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• 1 2022-10-29T19:10:54+00:00 MCCH Meeting (March 29, 1935) 42 plain 2024-01-28T17:19:50+00:00 The second meeting of the MCCH on March 29 attracted significantly less attention in the press than the first meeting. A story in the New York American on March 27 mentioned that it would take place. Only the New York Evening Journal published a story clearly based on the statement the MCCH released after the meeting, briefly announcing a hearing would take place on March 30 and the membership of the subcommittee holding it, including the recently appointed Rev. Robinson. A copy of the meeting minutes is in the MCCH records, together with multiple copies of the agenda. A report Carter prepared was on the agenda for this meeting.
  
  The only member not to attend was A. Philip Randolph; he had been called to appear before the National Mediation Railroad Board in Washington, DC on the day of the meeting. The other ten original members were joined for the first time by Rev. John Robinson, whom Mayor La Guardia had formally appointed that same day, fulfilling the commitment he made at his meeting with the Interdominational Preachers Meeting of Greater New York and Vicinity on March 25.
  
  Hays gave a report of the “Committee to Investigate the Happenings of March 19th.” He had evidently taken over from Toney, the chairman appointed at the first meeting. There is no mention of that change in any sources. Hays' report focused on preparations for a hearing the next day, March 30; there is also no evidence of when after the first meeting the decision to schedule that event had been made or by whom. While the upcoming hearing was reported the day after the meeting in the New York World-Telegram without attribution, the New York Herald Tribune attributed that information to Villard; however, that seems unlikely as the statement he wrote included a vague commitment rather than that information. It was Hays whom the Home News quoted a day later, on March 27, identifying him as “a member of a subcommittee which will meet at the Heights Court at 10 a. m. on Saturday 'to welcome anybody who has anything to tell us about what happened.'” The same statement later appeared in the Afro-American, in a separate story from the one that mentioned the first meeting of the MCCH, suggesting it had been made at a different time. On March 27, the Daily Worker reported that Hays’ statement announcing the hearing had “followed by a few hours a statement issued by Oscar Villard,” and included an attack on District Attorney William Dodge for suggesting he would use the criminal anarchy statute to prosecute Communists arrested during the disorder. The New York American also reported Hays' comments on March 27, and said he made them “yesterday,” March 26, the day after the committee met and Villard released his statement. The decision to hold a hearing on March 30 thus appeared to have been made between the MCCH’s first meeting and the first meeting of the subcommittee.
  
  Reports by Delany and Ernst on the subcommittees they chaired also mentioned planned public hearings, on housing on April 6 and on discrimination on April 13. (The MCCH had use of two courtrooms, making it possible to hold hearings on different topics at the same time.) Villard’s statement announced both those hearings as well as the hearing on the events of March 19th taking place the next day.
  
  The future program of work adopted by the MCCH at this meeting gave a far smaller place to the investigation of the events of the disorder going forward than indicated in the statement to the press after their first meeting. The extensive program outlined by Randolph, with contributions by Ernst, did not mention those events. However, it did appear to assume they were being investigated as an item under “Methods for making work of Commission effective” that called for “Release [of] sections of Report from time to time” listed as the first such section, “Immediate cause of riot Tuesday, March 19.” Randolph emphasized that recommendation in a letter to Carter informing her he would not be able to attend the meeting, writing “In order that the public, colored and white, may not develop a mordant and cynical pessimism toward the Commission, I think it proper to dramatize the work by the release of sectional reports by various committees from time to time. The first section released might well be on the immediate case of the riot Tuesday night, March 19.” The suggested program of work Walter White of the NAACP sent the mayor and MCCH on March 26th, likely discussed at the same time, gave a similar limited place to investigation of the events of the disorder. The “Immediate Causes of Rioting March 19th and 20th” was the second to last topic in his outline, which he envisioned as warranting attention at the outset of the investigation: “It is suggested that the committee might well devote, at the beginning of the” investigation, as much time as it deems wise to checking the facts on immediate causes of the riot to establish responsibility and to settle controversial points where, in the opinion of the committee, there is sufficient legitimate doubt on these points to merit investigation.” White, like Randolph, argued that it was “desirable for the committee to issue a preliminary report as soon as possible on its findings in this regard.”
  
