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

Appearances in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20

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In the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 Around two dozen uniformed patrolmen kept people away from the city block housing the Harlem Courthouse. Inside, ten more officers lined the stairs leading up to the courtroom, within which an additional fifteen officers were stationed. So many people had crowded into the courtroom by 9:30 AM that for the remainder of the day only those who could prove they had business in the court were admitted. Hundreds of others were left standing in crowds on the sidewalks outside the police cordon. Many had come from the Black neighborhoods to the west; the sprinkling of white spectators likely included members of the Communist Party as well as residents of the white section around the courthouse. While no one in those crowds turned to violence against people or property as white observers clearly worried they might, they did express dissatisfaction with the white authorities. “Boos and jeers” greeted the arrival of the police wagons, and “considerable grumbling, [and] some shouting of threats” continued throughout the day. Just what people were calling out went unreported by white observers of these events. The men and women exiting the police wagons at the courthouse yet again found themselves in front of press photographers, some on the street, others shooting out of windows on the upper floors of the building, one of whom took this image of a group of men arriving.
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Inside the courthouse, clearly aware that the eyes of Black Harlem were on him, Magistrate Stanley Renaud began the hearing by announcing that “at his request," a Black Assistant District Attorney, Richard E. Carey, had been assigned to prosecute the accused rioters so that "there can be no charge of discrimination." Carey had only been sworn in as a district attorney a month earlier, after practicing as a defense lawyer for ten years. During that time he had served as the legal advisor for the group that organized the picket and boycott campaign in 1934, and represented John Johnson, one of the protesters that the Beck shoe store had successfully sued in the New York Supreme Court to have the picketing declared unlawful. Active in the Democratic party, Carey’s decision to become a prosecutor was reported by the New York Amsterdam News to have been an effort to position himself to be a magistrate.

Police brought sixty-three Black men, eight white men, and five Black women before Renaud for arraignment, beginning with James Bright, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man accused of breaking windows in a Lenox Avenue drug store. Just over half of the arrested men who appeared after him were, like Bright, between twenty and twenty-nine years of age. Only twenty were older, with just six over forty years of age, Leroy Gillard and Joseph Moore the oldest at age forty-six. Thirty years separated them from the youngest of those arrested, sixteen-year-old Joseph Hayes, one of only fourteen men less than twenty years of age. Among that group were four of the eight white men arrested during the disorder, eighteen-year-old Louis Tonick, nineteen-year-olds Murray Samuels and Sam Jamison, arrested in front of the Kress store, and Leo Smith. Three of the other four white men who appeared before Magistrate Renaud were between twenty and twenty-four years of age, with the oldest white man, Jean Jacquelin only thirty-three years old. The five Black women arraigned in the court were similarly young. Margaret Mitchell was the youngest, eighteen years of age; Viola Woods the oldest, only thirty years old.

The accusation of breaking windows made against James Bright that began the arraignments proved not to be typical of the allegations made over the course of the court session. Only fifteen others were alleged to have committed that act, although they were a diverse group, including three Black women, Viola Woods, Louise Brown, and Rose Murrell, and one white man, Leo Smith. Unlike most of those arrested for breaking windows, Bright was charged with the offense of disorderly conduct. Only four others faced that charge; the other ten were charged with the offense of malicious mischief. The later was an offense that included the destruction of property, with the punishment determined by the value of the property or damage done. The threshold for a felony charge was $250; store windows were generally valued at less than $100, so fell within the lesser, misdemeanor form of the offense. Disorderly conduct, by contrast, encompassed a variety of forms of breach of the peace, none of which involved damage to property. It carried a lesser sentence than a misdemeanor and fell within the jurisdiction of the magistrate: Renaud would determine guilt and, if necessary, punishment. Carey's decision to charge men and women accused of breaking windows with disorderly conduct likely indicated a lack of evidence that they were responsible for that damage. Their arrest would have resulted from being nearby when windows were broken, part of crowds on the streets, which police could portray as being involved in the "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior" that constituted disorderly conduct.

