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

MCCH Meeting (March 25, 1935)

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 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.

Oswald 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 NYT, NYWT, BDE and DW made it the basis of the headline of their story. The NYHT, NYDN, and HN folded the meeting into stories about the work of Dodge’s GJ, which they made the subject of their headlines.  The Hearst newspapers, the NYEJ, Am 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 AN 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 HN and NYDN included this section in their stories, quoted in the HN and paraphrased in the NYDN. It was not mentioned in NYHT, NYWT, NYT, BDE and DW. Without this section, stories pushed events to the background, appearance that the MCCH not concerned with events. Particularly in the NYDN, which characterized the statement as a “preliminary report.”

The third section was an appeal for information, and a notice that hearings would be hold, 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 NYT and HN, and paraphrased in three other newspapers: as “The public was invited to send any remedial suggestions” in the NYDN; as “beseeching the city to offer suggestions to clear up the Harlem sore spots” in the BDE; and as “it asks for public cooperation and will welcome any suggestions and information,” in the AN (3/30, 3 – end of critics story).  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.”

At some point, the MCCH also announced that it would hold its first hearing at the end of the week, on Saturday, March 30. There was no mention of that decision in the minutes or the NYT, NYDN, or the BDE stories about the meeting. While the upcoming hearing was reported in the NYWT without attribution, the NYHT 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 who the HN quoted, 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 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. A day later, the DW 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 Am 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 HN simply reported the comments on March 27. The decision to hold a hearing on March 30 thus did appear to have been made after the MCCH met. The press statement after the second meeting of the MCCH would also include information on the March 30 hearing. It was at that time that the NYEJ reported the hearing.

The subcommittee of which Hays was a member was one of three the MCCH established at the meeting. In the minutes, Judge Toney was chair of the group appointed “to investigate the police records and all facts pertinent to the happenings in Harlem on Tuesday, March 19th,” with Schiefflin and Carter as well as Hays. 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 of why that change was made. These subcommittees do not appear to have been announced to journalists after the meeting. Only the AN provided any information on them: that story identified their members and said Hays subcommittee would “investigate the "outburst" (the committee rejected the term "riot").” After the MCCH met on March 29, the statement to the press provided information on eight subcommittees, with the one led by Hays labelled “Crime” and no longer including Carter. (The six subcommittees appointed in addition to those on discrimination and housing were focused on education, health and sanitation, labor problems, law and legislation and relief agencies). [Presumably these reflect Randolph and Ernst’s plan for the MCCH’s work??] Given that Hays announced the March 30 hearing before his subcommittee was scheduled to meet, it is not clear who else was involved in the decision to hold the hearing.

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 NYHT [3/22] 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] 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.” [NAACP 0438, Villard to White, 1/31/1936}

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.
 

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