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

MCCH Meeting (April 5, 1935)

The MCCH only met once in the week after the first public hearing. The only source related to that meeting are the minutes. Eunice Carter did not record who had attended in the minutes; she had requested Father McCann, whom Mayor La Guardia had just appointed, be present, but there was no indication he was at the meeting. The agenda was largely devoted to reports from the four subcommittees established the previous week. Before they reported, the MCCH members discussed the hearing, which all but McCann had attended.

“The Commission decided that some progress had been made and the committee on events of March 19th decided to hold another hearing and to make a report as to the events of March 19th before starting the hearings on police brutality cases, making this last a separate project of the subcommittee,” the minutes recorded. The hearing the next day, April 6, had been announced at end of hearing on March 30, so the hearing referred to here was likely an additional hearing beyond that. The quick release of a report on the events of the disorder was part of the plans for the MCCH's work proposed by both Randolph and White the previous week. Optimism about meeting that goal would prove misplaced as the MCCH struggled to get staff from the Kress store to testify in a public hearing. The investigation of police brutality would also end up folded into that report rather than a separate project.

The shift in focus to police brutality reflected the expanded brief MCCH members had given the subcommittee — crime, not simply the events of March 19. In Randolph’s plan, crime referred to numbers gambling, ubiquitous in Harlem at this time, and juvenile delinquency, perceived to be increasing in the context of the Depression. The focus on police brutality appeared to have been at Hays’ initiative, although it was more in keeping with the agenda that White and the NAACP had proposed. There must have been some discussion of the cases that the subcommittee was investigating, as Hays was recorded as saying, "where shooting cases were pending in the courts, it would be his policy to allow no cross-examination at the hearing of those cases." The killing of Hobbs and Thompson would have been the cases to which he referred; both had been shot by police. Cross-examination would have involved the ILD lawyers and others in the audience questioning police officers, a prospect they would have relished but would have been resented by police and have endangered their cooperation with the MCCH. Discussion of the subcommittee’s hearing apparently blurred into Hays' report on the activities of the subcommittee on crime, as the minutes recorded no separate discussion. Other subcommittees reported plans to schedule public hearings of their own, expanding opportunities for Harlem residents to voice their concerns and anger about conditions in the neighborhood and diverting the attention of the press from the hearings of the subcommittee on crime.

The meeting was not reported in the press, an indication that attention to the MCCH and the disorder was beginning to wane.

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