsky responded, “I am quite sure that the grand jury would not indict people for their political views.” When Tauber asked to question Kaminsky, Hays simply said, “I think not,” before Kaminsky declared “I refuse to be a party to a field day by irresponsible persons. So far this has been simply an occasion for police baiting.” When Tauber and Minor raised the raids, Hays asked Kaminsky if he knew anything about them, which he said he did not. He then sat by while Hays asked the ILD lawyers about their allegations, eventually asking to be excused as he was not a witness . The story in the New York Herald Tribune reported it was an audience member who called out “that’s your viewpoint,” not in response to Hays, but after Kaminsky claimed the ILD was using the hearing for "police-baiting.” In that narrative, Hays refused to allow Tauber to question Kaminsky before the ADA made his remark about irresponsible people. Similarly, no exchange between Hays and Kaminsky featured in the New York Age's account. Like the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Worker, it included the audience reaction, applause for the lawyers’ protests and hissing when the ADA left the stand. Kaminsky’s response to Tauber was mentioned in the New York Times, which added that he accused Tauber of “police baiting,” and that Hays refused to allow the questioning on the grounds that the lawyers would be representing men prosecuted by the DA. (The New York World-Telegram and Times Union mentioned Kaminsky’s evidence without reference to the clash.)
  
  If the garbled reporting and transcription of this exchange might be explained by the difficulty of discerning what was being said when people shouted at and over each other, those circumstances do not explain the complete absence from the transcript of another clash reported by several newspapers. In that case, the Home News and the Chicago Defender and Associated Negro Press reported that when Battle, a Black police lieutenant, was recalled to testify for a second time in the afternoon, Charles Romney questioned him until stopped by Schieffelin declaring “there would be no more 'police baiting.'” The passage was identical in all three stories; the stories in the Black newspapers were published after the Home News story, so may have taken the text from that story. However, Bessye J. Bearden, credited as the author of the Chicago Defender story, worked as a New York correspondent for the paper, so could have been in the courtroom.
  
  The police officer who was recalled to the stand in the afternoon in the transcript was Captain Rothengast, a white officer; after Hays asked him about the circumstances in which police shot Lloyd Hobbs, his testimony was interrupted so that Russell Hobbs, Lloyd’s younger brother could testify. When Rothengast returned to the stand, Romney was one of those who questioned him. Later, when someone questioning Rothengast complained that the officers who had killed people during the disorder had “gone free,” Hays interjected to say, “We are not here to investigate the police.” The New York Times and New York American identified the subject of that “rebuke” as Minor not Romney; the New York Times, which attributed the statement to Schieffelin not Hays, described what Minor said as police baiting, while the New York American described it as “as similar rebuke” to an earlier accusation of police baiting (which could refer to Kaminsky’s statement, as there was no intervention in Rivera’s testimony, which is when the story said it took place). The New York Herald Tribune reported that Hays said “he would have no police baiting at the hearing” during Donahue’s testimony; there was no intervention by him in the transcript of that testimony other than offering people the opportunity to ask questions. While Rothengast was a white officer, and Battle a Black officer, it does appear that these stories misreported the name of the officer testifying during this clash. The Daily Mirror reported another exchange during Rothengast’s testimony as “another highlight” of the hearing. The story described Schieffelin warning Tauber, one of the ILD lawyers, to treat witnesses with politeness. That statement did appear in the transcript, without a clear identification of who said it, and addressed to “Mr Allen,” a name that otherwise did not appear in the transcript.
  