After a second man accused of breaking windows, Arthur Bennett, followed Bright, police brought Rivers Wright before Magistrate Renaud. Detective Doyle accused the twenty-one-year-old Black man of assault, alleging that he was part of a group of men who attacked an unnamed white man. With no arrests in forty-seven of the reported assaults during the disorder, such allegations were an infrequent part of the court hearing, made against only five other men. However, the offense with which the prosecutor charged Wright was disorderly conduct. As with Bright, that charge likely indicated that police did not have evidence that Wright participated in the assault, only that he had been part of a crowd nearby. Wright was the only one of the men arrested for assault who faced that charge in the Harlem court; Carey charged the other five men, including one white man, Harry Gordon, accused of assaulting a patrolman arresting him for trying to speak to the crowd in front of the Kress store, with the offense of assault. The use of a weapon and the extent of the injury inflicted defined the different degrees of that offense.

Twenty-two-year-old Theodore Hughes, who appeared after Wright, was accused by Patrolman Carrington of having committed an act more typical of those brought before Renaud: looting items from a store. Police accused thirty-six others, just under half of those arraigned that day, of such theft. They were a less diverse group than those police alleged had broken windows, Black men apart from two white men, Louis Tonick and Jean Jacquelin, and one Black woman, Elizabeth Tai. Those men were also older than those alleged to have committed other acts: fifteen were over thirty years of age, more than two thirds of those arrested of that age, including the two oldest who appeared in the Harlem court, Gillard and Moore. As with Bright and Wright, the offense with which Carey charged Hughes, petit larceny, proved not to be typical of those accused of looting. Only four others faced that charge. A substantial majority, twenty-seven, instead were charged with burglary, including Elizabeth Tai. Carey charged two others, Louis Tonick, the eighteen-year-old white man, and Edward Larry with robbery. The offense of burglary involved breaking into a building to commit a crime; in the context of the disorder, that applied to those alleged to have both broken a store’s windows, entered the store, and taken items from inside. The value of the items taken did not matter. That act became robbery if the property was taken from a person. The offense of larceny fitted circumstances in which items were taken without breaking a store window. The value of that property determined the form of the offense, with petit larceny involving goods worth $100 or less. In the case of Hughes, the man accused of breaking the windows of the meat market from which he took two pieces of pork, Emmett Williams was arraigned directly after him, charged with the offense of malicious mischief. Two of those accused of looting, Albert Bass and James Smith, faced charges of disorderly conduct, indicating that police had no evidence that they had taken any merchandise, broken windows, or entered a business. The definition of disorderly conduct included only various forms of breach of the peace, so police had likely arrested them in a crowd near a looted store.

Following Emmett Williams, police next brought Margaret Mitchell before Magistrate Renaud. Her early appearance in court was fitting as she had been the first person police arrested, inside the Kress store around 5:00 PM, accused of “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect.” Those arrested for inciting crowds made up a far smaller group than those arrested for looting. The fourteen others were all men, including the three white men, Daniel Miller, Murray Samuels, and Sam Jamison, arrested in front of the Kress store, and the Black man who picketed with them, Claudio Viabolo. All but one of those men were charged with the offense of riot. To fall within that offense, the men had to be part of a group of three or more who threatened to use, attempted to use, or did use violence against a person or property. In the context of the disorder, police accused them of calling on groups of which they were members to break store windows or attack police. Carey, however, charged Mitchell with disorderly conduct; only John Hawkins of those accused of riot also faced that charge. In Mitchell’s case, that offense fit what police alleged she had done. While she had been part of a crowd in the store, she had not acted with any of those women or men, nor had she sought to damage property. Mitchell may not have intended to cause any disturbance. According to the Times Union she “denied hysterically she participated in the rioting. She stood up from the witness chair screaming, then collapsed.” Police likely could also only place Hawkins in a crowd, not acting with others or calling on them to attack property or people.

Four more men and one woman arrested during the disorder appeared before Renaud before he heard Officer Ramos accuse Jose Perez of having a gun in his possession, the least frequent charge made against those arrested during the disorder. Only Perez, recorded by the court clerk as a white man but given his name likely Puerto Rican, faced just that charge; the two Black men alleged to have had weapons in their possession who appeared before Renaud later in the day had also been accused of other acts, breaking windows in the case of Arthur Killen and looting in the case of Raymond Easley. Police had found weapons in those men’s possession after arresting them for those other actions. Perez attracted police attention in some other way.

