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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 2022-02-13T21:48:02+00:00 Margaret Mitchell arrested 57 plain 2024-01-28T05:59:21+00:00 Officer Johnson of the 6th Division arrested Margaret Mitchell, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, inside Kress’ 5, 10 and 25c store, sometime around 5:00 PM on March 19. Police alleged that she was “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect,” according to Inspector Di Martini’s report on the disorder. Pots and pans and glasses were knocked off counters and women screamed, after the store was closed and police tried to clear out those inside, Jackson Smith, the store manager, Patrolman Timothy Shannon, and Louise Thompson all testified. Only Thompson described the circumstances that produced that noise, most fully in an article in New Masses. After a woman she could not see screamed, Thompson joined part of the crowd who rushed to where the noise came from, the rear of the store. Police there pushed that crowd back and refused to answer when women asked “if the boy was injured and where he is,” Thompson wrote. The officers also “began to get rough.” A woman with an umbrella retaliated; she either hit an officer, according to Thompson’s testimony, or “knocked over a pile of pots and pans,” according to her article. Many of those in the store left once the noise and struggles with police began, both Thompson and Smith testified. Thompson remained with the woman she described knocking over pots and pans, who was not arrested, but she was clearly not the only person who knocked over merchandise in efforts to remain in the store until they had information about Rivera. Mitchell could also have been the woman whose scream drew Thompson and others to the rear of the store.
  
  Margaret Mitchell appeared in many newspaper stories about what happened in Kress’ store, but almost all truncated the extended standoff between the Black women and store staff and police into a rapid sequence of events, in the process mistaking what Mitchell was alleged to have done and when she was arrested. The Home News reported that Mitchell “attempted to take the Rivera boy from the department store detectives and cried out that the guards were beating the youth.” La Prensa also reported Mitchell trying to intervene. Although the Home News went on to claim that Mitchell was arrested at that time, neither Charles Hurley nor Patrolman Donahue mentioned a woman being part of their struggles with Rivera, and Donahue testified he did not arrest anyone while at Kress’ store. The Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, New York Evening Journal (and the New York Times on March 24) reported that Mitchell was arrested after she screamed when the boy was being beaten. However, the New York Times, Daily News, New York American, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily Worker did not specify when she screamed (or spread rumors in the New York Times story, or was “a leader of the disturbance” in the New York Herald Tribune story) — although the Daily News, New York American, and New York Post did elsewhere in their stories mention an unnamed woman running into street screaming at the time Rivera was grabbed. The New York Sun alone specified that Mitchell’s actions came later: “The woman whose cries that the boy had been murdered, rekindled the vandalism after the police had succeeded in quenching it earlier in the evening, is Margaret Mitchell, 18, of 283 West 150th street.” The next day, in reporting Mitchell’s arraignment in the Harlem Magistrate’s Court, the Home News combined its description of her trying to intervene when Rivera was grabbed with the later events mentioned in Di Martini’s report. While reiterating that she “attempted to take the Rivera boy from the department store detectives and cried out that the guards were beating the youth,” the story added that after Rivera had been taken to the basement, she was “urging other colored people in the store to demand the release of the boy, started throwing merchandise to the floor and upset many of the counter displays.” Inspector Di Martini's report, while containing few details of events in the store, did distinguish Mitchell from the woman who reacted to Rivera, whose actions he located slightly later than the newspaper stories, "upon the arrival of the ambulance [to treat Hurley and Urban]," when the "unknown female screamed that the boy had been seriously injured or killed and otherwise caused a commotion which attracted a large number of persons." Mitchell's arrest came later, after which "this commotion was soon quieted."
  
  The more specific allegation of “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect” was recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter as “Disorderly in Kresses 5 & 10c Store.” That language echoed the offense with which the prosecutor charged Mitchell, disorderly conduct. She appeared in lists of those arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York Evening Journal, New York American and Daily News. Arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Mitchell was found guilty by Magistrate Renaud, who remanded her until March 23 for investigation and sentencing. The Times Union reported that she “denied hysterically she participated in the rioting. She stood up from the witness chair screaming, then collapsed.” No other newspapers included that scene.
  
