Washington Heights Magistrates Court, 447-455 West 151st Street, c. 1939-1941.
1 media/nynyma_rec0040_1_02066_0009_thumb.jpg 2024-05-31T19:05:24+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf 1 2 Source: DOF: Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos (New York City Municipal Archives). plain 2024-05-31T19:05:40+00:00 nynyma_rec0040_1_02066_0009 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfThis page has tags:
- 1 2023-12-13T11:17:05+00:00 Anonymous Department of Finance, Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos: Miscellaneous buildings Anonymous 5 plain 2023-12-13T16:19:18+00:00 Anonymous
This page is referenced by:
-
1
2022-11-11T17:06:01+00:00
The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (April 6)
61
plain
2024-05-31T19:06:35+00:00
Twenty witnesses testified at the hearing in the Washington Heights Magistrates court on April 6, the largest group at any of the hearings. Their testimony covered a wider range of events than the previous week. Three witnesses added to the picture of events in the store. Charles Hurley, one of the Kress staff who grabbed Lino Rivera, testified about both about what happened to the boy and subsequent events in the store. Officer Eldridge, the Crime Prevention Bureau officer summoned to take custody of the boy, testified about how Rivera came to be left with Patrolman Donahue. Patrolman Shannon testified about efforts to disperse the crowds after the boy had been released. Three women staff from the store testified they knew nothing about what had happened to Rivera. Rivera himself testified again in response to persistent questions about whether he was actually the boy who had been in the Kress store. No newspapers covered the testimony in the detail they had the first hearing. The nature of the hearing would have made that difficult as "scores of witnesses presented different angles of the rioting," as the correspondent for the Afro-American described it. Or as the more critical assessment of the New York Herald Tribune journalist put it, "Additional facts as to the actual riot were elicited in a wordy, sometimes redundant question and answer session guided by Arthur Garfield Hays." Several publications devoted as much or more space to the reactions of the audience as to the testimony as Black residents and Communists asserted their view of the events and the situation in Harlem. All the MCCH members other than Judge Toney were in attendance to hear from both the audience and the witnesses, although Morris Ernst and Rev. Robinson were only present in the afternoon as in the morning they presided over a public hearing on housing in a courtroom on another floor.
Hurley’s testimony described the circumstances that led to Rivera being caught. He and the store manager had seen Rivera take a knife, after which he and the store detective grabbed the boy and took him out the front of the store. The store detective then left to get a Crime Prevention Bureau officer to take the boy into custody, which Hurley testified was the store’s practice with shoplifters rather than having them arrested. When Rivera continued to struggle with Hurley, Steve Urban came to help. They were the two men Donahue saw the boy bite. Once Officer Eldridge, the Crime Prevention Bureau officer, arrived, Hurley claimed he went to the back of the store. He insisted that he played no further part in the events in the store, merely observing the exchanges between police and women shoppers. Neither Rivera nor Donahue had mentioned Eldridge’s presence in their testimony the previous week. The officer testified he arrived at the store when the ambulance doctor Donahue had summoned was treating Hurley and Urban for their bite wounds. That Eldridge did not leave with Rivera was due to Hurley wanting him arrested for assault for biting him. It was Hurley later changing his mind that left Donahue having to decide what to do with Rivera. (Hurley himself insisted that it was Urban, not him, who wanted to charge Rivera.) Few journalists saw anything sufficiently new in the details these witnesses provided to make them worth including in their stories. Only the New York Sun and Home News mentioned Hurley’s testimony, reporting just his denials that Rivera had been beaten. The Afro-American listed Hurley and Eldridge among a group of witnesses who “testified to clinch the contention that Rivera is the boy who stole the ten-cent Kress knife,” a question which neither was asked.