Magistrate Renaud remanded just under half of those arrested in the disorder, twenty-eight Black men, five white men, and three Black women, for further investigation of their alleged offenses. That group included all the men charged with assault other than Rivers Wright. Most of the rest, thirty-one of those arrested, he referred for trial in the Court of Special Sessions, in the case of nine Black men, one white man, and one white woman, or a hearing in the grand jury for the other nineteen Black men. None of the seven accused of having broken windows in that group had allegedly done enough damage for the charge against them to be a felony punished by longer terms of imprisonment; they were all sent to the Court of Special Sessions. By contrast, all four of those accused of inciting crowds that Renaud referred on March 20 were sent to the grand jury to face felony charges. Most of those accused of looting were likewise sent to the grand jury to face felony charges. Renaud referred only four of the nineteen to the Court of Special Sessions, all of who had been charged with petit larceny not burglary. In those cases, like the prosecutions for breaking windows, the value of the property determined that outcome.

The magistrate took little time to make those decisions, surprising many of the reporters in the courtroom — and perhaps making it difficult for them to gather information on all the cases, as even the most comprehensive list, published in the Home News included only thirty-seven of those who appeared before Renaud. The lack of lawyers representing those being charged contributed to how quickly the magistrate made his decisions. Only sixteen attorneys appeared in the hearings before Renaud. Among them were several high-profile Black lawyers, even though it was not obvious that their clients had the resources to pay them. Sidney Christian, a prominent West Indian attorney, represented Margaret Mitchell. Her father, Thomas E. Thompson, may have retained Christian to represent her. 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. Eustace Dench and John Lewis, who represented Viola Woods and James Williams, were both leaders of the Harlem Lawyers Association, an organization with around one hundred members that may have, may have offered their services as part of the group’s commitment to protecting the Black community’s civil rights. Carey, the prosecuting assistant district attorney, was also a member of the association. Two other lawyers were active in social organizations in Harlem and may also have been members of the association: Pope Billings, a former state assemblyman and member of the Elks Lodge, who represented Douglas Cornelius; and West-Indian born Hutson Lovell, also an Elk and prominent in the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, who represented William Ford. The lawyers for Frederick Harwell, Claude Jones, Arthur Merritt and Oscar Leacock could not be identified. The presence of this group of prominent Black attorneys in the courtroom would have contributed to Magistrate Renaud’s concern to involve Carey and try to blunt any charges of racial discrimination in the proceedings - and was likely one reason the men were there. Such an approach would have continued the strategy historian David Krugler argued was adopted in the wake of the racial disorders in 1919, when African American groups had acted to ensure that Black men and women arrested for riot-related offenses received unbiased treatment.

Aubrey Patterson identified his lawyer, T. French, as a friend. He may have been affiliated with the Communist Party, as the International Labor Defense offered to defend Patterson. White lawyers from that Communist Party organization, well-known in 1935 thanks to their role defending the Scottsboro Boys, did represent the four Communists arrested at the beginning of the disorder, Daniel Miller, Murray Samuels, Sam Jamison and Claudio Viabolo. The two attorneys, Yetta M. Aronsky and Isidore Englander, clashed with Renaud and drew the attention of reporters. When Carey asked that bail for the men be set at the maximum, $2500, higher than for any of the others arrested during the disorder, Aronsky and Englander, "protested vehemently." Renaud was unmoved; nor did he act on Aronksy's complaint that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest." Another ILD lawyer, Edward Kuntz, who would later take a leading role in MCCH hearings, represented Frank Wells. Kuntz would also appear for Harry Gordon at later hearings. Gordon on several occasions insisted he was getting his own lawyer, not being represented by the ILD lawyers who appeared for the other white men, as he was not connected with them. On March 20, however, he did not have a lawyer. That the lawyer who later represented him, Kuntz, was affiliated with the ILD, would not have helped Gordon's effort to distinguish himself from the Communists arrested in the disorder. He would later testify before a hearing of the MCCH that he knew Kuntz through the lawyer’s son rather than a shared affiliation with the Communist Party.