  Mitchell returned to the court on March 23, telling Magistrate Renaud she was "sorry," according to the Home News and New York World-Telegram. In passing sentence, Renaud commented that “he did not believe the girl acted maliciously,” those two publications and the New York Times and New York Age reported. The sentence reflected that assessment: three days in the Workhouse or a fine of $10. The New York American reported only that outcome, obliquely reporting Renaud's comment by describing her as having "unwittingly started Tuesday's outbreak." A brief mention in the New York Amsterdam News gave the opposite impression by describing Mitchell as having been "found guilty" of "stirring up the mob." The Daily Worker pointed to what its reporter saw as the implications of her sentence, that it "beating of Negro children by Harlem white storekeepers of the police, as frequently has been the case." Mitchell was one of only three people convicted during the disorder who paid a fine. She was also one of only eighteen of those arraigned represented by a lawyer, in her case Sidney Christian, a prominent West Indian attorney.
  
  The lawyer was likely obtained with the help of Mitchell’s father, Thomas E. Thompson. A West Indian immigrant who had arrived in New York City in 1895, Thompson had been a postal worker for thirty-five years at the time of his daughter’s arrest, and an office holder in the Prince Hall Masons. He and his family were among the earliest Black residents of Harlem, recorded in the 1910 census living in 55 West 137th Street. While not featuring on the social pages as Sidney Christian did, Thompson would have had the resources and the standing in the West Indian community to have known of and involved the lawyer. Mitchell, one of the youngest of Thompson's twelve children, had married in April 1934, and at the time of the disorder lived with her husband, David Mitchell, a handyman in an apartment building, at 287 West 150th Street. That she was in a store twenty-five blocks south of her home indicated the distance from which the businesses on West 125th Street drew their customers.
  
  
  
  As the only person arrested in Kress’ store, and named in newspaper stories about the disorder, Mitchell was one of the few identifiable sources of information about the beginnings of the disorder for the MCCH. However, when Lt. Battle called at her home and requested that she be at the public hearing on March 30, “she refused to come.” Asked again about her testimony three weeks later, Battle reiterated that "she absolutely refuses to come to this hearing."
  
  Margaret Mitchell and her husband still lived in the same apartment when the census enumerator called in 1940. In January 1945, she joined 200 family and friends celebrating her parents' 50th wedding anniversary, photographed alongside her siblings in an image published in the New York Amsterdam News. Her husband David was not part of the celebration; he was a sergeant in the US military serving overseas, as were two of Mitchell’s brothers and four nephews.
• 1 2023-03-14T20:07:41+00:00 In Harlem court on March 23 (6) 44 plain 2024-01-26T21:28:22+00:00 All the city's major newspapers reported the hearings in the Harlem Court even as they involved just five men and one woman arrested in the disorder being sentenced on the minor charge of disorderly conduct. Only the New York Evening Journal story referred to conditions at the court, that "special squadrons of police stood guard outside." Given that previous stories in other newspapers had mentioned similar deployments, their failure to do so on this occasion likely indicates that additional police were not actually present. The New York Evening Journal was also alone in directly drawing attention to what the charges and outcomes reported in the stories indicated, that those sentenced were "minor offenders in the outbreak."
  
  The woman, Margaret Mitchell, was mentioned in all those stories. Those stories continued to confuse her with a woman on 125th Street who screamed that Rivera had been killed some time after Mitchell’s arrest. They presented Mitchell's actions as having started the disorder, a claim that publications presented in different ways. The New York American reported Mitchell "started" the disorder, the Afro-American and New York Times that she "provoked" it (a claim they attributed to police), the Daily News that she "precipitated" it, the New York Evening Journal that she "set-off" the disorder, the New York Herald Tribune that she was "the spark which fired the riot," a claim attributed to police, and the Home News and New York Amsterdam News that she "stirred up the mob." More qualified claims were presented in the New York World-Telegram, that she only "helped stir Harlem mobs to rioting," and the New York Age, that she "precipitated" the disorder, but that the reaction to her outcry was "magnified to riot proportions by Communist literature." The New York Post opted for a more specific framing that more clearly captured the scope of Mitchell's responsibility, that she was "instrumental in starting the rumor that led to the riots." The Daily Worker did not ascribe any responsibility to Mitchell, describing her only as having "raised the outcry." The headlines to stories in the in the Home News and New York World-Telegram described Mitchell as the "cause" of the disorder (notwithstanding the more qualified statement in the later story itself), and "Blamed for Riot" in the New York Times. Mitchell shared the description in newspaper headlines of having caused the riot with Lino Rivera.
  