  Reactions from the audience likely contributed to focusing attention on those incidents. Newspaper stories portrayed those reactions in different, somewhat contradictory terms. The New York Amsterdam News and New York Age described a tense crowd that on occasion made their feelings known. Those outbursts came at the end of the day according to the New York Amsterdam News: “The undercurrent of the antagonism against the police, noticeable throughout the day in the audience, surged to its height during Rothengast's stay on the stand, culminating in numerous audible taunts and cat-calls just before the hearing ended for the day.” Such outbursts were more frequent in the New York Age’s account and tied to the actions of the ILD lawyers and their supporters on which the Hearst newspapers focused: “The hearing itself was characterized by an air of unrest and incipient disorder on the part of the crowd which was greatly augmented by the presence and active participation in the proceedings of numerous lawyers representing various 'left wing' organizations. A large part, if not the entire crowd of spectators also exhibited definite 'radical' leanings and frequently interrupted the hearing with their audible comments and criticism.” The Daily News and New York Evening Journal, portrayed the audience in similar but less threatening terms as “restless and sometimes irritable” and having “stirred uneasily” when the ILD lawyers questioned witnesses. By contrast, the New York World-Telegram and Home News highlighted outbursts of laughter as illustrating that the audience was “interested and even jovial” and “good-natured,” portrayals that conjured racist stereotypes.
  
  Only Harlem’s Black newspapers focused attention on the identification of Rivera as the boy who had been arrested and released in the Kress store. That topic was mentioned in only three white newspapers, the New York Post, Home News, and Daily Worker. Both reported only Battle’s testimony that he had no evidence Rivera was not the boy; neither mentioned Cole’s testimony affirmatively identifying Rivera (which was reported only in the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News). In contrast, neither the New York Age nor New York Amsterdam News mentioned Battle’s testimony on the boy’s identity. Instead, the New York Age presented Cole’s testimony as “one of the most important revelations of the day’s testimony.” Rather than either man’s testimony, the New York Amsterdam News highlighted the testimony of Rivera himself and “the failure of any interested person to accept the committee's invitation to present evidence to the effect that another youth was the real victim.” The Daily Worker more generally noted that, "Throughout the hearing, the Mayor's Committee sought to dispose of rumors, still persisting in Harlem, that the Rivera boy had been substituted by the police for the real victim."
   
  
• 1 2022-11-11T16:55:54+00:00 The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (March 30) 47 plain 1985 2024-05-31T19:07:15+00:00 At 10:00 AM on Saturday, March 30, the members of the Mayors Commission on Conditions in Harlem took their seats at the front of a courtroom in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on West 151st Street. While formally it was the subcommittee on crime that was holding the public hearing, with Arthur Garfield Hays serving as chairman, all twelve members chose to attend (Father McCann would not join the committee until the next week). An audience of around 400 people filled the courtroom, monitored by around thirty police officers. Among the crowd of Black residents were enough white men and women for observers to describe the audience as racially mixed. Most, if not all, of the white audience members were connected with the Communist Party (CP), present to place blame on the staff of Kress’ store and police, rather than the party. Thanks to Hays offering those in attendance the opportunity to question witnesses, the Communist International Legal Defense lawyers and others in the audience would be active participants in the hearing.
  
  The event ran from 10:00 AM to 6:30 PM, interrupted only by an hour-long break for lunch. During that time eleven people testified; all witnessed the events of the disorder other than an assistant district attorney, who briefly described the progress of the investigation District Attorney William Dodge was conducting in the grand jury. In addition to Lino Rivera, the MCCH heard the testimony of two Black witnesses who had been in Kress’ store, when Rivera was taken to the basement in the case of L. F. Cole, and after he had been released in the case of Louise Thompson. Four police officers testified: Patrolman Donahue, the white officer who arrested and released Rivera; two senior officers who were at the store after disorder broke out on 125th Street, Inspector Di Martini and Captain Rothengast; and the senior Black officer in the police department, Lieutenant Samuel Battle, who was not on Harlem’s streets until the final hours of the disorder. The hearing also heard from the leaders of the Young Liberators and the Harlem Communist Party, Joe Taylor and James Ford, about the activities of their organizations and their own experiences in the hours after the Kress store was closed. The briefest testimony was provided by Russell Hobbs, whose older brother Lloyd had been shot by police. Several of those on the list of eyewitnesses the MCCH staff prepared for Hays did not testify, apparently because there was not sufficient time. Hays planned to have at least five of those witnesses appear at the next hearing, scheduled for April 6, writing a list of “Witnesses who didn’t testify last week:” "Mrs Jackson, Mrs Ida Hengain, Mrs. Effie Diton, Mr Campbell, Mr Irving Kirshaw.”
  