At least one other white lawyer appeared in the hearings, to represent Leo Smith, the youngest of the white men arrested by police. For some reason the lawyer’s name was not recorded in the court docket book, but he earned a rebuke from Renaud that attracted the attention of reporters from the Daily News and Times Union. The case would have stood out even before that clash as it reversed the racial dynamics of the vast majority of the hearings. Smith had been arrested by a Black patrolman, one of only five Black officers among the police who made arrests. Neither of the white journalists who reported the incident recounted just what Smith’s white attorney said while the Black patrolman was testifying — he “sought to inject a question of race,“ according to one, and “hinted the trouble was started by Negroes and was racial in origin” according to the other — but it prompted “muttered disapproval” from the predominantly Black spectators and a rebuke from Renaud: "The patrolman in this case happens to be colored, the Judge happens to be white and the prosecutor is colored." said Renaud. "We recognize no race, color or creed here. We are looking for justice and law and order." That clash occurred early in the session; only eight men and women arrested during the disorder had appeared before Smith. What impact it had on the hearings that followed went unrecorded.

In just nine cases did the Magistrate adjudicate a prosecution. Three additional defendants charged with disorderly conduct whose cases he could have decided, Viola Woods, Frank Wells, and Albert Bass, he had investigated. Renaud convicted Margaret Mitchell and John Hawkins, arrested for inciting crowds, James Bright, Arthur Bennett, and Leo Smith, arrested for breaking windows, and Rivers Wright, arrested for assault. But he did not sentence any of them, instead ordering they be investigated and returned to court on March 23 for sentencing.

Renaud also acquitted Jacob Bonaparte, Oscar Austin, and Sam Nicholas, decisions that went unreported by the press. All three of those men had been arrested by the same police officer, on the complaint of the same person, J. Romanoff, the proprietor of a drug store on Lenox Avenue. There was clearly some confusion about what Romanoff and the officer alleged the men had done as the charge against them was changed from attempted burglary, which suggested the men had been involved in looting but had no stolen items in their possession, to disorderly conduct, which suggested that they had simply been part of a crowd around the drug store. Given that Renaud was not willing to hold the men for investigation as he did all the others arrested in the disorder who came before him on that day, it seems likely that neither Romanoff nor the police officer had seen the men do anything and that they were arrested too far from the store to be connected with what happened there. Newspaper stories about the hearings offer no insight on Renaud’s decision; they did not mention any of those who were acquitted or released.
In Harlem court on March 20 (76) Seventy-six of those arrested in the 28th Precinct, south of West 130th Street, during the disorder appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud decided just over half of those prosecutions. He rendered verdicts in only nine cases, convicting five men and one woman and discharging three men. That was far fewer cases than Magistrate Ford decided in the Washington Heights Court that day in large part because those arraigned in Harlem faced more serious charges. Renaud sent twelve others for trial on misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions and eighteen more charged with felonies to the grand jury. The remaining thirty-seven people he remanded in custody on bail. Those hearings were reported in all of Harlem’s white newspapers, but not in Black newspapers, which did not report the disorder until March 30, when they reported later court appearances. The newspaper stories varied in detail, with most only offering general accounts.

Descriptions of the scene at the court emphasized the number of police present and how they kept onlookers at a distance. The Home News put the number of police at fifty, the New York Post at sixty-five. The New York Times reported “Heavy police guards composed of men on foot, mounted and on motorcycles, surrounded the courts,” the Home News reported “cordons," and later that “Heavy police guards surrounded the courts and held back many colored persons who attempted to enter the buildings,” the New York Sun “lines of policemen formed in the street” that stopped anyone from going “west of Third Avenue or east of Sylvan Place," the Daily News that “Spectators were kept a block away from the buildings," and the New York American that the court was "heavily guarded,” with the "crowd gathered in the vicinity but was not permitted near the courthouse.” Only the Daily News noted the police presence in the crowd itself, that “plainclothesmen prowled through the crowds.”