  Only the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Home News reported that Mitchell told Renaud that she was "sorry." Whatever her role, Magistrate Renaud determined it was not "malicious" or intended to have the consequences it did. That statement appeared in only the New York Times, New York World-Telegram, Home News, and New York Age, and implicitly in the New York American, which did not mention Renaud, but described Mitchell as having "unwittingly" started the disorder. By contrast, the New York Herald Tribune reported that Reanud "lectured Miss Mitchell on keeping the peace." No story mentioned her lawyer, who likely would have had some role in promoting Renaud's assessment. The magistrate's judgement was reflected in the light sentence he imposed, reported as a choice between a $10 fine and three days in the Workhouse in the New York Times, New York Evening Journal, Daily Worker, New York Age, and Afro-American and simply as a fine in the Daily News, New York American, New York World-Telegram, Home News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Amsterdam News. However, Mitchell's sentence proved to be more punitive than those given to most of the others arrested for inciting crowds: six of the seven received suspended sentences, the other a month in the Workhouse.
  
  Four of the five men sentenced at the same time were reported as charged with breaking windows, rather than the actual offense, disorderly conduct, in the Daily News, New York Times, Home News, New York World-Telegram, New York Age, and Afro-American, while the offense was reported in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and New York American. Unlike Leo Smith, James Bright, and Arthur Bennett, there was no other evidence that John Hawkins had broken windows. Initially charged with riot, in the analysis he has been classified with those inciting riot. The Home News, New York American, New York World-Telegram, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal did not name the men. While the Daily News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Home News, and the New York Age and Afro-American, identified a white man, Leo Smith, among that group, his presence went unmentioned in the New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and New York American. In the later two Hearst newspapers, that silence fitted their emphasis on white men and women as victims of violence during the disorder. The men were not mentioned at all in the New York Amsterdam News. The fifth man, Rivers Wright, had been charged with assault. None of the stories mentioned a charge in his case, only his conviction of disorderly assault and lesser sentence, ten days in the Workhouse compared to thirty days for the other men.
• 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.
   
• 1 2022-12-09T03:14:31+00:00 In court on March 27 19 plain 2024-01-26T21:17:32+00:00 A week after the disorder, three men appeared in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty, becoming the first of those arrested to be convicted in the city’s felony court. However, the outcome of those prosecutions did not establish the men as major figures in the disorder, distinct from those who had been convicted in the lower courts. While Joseph Wade, Thomas Jackson, and Hezekiah Wright had all been charged with burglary, they pleaded guilty to lesser offenses: Wright and Jackson to unlawful entry, which did not involve breaking into a store; Wade to petit larceny, which involved being in possession of stolen merchandise but not entry into a store. Notwithstanding those differences, both crimes were misdemeanors that carried the same sentence of up to a year rather than up to ten years for burglary. The men were not sentenced at this time, so the consequences of their plea bargains were not immediately apparent. That they had been convicted of “lesser offenses” was noted in the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Times, but not in the New York Post and New York Amsterdam News. Plea bargaining was by far the most common outcome of felony prosecutions in this period, so that outcome may not have been perceived as entirely diminishing their actions. Nor did a plea necessarily indicate an admission of guilt. Wright would later assert his innocence, saying that he had pleaded guilty on the advice of his lawyer.
  
  The grand jury added to the picture of the disorder as composed of minor actions by sending all four of the men whose cases were presented to it on this day to the Court of Special Sessions, charged with misdemeanors not felonies. All had faced charges of riot, with Leon Mauraine, David Smith, and John Kennedy Jones also charged with malicious mischief for breaking windows, and John King with assault. Only the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal and New York American, and the New York Times, reported the hearings, but without names as the grand jury proceedings were closed.
  
  The four men who appeared in the Harlem court appeared to present a countervailing picture. Three were sent to the grand jury on riot charges. One, Raymond Easley, had already been indicted by the grand jury as a result of Dodge’s investigation. He was the last subject of that investigation to appear in court, although only one of the two newspapers that reported the hearing mentioned him. However, the outcomes of the three men's prosecutions would follow the same pattern as the hearings that occurred on same day: James Pringle and Claude Jones would be sent to the Court of Special Sessions, and Easley’s indictment would be dismissed. The magistrate continued the investigation of two other men, Leroy Brown and William Ford. Both would later be sent to the grand jury, and like the others, to the Court of Special Sessions. The magistrate sent the final man, Harry Gordon, directly to the Court of Special Sessions. Two days of additional police investigations had failed to produce enough evidence to send him to the grand jury. With Gordon’s ILD lawyer in attendance, the magistrate would have had little scope to overlook the deficiencies in the evidence. Gordon would not face trial for another seven months, the last of those arrested in the disorder to appear in court. In the interim, he would testify in a public hearing of the MCCH and describe being beaten both when he was arrested and while in custody. His testimony persuaded the chairman of those hearings, Arthur Garfield Hays, but not the judges in the Court of Special Sessions. They convicted him; the sentence they imposed is unknown. He was one of only two men known to have been convicted of an assault during the disorder — although there is no evidence that outcome was reported in the press.
  