  Lino Rivera was the first of those witnesses to testify, taking a seat next to the members of the MCCH. Questioned by Hays, he described being grabbed by store staff after he put a pocketknife in his pocket but insisted that although they had threatened to beat him, he had not been hit. His testimony, which confirmed what newspapers had reported immediately after the disorder, unsurprisingly appeared in all the stories about the hearing. MCCH members and ILD lawyers asked Rivera series of questions about exactly how the store staff had taken hold of him, probing for evidence that he had been subject to any violence. Rivera continued to deny he had been injured in any way. He also rejected suggestions that police had told him what to say. When he left the stand, Rivera took a seat in the front of the audience, next to Alfred Eldridge, the Crime Prevention Officer who had been given responsibility for him. Over the course of the day, the pair was photographed several times listening and reacting to testimony. The MCCH heard from one other witnesses to Rivera being apprehended, L. F. Cole. He had seen the boy being taken to the front of the store, the ambulance arrive and later Rivera being taken to the basement. While he apparently remained in the area, he did not stay in the store.
  
  Patrolman Donahue and Louise Thompson testified about subsequent events inside the store. The police officer described seeing staff struggling with a boy outside Kress’ store, who he found out had stolen a knife and bitten the men. He called an ambulance for the staff members. Asked why he then took Rivera back into the store, he explained that he wanted to avoid a crowd gathering on the street. Donahue gave the same explanation for releasing Rivera through the rear basement. That testimony was the most widely reported of the hearing. While the Home News, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Associated Negro Press reported Donahue had admitted that releasing the boy out of sight of shoppers was a mistake, the transcript did not record such a statement. Instead, it was Edward Kuntz, one of the ILD lawyers in the audience, who offered that assessment while questioning the patrolman. Rather than Donahue or Kuntz, it was unnamed “witnesses” to whom the New York Times and Afro-American attributed evidence that had there been “no mystery” about what happened to Rivera there would have been no rioting. (Both those stories, and the New York Amsterdam News, also attributed a similar statement to Inspector Di Martini, that “he would have released the boy where all could see,” that is not what the transcript recorded him as saying.)
  
  The most extensive testimony about what happened in the store came from Louise Thompson, although she did not arrive until around an hour after Donahue had released Rivera and left. She described the groups of concerned Black women who remained in the store, the arrival of additional police, and their efforts to clear the store while refusing to answer questions about what had become of Rivera that resulted in a woman screaming and displays being knocked over. Thompson stood out among those who appeared at the hearing in offering extended narratives of what she had witnessed rather than having all that information drawn out by questions. Her delivery of that testimony “In a steady voice, as if she were reciting a poem or play” also stood out, at least to the journalist from the New York Age. The woman screaming was reported in the New York World-Telegram and Times Union, and as an ”outburst” in the New York Age, while the New York Amsterdam News referred more generally to “the first violence on the part of indignant women.” The later story blamed the failure of police to provide “proper explanations of the incident” for the women’s behavior. Those police efforts to mollify the women in the store were the testimony the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Worker chose to report. The Home News and Chicago Defender reported no details, only that Thompson had criticized police.
  
  Thompson also testified about events on 125th Street after the Kress store closed and she and the other women inside were pushed out. She described crowds on the street and the corners at each end of the block, the arrests of Daniel Miller and Harry Gordon, and windows being broken. After leaving around 7:30 PM, she returned around thirty minutes later to find police violently keeping people at the corners of 125th Street away from the Kress store. It was only then, around 8:00 PM that she saw the leaflets distributed by the Young Liberators that much of the press had reported were responsible for inciting the disorder. The New York Herald Tribune made that testimony the headline of its story about the hearing: “Reds' Handbills Are Cleared As 'Chief Cause' of Harlem Riot - Came Out Two Hours After Peak of Fighting, Mayor's Board Learns at Outset.” The New York Times, New York Amsterdam News and, unsurprisingly, the Communist publication the Daily Worker also reported the testimony, with the New York Amsterdam News further highlighting its implications in an editorial: “Disappointing as this testimony must be to District Attorney William C. Dodge and Mr. Randolph Hearst, who have attempted to use the Harlem outbreak as an excuse for a citywide Red-baiting campaign, it is well that this issue was settled at the outset by the committee. Now, with the red herring out of the way, the investigating body can set out to probe the basic factors which really precipitated the riots - the discrimination, exploitation and oppression of 204,000 American citizens in the most liberal city in America.” None of those publications identified Thompson as the witness. The only other element of Thompson’s testimony that journalists reported was the arrest of Daniel Miller, in the New York Times, New York World-Telegram, and Times Union, together with the breaking of the store window, and the spread of rumors among the crowd, in the New York Age. Surprisingly, the Daily Worker was among the publications that made no mention of her descriptions of police violence on 125th Street.
  