  After the MCCH adopted an outline of the work drawn up by Randolph, “certain changes in Committee assignments were accepted.” Six new subcommittees were appointed focused on topics in the outline: education, health and sanitation, labor problems, law and legislation and relief agencies. The subcommittee on the events of the disorder was renamed “Crime.” (Randolph’s outline had proposed a subcommittee to investigate “Police – riot night – numbers and policy rackets.”) The members of that committee announced on March 29 appear to have been Hays, Toney, Schiefflin, Carter, and Robinson; those are the names reported in a New York Evening Journal story published on March 29, apparently based on the statement the MCCH released to the press. Robinson’s addition came at the instruction of La Guardia. A note in the files of the mayor indicated that a member of his staff had telephoned Hays on March 29 to tell him the “Mayor hopes it will be possible to have Dr. Robinson serve on Mr Hays subcommittee and requests that Robinson be advised of the next meeting of the committee.” At some point before it submitted its report, Villard was added to the subcommittee. He signed that report as a member, together with Hays, Toney, Carter, and Robinson. He could have replaced Schiefflin, whose signature was missing. However, Hays' covering letter submitting that report to the mayor noted that Schiefflin’s signature was missing as “he at present is in Europe.” Three undated lists of the subcommittee memberships filed in the records of the MCCH confusingly list only some of the members identified in those sources; they are likely drafts. What appears to be a copy of the press statement released after the meeting on March 29 included only Hays, Schiefflin, and Toney as subcommittee members, omitting Carter and Robinson, as well as Villard. Two documents in the same file, one entitled “Suggested Committees and Assignments” and the other “Chairman and Members of Each Sub-Committee,” listed Hays, Schiefflin, Toney, and Villard as members of the crime subcommittee, omitting both Carter and Robinson.
  
  It was also at this meeting, in a discussion of securing letterheads, that the MCCH chose a “formal name.” They had been referring to themselves as the “Bi-Racial Commission.” The new name may have been Villard’s suggestion; he moved the motion to adopt it.
• 1 2022-10-27T21:16:01+00:00 MCCH Meeting (March 25, 1935) 37 plain 2024-01-24T18:36:59+00:00 All eleven members of the MCCH met for the first time at 4:30 PM on March 25, at the Seventh District Municipal Court, 447 West 151st Street. Minutes of that meeting are in the records of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. The meeting was also widely reported in the press, having been announced the previous week, after some members of the MCCH met with the mayor. Aware of the presence of reporters, the MCCH members made preparing a statement for them their first business after electing their officers, the task deferred the previous week. That statement contributed to focusing attention not on the events of the disorder but on broader conditions in Harlem.
  
  Oscar Villard wrote and delivered the statement released after the meeting, having been appointed chair of a Publicity Committee that included Toney, Roberts and Carter. Although the minutes refer to a copy of the statement being attached as part of the record, one is not included in the file. Based on the newspaper stories, it appears to have had three sections. Only the Home News quoted all three sections, although it omitted a parenthetical statement in the first section that is quoted in the Daily Worker and New York Times.
  
  The first section, the most widely reported, indicated that the focus of the Commission would be the broader conditions in Harlem rather than the events of the disorder:

  "The committee is already agreed that the disturbance (of last Tuesday, which took a toll of three lives and extensive property damage) were merely symbols and symptoms: that the public health, safety and welfare in colored Harlem have long been jeopardized by economic and social conditions which the depression has intensified."

  All the stories in white newspapers quoted or paraphrased this statement, and in the case of the New York Times, New York World-Telegram, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Daily Worker, made it the basis of the headline of their story. (The New York Times published an additional story at the end of the week, on the day after the first hearing, endorsing that approach and arguing that the MCCH needed to pursue “a thorough economic and social investigation” with the “assistance of technical advice.") The New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and Home News folded the meeting into stories about the work of Dodge’s grand jury, which they made the subject of their headlines. The Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal, New York American and Daily Mirror, took that approach further, writing only about the progress of Dodge’s investigation without similar attention to the MCCH (keeping the Communists in the foreground). Only the New York Amsterdam News among the Black newspapers quoted this section; the other papers did not refer to the statement at all.
  
  The second section put events on par with broader causes as one of two parts of the investigation:

  “It has, therefore, determined to divide its work into two parts, an investigation of the immediate situation and a thorough, far-reaching inquiry into the entire problem, including housing, wages, rents, employment discrimination and other questions.”