Shannon arrived at the Kress store at 4:00 PM, so his testimony filled in what had happened in the store between Donahue’s departure and the arrival of Louise Thompson. Going “from one crowd to another,” the patrolman told the shoppers that there was not a boy in the store basement, “but they would not listen.” Shannon claimed that he formed a committee of three shoppers, two men and one woman, whom he took to the basement to see that Rivera was not there. As he could not identify its members and no other witness mentioned it, that may not have happened. It was his decision to call for additional police at 4:20 PM. Still among the officers in the store trying to “reason” with shoppers when a second group of police reinforcements arrived, Shannon also heard the woman scream and pots and pans hitting the floor that Thompson had described. It was Hays' response to this testimony that attracted the attention of many of the journalists present. He twice suggested that police should have brought Rivera back to the store so that the crowds could see him. “That was up to my superiors,” Shannon replied on both occasions. Hays’ pointed rejoinder to that answer was also quoted in exactly the same language in the Home News, Daily News, New York Sun, New York Herald Tribune, New York Age, and New York Amsterdam News. "'I am not blaming you personally,' Hays said. 'You see this whole thing started from a false rumor, and it could have been stifled at the start, if it had been handled properly by the police.'" That statement was not included in the transcript of the hearing. It continued the criticism of police handling of Rivera’s release targeted at Patrolman Donahue in the previous hearing. The transcript and the press had differed then too about what had been said and by whom, reflecting how the audience inserted their reactions and questions into the MCCH’s agenda. However, given the consistent language of the quotation in white and Black publications, it was clear that Hays had picked up the audience's criticisms and more directly blamed police than he had in the first hearing. That did not mean that the press shared the same sense of the importance of this testimony. No mention of it appeared in New York Times, New York Post, or the Hearst papers the New York American and Daily Mirror. By contrast, the Home News and Daily News made Hays' statement the headline of their stories. The reactions of the Black press spanned the New York Amsterdam News identifying Hays criticism as one of three highlights in the hearing, the New York Age placing it near the end of its story, on an inside page, and the Afro-American not mentioning it (but focusing on criticism of police shooting Lloyd Hobbs).
Testimony about events on West 125th Street outside the store was given by three police officers. The MCCH had requested their presence so they could testify about events that had resulted in arrests, but District Attorney Dodge’s instructions prevented that testimony. Despite that injunction, Hays did question Sergeant Bowe, Patrolman Moran, and Patrolman Eppler about events around the arrests they made. Moran described Daniel Miller’s attempt to speak in front of the Kress store, the store window being broken, and Miller's subsequent arrest, in line with what Louise Thompson had described, and the later arrest of the three Young Liberators for picketing, which Thompson had not mentioned. Moran spent the rest of the evening moving crowds away from the front of the Kress store, in keeping with Thompson’s account. Bowe testified only that he witnessed the arrest of the Young Liberators. Eppler described what he saw on 124th Street, where his emergency truck first arrived to find nothing happening, and then on 125th Street, where he saw crowds and heard windows broken. None of that testimony was reported in the press. The New York Sun did mention Eppler and Moran, but mistakenly reported that “they told of the trouble in the store which preceded the riot." Dodge's restriction on police officers testifying attracted more attention than what those officers said. The New York Sun and New York Post made it the headline of their stories, and it featured prominently in the New York Times, Daily News, New York Age, and New York Amsterdam News, and less so in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News. Rather than elaborating details of the events of the disorder, the public record of the hearing focused on the politics of the investigation.