  Rather than building toward the prosecution of individuals who played major roles in the disorder, then, the legal response to the disorder saw serious charges become misdemeanors and frequently the even lesser offense of disorderly conduct. Those arrested by police proved not to be responsible for much of the violence and damage. Instead, they had been among the crowds drawn to the streets and into encounters with police. The extent of the violence of the disorder consequently was not brought into focus in the criminal courts. Only later, in the civil courts, would some of the scale of the damage, if not the violence and injuries, become part of the legal record.
   
• 1 2023-03-09T22:02:20+00:00 Dodge grand jury hearings suspended, March 26 19 plain 2024-02-16T21:31:55+00:00 The additional indictments and more serious charges that Dodge mentioned on March 25 did not manifest the next day. To the contrary, stories in the New York Evening Journal, New York American, and Home News reported that Dodge announced that the grand jury would return to “routine” business rather than hearing further witnesses to the Harlem disorder for the rest of the week. When a new grand jury was impaneled in April, this group would “devote much of its time to the riot inquiry,” according to the New York American and Home News, or “devote itself exclusively to the rioting inquiry,” according to the New York Evening Journal. That statement went unreported in newspapers that did not share the anti-Communist editorial position on the disorder of those publications. None of the stories explicitly explained the change. The New York Evening Journal came closest, reporting Dodge as saying that routine work had "accumulated in the last few days."
  
  Also largely unreported was the attack on Dodge invoking the criminal anarchy statute by Arthur Garfield Hays, one of the members of the MCCH investigating the disorder alongside the DA. The New York American’s brief story on Dodge’s statement mentioned Hays as having criticized the DA’s investigation, asserting that “the criminal anarchy law, under which Dodge is seeking indictments, was used 'only when the Governments want to 'get' a man.'" The Home News made the disagreement the focus of its story, headlined “Mayor’s Riot Committee Splits with Dodge as Hays Raps Plan to Invoke Anarchy Law.” Hays was quoted making the same charge as appeared in the New York American, and adding, “They are never used against Fascists.” The New York Evening Journal did not mention Hays. The Daily Worker did report Hays' attack, in a story on the MCCH that did not refer to Dodge’s statement. Both the city’s Black newspapers folded Hays’ criticism into their stories, the New York Amsterdam News on March 30, and the New York Age in a later story on the first public hearing of the MCCH on March 30.
  
  When ADA Alexander Kaminsky appeared at that public hearing on March 30, sent by Dodge to discuss what his investigation had accomplished, he testified that to date it had resulted in 12 indictments, confirming that the grand jury had voted no additional indictments after March 25. Pushed by Hays to name those individuals, Kaminsky said he could identify only the five men who had pled guilty: Carl Jones, Joseph Wade, James Hughes, Thomas Jackson, and Hezekiah Wright. He also mentioned that four others had been charged with unlawful assembly and transferred to the Court of Special Sessions. That those men were widely recognized as being the four Young Liberators was evident in Hays' follow-up questions about whether they had been charged because of their political beliefs. In answer, Kaminsky said he was sure that the grand jury would not do that.
  
  Although a story in the New York Evening Journal the day before Dodge suspended the grand jury hearings had confidently predicted that "at least a dozen more [persons] will be named in bills to be returned within a short time," with most of those charged "Communists or allied radicals," Kaminsky's widely reported appearance was the last mention of Dodge’s investigation and of grand jury hearings related to the disorder in the press.
   
• 1 2023-04-04T15:37:27+00:00 In the Court of General Sessions on March 27 (3) 9 plain 2024-01-26T22:47:37+00:00 Five newspapers reported the three guilty pleas. The stories in the Daily News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Amsterdam News all named the three men and gave their ages and addresses. The New York Post mentioned only that the men were "Three Negroes." The New York Amsterdam News omitted details of the charges and pleas; all the other publications noted that the men had been charged with burglary and pled to unlawful entry in the case of Jackson and Wright and petit larceny in the case of Wade.
  
  Only the Daily News and New York Herald Tribune included details of what the men had done. The Daily News did so only for Jackson, who it reported "took $100 worth of pipes and jewelry." The New York Herald Tribune added that the merchandise came from a cigar store on 7th Avenue. It also reported that Wade had taken a toy pistol from a store on 127th Street. Neither story provided details of what Wright had done. That additional information somewhat countered how pleading to a lesser charge diminished the seriousness of what Jackson had done, while having the opposite result in Wade's case, leaving the New York Herald Tribune's readers with a somewhat confused picture of whether these convictions involved men who played a major role in the disorder.