The New York Sun also reported an additional 25 officers in the court building, ten on the stairs leading up to the courtroom and 15 in the courtroom itself, the Daily News more generally that “police lined the corridors of the courts.” Despite police restricting access to the courthouse, newspaper stories did mention the presence of spectators in the courtroom. That crowd had arrived early according to the New York Post, which reported that by 9:30 AM the space had become so crowded that the doors were closed. The Times Union described those present as Black, while the New York Evening Journal said the courtroom was crowded with participants in the disorder, prisoners awaiting arraignment.

Newspapers offered only slightly more details about the crowd outside the courthouse. Only the New York American put a number on those present, 1,500 people, which is likely an exaggeration given the sensational style of that publication. The New York Post described the crowd as lining the curbs outside the courthouse rather than giving its size. The New York Sun, New York Times, and Daily News mentioned crowds without describing their size. Those stories focused on the composition and behavior of the people, about which they offered contradictory pictures. Most of the spectators, inside and out, were Negroes, according to the New York Post, while the New York Times described them as “Negro friends of the prisoners assembled to attend the arraignments.” To the contrary, the Daily News portrayed them as “evenly distributed between white and colored.” Descriptions of how they behaved ran the gamut, with the New York Post portraying them as showing “clearly that they were there just to see the sights," to the Daily News insisting that they were “entirely orderly,” and the New York Sun and New York Times highlighting moments of anger, “a storm of boos and jeers from the crowd” as a wagon loaded with prisoners drove by in the New York Sun, and “considerable grumbling, some shouting of threats, but no violence” recounted in the New York Times.

Two photographs published in the Daily News captured the arrival of prisoners at the Harlem courthouse. In a photograph that appeared on the front page on March 21, shot from street level, a crowd can be seen in the background, held back by a uniformed patrolman, the elevated railway line indicating that they were on 3rd Avenue. An injured man is visible in the photograph; unlike the photograph published in the same newspaper of men being loaded into a wagon at the 28th Precinct, the caption to that image made no mention of the man’s injury. However, a second photograph published in the Daily News of a different group of men exiting a wagon and entering the court, shot from above, did draw attention to prisoners’ injuries, in both the headline and caption attached to it. “Casualties of Race War,” was the headline given to the image, which was captioned, “Prisoners of War! Wounded in the battle of Harlem, these prisoners arrive at Harlem Court in police wagon.” (It is difficult to determine which of the men shown in the photograph are injured as the only available image is scanned from microfilm and is of poor quality. One of the men in the foreground may have a bandaged head.) A third photograph of prisoners arriving at the courthouse, found in the Getty Images collection, is not attributed to a newspaper or agency and did not appear in any of the publications examined for this study. Taken from a similar elevated angle to the first of the Daily News images, it showed a different group of prisoners being taken into the courthouse. The different arrangement of vehicles indicates that the photographs are of two different groups of prisoners. None of the men in that image have visible injuries, nor did the caption reference any. It simply noted, “Members of the press as well as police officers watch as police vans escort the arrested to the courthouse the day after rioting in the Harlem neighbourhood in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, 20th March 1935.”
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As was the case in reports of the police line-up, several newspaper stories included incidental mentions of the visible injuries of many of those under arrest. The New York World-Telegram merely noted “many battered and sore” among the prisoners. The Daily News mentioned that “numerous minor defendants appeared in court with bandaged and plastered heads” but only to contrast them with the group of alleged Communists, none of whom was “hurt.” Alone among the mentions of injured prisoners, the New York Sun story explicitly stated what would have been widely understood to be the source of their injuries, describing “Groups of prisoners battered and bruised after their furious battles with the police.” The implicit acceptance of police violence against Black New Yorkers by the white press stood in stark contrast to the attention and criticism it attracted in the Black press.