Details of Patrolman McInerney’s killing of Lloyd Hobbs were provided by eight witnesses. Lawyer, Mary, and Russell Hobbs testified, together with three Black men who had witnessed the shooting, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Samuel Pitts, Dr. Arthur Logan, one of the physicians who treated Lloyd Hobbs, Detective Thomas McCormick, the police stenographer who had recorded a statement from the boy soon after he arrived at Harlem Hospital, and James Tartar, a Black investigator for the MCCH. Russell's testimony was more in line with his statement than the previous week. Having continued to run up 7th Avenue fearing a beating by police, he had not, however, seen his brother shot. Malloy, Moore, and Pitts all described Hobbs breaking from the crowd to turn on West 128th Street and McInerney firing at him without calling on him to stop. Lawyer and Mary Hobbs testified that in the hospital their son had said “the officer shot me for nothing. I was not doing anything.” According to their testimony, McInerney, guarding the boy, responded, "Why didn't you halt when I told you to?" The boy's statement taken by Detective McCormick echoed what his parents said the Lloyd had told them. Dr. Arthur Logan’s testimony only described the nature of the boy's injuries; Lloyd had not said anything in the doctor's presence and no items had been found in his clothing. Tartar provided details of a report from the precinct commander about the shooting that was at odds with what the testimony of the eyewitnesses. The Afro-American made the killing of Hobbs the focus of its story, but the two New York City Black newspapers gave it less attention. It was the final item in the New York Age story and surprisingly not mentioned at all in the New York Amsterdam News, which had reported it extensively the previous week. While the radical Daily Worker and New Masses gave Hobbs prominence in reporting the hearing, only the New York Times and Home News among the mainstream white press even mentioned his killing.
The only other events in the disorder about which testimony was given were the deaths of Andrew Lyons, August Miller, and James Thompson. Physicians from Harlem Hospital testified to their injuries and treatment, but offered no information on the circumstances in which they died.
The audience of Black residents and Communists asserted their view of the events and the situation in Harlem and contested the testimony of some witnesses. It was their reactions to the testimony more than the questions asked by Communist lawyers that drew the attention of MCCH members and the press to issues. “Turbulent” was how the white newspapers the Home News, Daily Mirror, New York American, and New York Times described the hearing, with the later straying into racial stereotypes in adding “noisy and emotional.” A fuller picture of the proceedings was offered by the New York Herald Tribune: “persons in the crowded courtroom were asking questions as well as five attorneys representing a variety of Communist associations. The lawyers would quarrel from time to time, and when the din blotted out the shouted replies of witnesses Mr Hays would rap for order.” That story was also the only one to identify the audience, as mostly “Negro and Communistic.” Their boos, cheers, and outbursts highlighted the issues that mattered to them and the testimony which they contested: boos for Dodge’s ban on police testimony (Daily News, Daily Mirror) and the quality of care at Harlem Hospital (New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Amsterdam News); cheers for defense of the Communist pamphlets (New York Amsterdam News); accusations that Kress staff had been bribed to testify there had been no beating in the store; and calls for the arrest of Patrolman McInerney (Afro-American).
The audience joined with ILD lawyers to also force Hays to address the question of whether Rivera was the boy who had been in the Kress store, which consequently made its way into stories about the hearing. The New York Times’s reporting most clearly captured that process, with the challenges from the audience when Hays had Rivera testify again included in the narrative: “He’s a paid witness,” some of those in the room shouted. “He wasn’t the only boy in that store.” “The police are covering up,” another exclaimed.” They also booed Rivera, according to the New York Age. The Black press, the New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and Afro-American, followed the lead of the audience and made debate over Rivera the headline in their stories about the hearing. The reactions would also make an impression on E. Franklin Frazier, the director of the MCCH's survey of Harlem. Although convinced by the evidence that Rivera was the boy in the store, he mentioned the debates in his final report to illustrate the "skeptical mood of the people in the audience who openly expressed a lack of confidence in the police and the representatives of established authority."
By contrast, several white newspapers ignored the audience interventions entirely. The Hearst newspapers, the New York American and the Daily Mirror, put the audience's complaints into the mouths of witnesses in stories devoted to sensationalized claims that another riot was imminent. The Daily Mirror also recast the audience’s concerns in the racial terms in which that publication portrayed the disorder: "The room was packed with colored people, openly hostile to any effort to justify the white participants in the riot.”