  Testimony about the source of the leaflets occupied more of the hearing than when they appeared. Joe Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, testified that his organization produced the leaflet, while he was on the street seeking information about what had happened in the Kress store. The information on which it was based came from Black men who brought news to the organization’s offices. James Ford, the head of the Harlem branch of the CP, said his organization was responsible for a second leaflet. The Young Liberators (YL) had approached them for help as they worried that protests at the store would turn into a riot. The CP leaflet was not distributed until after 9:00PM. That the YL and CP produced the leaflets was reported without the evidence that they appeared too late have caused the violence as the press had claimed in the Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Age, Afro-American, and Chicago Defender.
  
  The MCCH also heard from senior police officers about what happened in the streets. Inspector Di Martini was at the Kress store after it closed, Captain Rothengast arrived on 125th Street around 8:30 PM, and Lieutenant Battle was in the neighborhood after 2:00 AM. Di Martini testified that he spoke to the store staff and heard that Rivera had not been assaulted. He tried without success to convince the people outside the store that the boy had not been harmed, both then and when he returned around 7:15 PM. Di Martini also described the crowds on streets as numbering only a few hundred, mostly young people, and looting of stores with broken windows, which led him to call for police reinforcements. Rothengast described the crowds as small in number, like Di Martini, but made up not simply of young people but “hoodlums,” and as targeting police with rocks more often than they did store windows. He also insisted that most of those on the street were not angry about the rumors that a boy had been beaten or killed, but “yelling and laughing.” MCCH members (and audience) also questioned him about deaths and shootings during the disorder, and what role police played in that violence. By the time Lieutenant Battle went on to Harlem’s streets, the disorder was largely over. He described finding “no excitement” on the streets, only some small groups and looted and damaged stores. Asked by Hays about whether the crowd had spared Black businesses, Battle insisted they had not. He also agreed with Hays that the disorder was “not a race riot.” This testimony about events proved to be of little interest to journalists. While Battle featured in most newspaper stories about the hearing, his testimony about what he saw on the streets was mentioned only in New York Age, with the New York Post, New York American, Home News, and Chicago Defender reporting his statement that there had not been a race riot. Similarly, only the Home News and Chicago Defender reported Di Martini’s testimony about his efforts to persuade people on the street, while the Daily Mirror and Daily Worker made fun of his statements that people in Harlem loved him, and for taking credit for Rivera being photographed, which was the only part of his testimony reported in the New York Herald Tribune and New York American. Rothengast’s testimony received even less attention. The New York Age reported it in detail, but the only other mentions were just of his description of participants as hoodlums in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, and in the New York American, which used “troublemakers” in place of hoodlums. Information about damage to stores and looting was not reported.
  
  The MCCH heard testimony about one other event, the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs, from his younger brother Russell. His testimony, or at least as recorded by the stenographer, was a somewhat garbled version of what he had told his parents. He talked of stopping on 125th Street, not 7th Avenue, and the patrolmen running up on the pavement on a horse, not in a patrol car. Few white newspapers' stories about the hearing mentioned Russell's testimony, even as they reported Lloyd's death later that night. The New York Times, Daily News, and Daily Worker, together with the New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and Afro-American reported that Russell’s testimony contradicted the police account.
  