Only the New York Evening Journal and Home News published lists of those being arraigned, neither of which was complete. The Home News identified thirty-seven of the seventy-six individuals, including their name, address, charge, the magistrate’s decision, the amount he set for bail, and also brief descriptions of their alleged offense. (In several cases those descriptions provide the only details of those events.) Three of those omitted were discharged; those discharged were also omitted from the publication's list of those arraigned in the Washington Heights court. There is no obvious reason why the other thirty-six were not listed. As discussed below, the New York Post, Daily News, and Daily Worker did note the speed with which cases were processed, which might have made it difficult for reporters to hear or otherwise gather information about them. The list in the New York Evening Journal also included the name, address, charge, the magistrate’s decision, and the amount he set for bail, without any information on the alleged offense. (My copy of this story is incomplete, so I do not know how many of those arraigned the newspaper identified; sixteen names are visible, but there were more in the list.)

The appearances of the four alleged Communists, Daniel Miller, Murray Samuels, Sam Jamison, and Claudio Viabolo, and in some cases Harry Gordon, also arrested at the beginning of the disorder were the only widely reported arraignments, with the Daily News, New York American and New York Evening Journal, also publishing photographs of the men leaving the 28th Precinct station for court. While the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Daily Mirror included all five men in that group, the New York American, Home News, and New York Times omitted Gordon. And the New York Sun mentioned four white men but identified only Gordon. That difference appears to have resulted from Gordon being arraigned separately from the three Young Liberators and Miller. That separation would have resulted from Gordon being arrested by a different police officer. The Daily News claimed Gordon "was heard separately when he indicated that he would produce his own lawyers." The New York World-Telegram simply reported that “The fifth [man] was to be arraigned later in Harlem Court.”

These men drew reporters’ attention at least in part because police identified them as the instigators of the disorder, a claim that the Daily Worker reported that ADA Carey also made during the men’s arraignment. The New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Times all described the men as the "ringleaders" of the disorder, which was likely the term police used. The Daily Mirror elaborated that description in more sensational terms, describing them as “the curb-stone orators who had deliberately incited the 125th St. mobs to looting frenzy,” while the Daily News and New York World-Telegram used less sensational variations, with the Daily News describing them as those “whose propaganda is blamed for the riot” and the New York World-Telegram describing them as “accused of store picketing activities alleged to have been the direct causes of the riot.”

The stories also labeled the men Communists, with the New York World-Telegram and New York Sun directly attributing that information to police. The Daily Worker obliquely confirmed that source, reporting “Authorities declared that they 'would prove they were Reds.'” The anti-Communist Daily Mirror claimed the men identified themselves, that they were “all admitted Communists.” While the other stories did not explicitly label the men Communists, they identified the lawyers who represented them, details which would have conveyed to their readers that they were Communists. The Home News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily News all described the lawyers as from the ILD, well known in the 1930s as the legal arm of the Communist Party. The Daily Mirror explicitly made the connection in its story, stating that the men's "Communistic affiliations were declared" by the identity of their attorneys. The Daily Mirror and Daily Worker named the lawyers as Miss Yetta M. Aronsky and I[sidore] Englander, while the Daily News named only Aronsky, and the New York Herald Tribune and New York Times reported only "a woman lawyer" who would not give her name to their reporters. (Englander later testified about being present in the court in a public hearing of the MCCH.)

The other element of the men’s arraignment that drew attention was the bail of $2,500 that Magistrate Renaud set for Miller and the three Young Liberators (but not for Gordon). While the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, New York World-Telegram, Home News, and New York Times simply noted the amount of the bail, the Daily Mirror noted that sum was the “maximum bonds,” and was requested by the prosecutor, Carey. Without noting the high level of the bail, the Daily News reported that the men’s ILD lawyers “protested vehemently against the amount of bail.” That story also reported that one of those lawyers, Aronsky also complained that the men "had not been fed by police following their arrest," a detail that only the Daily Worker also reported. Magistrate Renaud responded to that complaint with a “retort,” the Daily News reported obliquely, and by saying “that he had no responsibility in the matter,” according to the Daily Worker.