  Only the Home News and Daily News included this section in their stories, quoted in the Home News and paraphrased in the Daily News. It was not mentioned in New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, New York Times, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Daily Worker. Without this section, the stories pushed the events of the disorder to the background, giving the impression that the MCCH was not concerned with them — particularly the Daily News, which characterized the statement as a “preliminary report.”
  
  The third section was an appeal for information, and a notice that hearings would be held, without any dates.

  “To that end it asks public cooperation and will welcome any suggestions and information which should be sent directly to the secretary, Mrs Eunice Hunter Carter, in care of Seventh Municipal Court, 447 W. 151st St.
  
  Public hearings will be started at an early date.”

  This section was quoted in New York Times and Home News and paraphrased in three other newspapers: as “The public was invited to send any remedial suggestions” in the Daily News; as “beseeching the city to offer suggestions to clear up the Harlem sore spots” in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle; and as “it asks for public cooperation and will welcome any suggestions and information,” in the New York Amsterdam News. The New York Age mentioned only that the meeting took place, emphasizing that as the meeting was not open to the public the MCCH was “enveloping their activities in an obscuring cloud of secrecy that evoked considerable comment.”
  
  Three subcommittees were established at the meeting. The minutes recorded Judge Toney as chair of one appointed “to investigate the police records and all facts pertinent to the happenings in Harlem on Tuesday, March 19th,” with Hays, Schiefflin, and Carter. A meeting of the subcommittee, and two others, on discrimination and employment and on housing, was scheduled for March 27. (By the time the MCCH met again on March 29, Hays rather than Toney was acting as chairman of the subcommittee. There is no evidence in the sources about that change.) These subcommittees did not appear to have been announced to journalists after the meeting. Only the New York Amsterdam News provided any information on them: that story identified their members as those appointed in the meeting and reported that one subcommittee would “investigate the "outburst" (the committee rejected the term "riot"). There is no mention in the minutes of a decision that that subcommittee would hold a public hearing on March 30; Villard’s press statement referred only to hearings “at an early date.” However, Hays told journalists the day after the meeting that such a hearing would be held. Given that Hays announced the March 30 hearing before his subcommittee was scheduled to meet, it is not clear who else was involved in making that decision.
  
  The other work done in the meeting reported in the press was the selection of officeholders: Roberts as chairman, Villard as vice chairman and Carter as secretary. The previous week, a story in the New York Herald Tribune had suggested that Delany would be the chairman, as his name “led the list of appointments to the committee as made public by the Mayor.” Delany had rejected that possibility, telling the reporter that “he would rather have someone else, preferably a white, in that position.” When the MCCH met on March 25, the minutes mentioned “a general discussion as to whether [illegible] expedient to have a white or Negro Chairman.” Or at least that statement initially appeared in the minutes; someone later crossed it out. Before that discussion, Ernst had said “he thought that the Chairman should be a Negro,” and suggested Eunice Carter. She declined. After the discussion, Toney was nominated by an unnamed commission member, with Grimley seconding. Hays then nominated Villard, with Carter seconding, setting up a choice between a Black candidate and a white candidate. However, Villard withdrew due to “his uncertain health,” offering instead to be the vice chairman. Schiefflin then nominated Roberts, with Hays seconding. That nomination ensured that the MCCH would have a Black candidate, with Roberts winning the role on an 8-3 vote. (Villard would later write to Walter White of the NAACP lamenting his decision not to serve as chairman, “which was the wish of the majority,” complaining that “Roberts has been a very poor chairman and there has been no meeting for weeks and weeks and weeks, and there is to be no effort on the part of the Commission to carry out any of its recommendations.")
  
  The further business discussed in the meeting that was not made public was how the committee would do its work. The minutes record a “consensus” that “one trained person was necessary to correlate the reports.” The commission members voted to pursue Ira B. Reid for that role, but left the final selection to Roberts, Delany, and Carter. (After lobbying by Walter White of the NAACP, E. Franklin Frazier rather than Reid would be employed by the MCCH.) At Carter’s urging, the MCCH also decided to move forward with its investigation without waiting to fill that position, and charged Randolph, Ernst, Delany, and Carter “to formulate general plans of work for the committee” by the next meeting.