  More attention was given to police actions in the disorder during the hearing than in the MCCH’s planned program thanks to the intervention of the audience. At this hearing, it was those who questioned witnesses that shaped the information presented, with a lesser role played by the reactions of the audience to the testimony than would be the case in later hearings. James Tauber and Edward Kuntz, lawyers from the ILD, and Communist Party official Robert Minor took the lead and drew the attention of journalists, with Charles Romney playing a lesser role. Just how many of the questions posed to witnesses came from those men and other members of the audience was difficult to establish. Both the stenographer recording the transcript and the journalists in attendance appeared to have had difficulty determining who was speaking, causing some of the statements made by audience members to be attributed to MCCH members (as happened in regard to who stated that Patrolman Donahue’s decision about where to release Lino Rivera was a mistake).
  
  At this hearing, MCCH members objected to the substance of the audience’s question to police. While Oscar Villard and Eunice Carter questioned Captain Rothengast about the shootings and deaths that had occurred during the disorder and what role police had played in them, Hays, chair of the hearing, objected when Robert Minor asked him further questions about police violence. “We are not here to investigate the police.” Many in the audience, however, were seeking to do just that, prompting several other objections from MCCH members to questions that they judged to be “police baiting” that would not be permitted. Those interventions were sufficient in number to be reported in general terms in the New York American. Robert Minor’s questioning of Lieutenant Battle seemed to prompt that objection from Hays, who the transcript recorded simply as interjecting. The Home News and Chicago Defender attributed a charge of police baiting to William J. Schieffelin in response to Charles Romney’s questioning of Battle (while the New York Herald Tribune had Schieffelin accusing Minor in the exchange where the transcript recorded Hays admonition). Hays labelled questioning of Patrolman Donahue as police baiting according to the New York Herald Tribune. Surprisingly, the Daily Mirror did not use the term police baiting, reporting more blandly that a highlight of the day was Schieffelin warning Tauber to "treat witnesses with politeness." Whatever the particular incidents, it was clear what the New York Herald Tribune characterized as “heated exchanges” amplified the issues raised by the questions from lawyers and others affiliated with the CP shaped the hearing, producing what the Daily News described as “a field day for Communist exponents and cop-baiting attorneys for the International Labor Defense.”
  
  By the end of the day, audience reactions also played a role. "The undercurrent of the antagonism against the police, noticeable throughout the day in the audience," the New York Age reported, "surged to its height during Rothengast's stay on the stand, culminating in numerous audible taunts and cat-calls just before the hearing ended for the day." In the coming hearings, such reactions would succeed in directing the attention of the MCCH to the role of police in the events of the disorder, with MCCH members limiting their objections to the tone of their questions and reactions rather than their substance.
• 1 2022-11-10T16:57:47+00:00 Reactions to La Guardia's appointments 36 plain 2024-02-14T20:37:16+00:00 The dissatisfaction of unnamed “anti-Red organizations” with the “distinct liberal leanings” and radical associations of the white men La Guardia appointed reported in the New York Sun as well as the anti-Communist New York American was soon overshadowed by editorial endorsements from the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and New York Herald Tribune. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Post both described the committee 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.”
  
  By contrast, considerable criticism emerged in Harlem of the Black members of the committee. Even as Mayor La Guardia announced his appointments, he appeared to have had some concerns about the representativeness of those he had chosen. On the evening of March 20, he had Charles Roberts contact Dr. William Lloyd Imes of St James Presbyterian Church, seeking a meeting with “the more sober and thoughtful portion of our Harlem residents.” The clergyman responded enthusiastically, writing at 11:30 PM that night suggesting that the mayor attend the Interdenominational Ministers meeting scheduled for the afternoon of March 25 at Salem Methodist Episcopal Church. In the intervening days the criticisms of his appointments that the mayor feared did indeed emerge. La Guardia’s mistake, New York Amsterdam News columnist J. A. Rogers, wrote, was to choose only among “routine names” at a time when life in Harlem had become far from routine. What was needed instead were Black members who “had practical knowledge of conditions in Harlem,” as Charles Hanson of the Harlem Committee on Public Policy, an organization of business and professional men and women, put it at a meeting the group organized at the YMCA on March 22. Only A. Philip Randolph had that knowledge in Hanson’s opinion. Particularly unqualified, in the judgement of others who spoke at the meeting were Hubert Delaney, dismissed as a political ally of La Guardia, and Countee Cullen, labeled as just a “poet.”
  