Newspapers reported the other arraignments with summary statements (The Daily Mirror and New York Herald Tribune reported only the arraignments of the alleged Communists). That most cases were not decided but instead held over for further hearings, was noted by the New York American, New York Times, Home News, and Daily Worker. The New York Post and Daily News specified that it was defendants facing the “more serious charges” that were held on bail, with the New York Post identifying those charges as burglary and inciting to riot. The New York Sun merely noted that “The more serious cases were brought before Magistrate Renaud in the Harlem Court.” Only the New York Post, New York Times, and Daily News also noted that Renaud did decide some cases. Where the New York Times simply reported that “several were sentenced immediately,” the Daily News specified that “In the cases of those charged with misdemeanors he invariably found them guilty and held them either without bail for investigation or in bail of $500 for sentence Friday" and the New York Post add the detail that these were “The relatively unimportant charges, disorderly conduct, simple assault and so on” in which “Small fines with alternative jail sentences were administered, with most of the prisoners taking the jail terms.” The summary details offered by the Daily News and New York Post mask the small number of cases Renaud decided: he convicted only five men and one woman, and actually acquitted three other men, of the total of seventy-six who appeared before him. He also did not sentence any of those he convicted, instead ordering them investigated and returned to court for sentencing three days later, on March 23. What the New York Post described happened in the Washington Heights court, not the Harlem court.

The other feature of the hearings noted in those stories was the speed, the short time taken on each case. An early edition of the New York Post reported that “cases were handled with almost unprecedented speed.” A later edition elaborated that minor charges were “handled at a speed of ten minutes or less to a case” and more serious charges “also were jammed through rapidly.” The Daily Worker, which cast the work of the “capitalist courts” as “frame-up cases and grinding out convictions,” had case handled even faster: “30 cases of Negroes were disposed of in almost as many minutes.” The Daily News described the speed in terms of the activities involved rather than time: “As rapidly as overtaxed court clerks could draw the necessary papers Renaud heard defendants.”

Newspaper stories had little to say about how those in the courtroom reacted to the proceedings. What they did mention suggested a wariness that the Black community might see racial discrimination at work that could prompt further disorder. Only the Daily News reported that Magistrate Renaud expressed such concerns at the beginning of the hearing, announcing that at his request Assistant District Attorney Richard E. Carey, who was Black, had been assigned to prosecute the accused rioters so that "there can be no charge of discrimination." Only the Brooklyn Daily Eagle also explicitly linked Carey’s role to racial tensions, pointed to him being the prosecutor in the Harlem Court to claim “it could hardly be said there was racial discrimination against the Negro Prisoners.” That story did not mention that Renaud had requested Carey. The Daily Mirror did note that Carey, whom the story described as “a colored attache of District attorney Dodge’s office,” was specially assigned at the demand of Renard without providing his explanation for that request. The New York Post and Daily Worker simply noted Carey’s involvement in the prosecutions. On at least one occasion, Carey’s involvement produced the racial tensions Renaud had sought to prevent, according to stories in the Daily News and Times Union. The fullest account was provided by the Daily News: “…when a white attorney, who refused to give his name to reporters, sought to inject a question of race while a colored patrolman was testifying against Leo Smith, 18, of 305 E. 118th St., who is white, Renaud denounced the attorney. 'The patrolman in this case happens to be colored, the Judge happens to be white and the prosecutor is colored.' said Renaud. 'We recognize no race, color or creed here. We are looking for justice and law and order.'" Missing from that story was the reaction in the courtroom, which is what the Times Union reported: “The tenseness lingering from the night was apparent in Harlem Court, where Negroes in the jammed room muttered disapprovingly as a lawyer for a white defendant hinted the trouble was started by Negroes and was racial in origin. Magistrate Renaud quickly reprimanded the attorney.” (Strikingly, that account, and mention of Margaret Mitchell’s reaction to be charged — that she "denied hysterically she participated in the rioting. She stood up from the witness chair screaming, then collapsed" — are the only references to the court proceedings in the Times Union story). Neither story made clear just what Smith’s lawyer had said. The Black officer who testifed against Smith was one of four Black patrolmen, together with a Black detective, that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle story referenced alongside Carey to refute the possibility of racial discrimination in the courts. The New York Herald Tribune was the only other newspaper to note that “Among the arresting officers were five Negro patrolmen and detectives.”