  Others echoed that assessment in the following days. The Consolidated Tenants League endorsed only Randolph as “sufficiently free from political and other affiliations and views to render them capable of obtaining the proper economic-social view of the problem.” More representative of the people of Harlem would be an unemployed person, in the opinion of men and women a New York Amsterdam News journalist interviewed on the street, labor leader Frank Crosswaith, a suggestion of the Consolidated Tenants Union and columnist J. A. Rogers, or a social worker, the proposal of the New York chapter of the National Association of College Women and James Hubert of the New York Urban League (who snidely dismissed Carter’s past experience when he wrote to La Guardia that “there is no one named up to now who is thought of as a social worker”). Several nationalist groups in the Puerto Rican community sought representation, even as Puerto Rican leaders disassociated their community from the disorder and attributed it to Black residents “with distinct problems, absolutely different interests, and ethnic characteristics that disassociate Hispanics from their colored American neighbors.”
  
  The most widely criticized omissions from the committee, however, were representatives of Harlem’s Black clergy. La Guardia came face to face with that criticism on March 25 when he met with the Interdominational Preachers Meeting of Greater New York and Vicinity, a group of about fifty Black religious leaders, at the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church. The mayor must have felt that he could marshal support from the ministers as he changed his original plan to meet with them privately and had journalists from both white and Black newspapers alerted that he was making the trip to Harlem. When he spoke to the meeting, appealing for them to help the committee in its investigation, La Guardia tried to preempt criticism, explaining that he had not appointed a minister because “If I had appointed one I would have had to appoint many others.” When he stopped speaking, it immediately became obvious that he had failed to convince his audience. A minister in the front row shouted, “There ought to be a minister on that committee! There is not a minister in this community who is not in touch with more persons than any member of your committee.” Others complained that the mayor had failed to recognize their leadership and standing in Harlem and psychological influence in the community.
  
  As the criticism mounted, La Guardia backed down, admitting that it had been a mistake not to appoint clergymen. He committed to appoint a member of the group if they sent him a suggestion, and to add a second religious leader from a denomination not included in their ranks. Soon after the mayor left the group elected as its representative its leader, Reverend John W. Robinson, the retired pastor of St. Mark's, the city's largest AME church and a campaigner for education reform. An indirect political connection likely made La Guardia receptive to that suggestion: Robinson’s second wife, pharmacist Dr. Julia Coleman, was active in the Republican Party in Harlem. The mayor appointed Robinson four days later, on March 29, in time for him to attend the committee’s second meeting.
  
  It took until April 4, almost a week after Robinson's appointment, for the mayor to finalize his choice of a second clergyman: Father McCann of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church on West 141st Street. On March 23, the priest had made public a pastoral letter blaming Communists for the disorder and calling for a movement to keep them out of Harlem. The priest's anti-Communism offered La Guardia a way to address those who had criticized him for the entirely liberal character of the committee. It provoked a furious complaint from the Communist Party that the appointment was aimed at "further stirring up racial animosity between Negro and while people" and "trying to place the blame of the March 19 events in Harlem on the Communist Party." However, La Guardia had clearly also decided the second clergyman on the committee should be Catholic as immediately after he met with the Black ministers he had sought advice about who to appoint from Edmund B. Butler, a prominent Catholic lawyer who was secretary of the city’s Emergency Relief Bureau. Butler suggested McCann as “he has always been very much interested in Negroes and volunteered for the work.” As that endorsement implied, the priest was a white man, likely another criteria for the appointment given that the committee had two more Black members than white members after Robinson was added.
  
  No press statements were released announcing those appointments, and they went unreported other than in the New York Amsterdam News. Having included the two clergymen, La Guardia made no further moves to address the other criticisms of the committee's Black members. The investigation of the disorder proceeded under the direction of the group of twelve men and one woman.