-
1
2022-11-11T16:55:54+00:00
The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (March 30)
47
plain
1985
2024-05-31T19:07:15+00:00
At 10:00 AM on Saturday, March 30, the members of the Mayors Commission on Conditions in Harlem took their seats at the front of a courtroom in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on West 151st Street. While formally it was the subcommittee on crime that was holding the public hearing, with Arthur Garfield Hays serving as chairman, all twelve members chose to attend (Father McCann would not join the committee until the next week). An audience of around 400 people filled the courtroom, monitored by around thirty police officers. Among the crowd of Black residents were enough white men and women for observers to describe the audience as racially mixed. Most, if not all, of the white audience members were connected with the Communist Party (CP), present to place blame on the staff of Kress’ store and police, rather than the party. Thanks to Hays offering those in attendance the opportunity to question witnesses, the Communist International Legal Defense lawyers and others in the audience would be active participants in the hearing.
The event ran from 10:00 AM to 6:30 PM, interrupted only by an hour-long break for lunch. During that time eleven people testified; all witnessed the events of the disorder other than an assistant district attorney, who briefly described the progress of the investigation District Attorney William Dodge was conducting in the grand jury. In addition to Lino Rivera, the MCCH heard the testimony of two Black witnesses who had been in Kress’ store, when Rivera was taken to the basement in the case of L. F. Cole, and after he had been released in the case of Louise Thompson. Four police officers testified: Patrolman Donahue, the white officer who arrested and released Rivera; two senior officers who were at the store after disorder broke out on 125th Street, Inspector Di Martini and Captain Rothengast; and the senior Black officer in the police department, Lieutenant Samuel Battle, who was not on Harlem’s streets until the final hours of the disorder. The hearing also heard from the leaders of the Young Liberators and the Harlem Communist Party, Joe Taylor and James Ford, about the activities of their organizations and their own experiences in the hours after the Kress store was closed. The briefest testimony was provided by Russell Hobbs, whose older brother Lloyd had been shot by police. Several of those on the list of eyewitnesses the MCCH staff prepared for Hays did not testify, apparently because there was not sufficient time. Hays planned to have at least five of those witnesses appear at the next hearing, scheduled for April 6, writing a list of “Witnesses who didn’t testify last week:” "Mrs Jackson, Mrs Ida Hengain, Mrs. Effie Diton, Mr Campbell, Mr Irving Kirshaw.”
Lino Rivera was the first of those witnesses to testify, taking a seat next to the members of the MCCH. Questioned by Hays, he described being grabbed by store staff after he put a pocketknife in his pocket but insisted that although they had threatened to beat him, he had not been hit. His testimony, which confirmed what newspapers had reported immediately after the disorder, unsurprisingly appeared in all the stories about the hearing. MCCH members and ILD lawyers asked Rivera series of questions about exactly how the store staff had taken hold of him, probing for evidence that he had been subject to any violence. Rivera continued to deny he had been injured in any way. He also rejected suggestions that police had told him what to say. When he left the stand, Rivera took a seat in the front of the audience, next to Alfred Eldridge, the Crime Prevention Officer who had been given responsibility for him. Over the course of the day, the pair was photographed several times listening and reacting to testimony. The MCCH heard from one other witnesses to Rivera being apprehended, L. F. Cole. He had seen the boy being taken to the front of the store, the ambulance arrive and later Rivera being taken to the basement. While he apparently remained in the area, he did not stay in the store.
Patrolman Donahue and Louise Thompson testified about subsequent events inside the store. The police officer described seeing staff struggling with a boy outside Kress’ store, who he found out had stolen a knife and bitten the men. He called an ambulance for the staff members. Asked why he then took Rivera back into the store, he explained that he wanted to avoid a crowd gathering on the street. Donahue gave the same explanation for releasing Rivera through the rear basement. That testimony was the most widely reported of the hearing. While the Home News, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Associated Negro Press reported Donahue had admitted that releasing the boy out of sight of shoppers was a mistake, the transcript did not record such a statement. Instead, it was Edward Kuntz, one of the ILD lawyers in the audience, who offered that assessment while questioning the patrolman. Rather than Donahue or Kuntz, it was unnamed “witnesses” to whom the New York Times and Afro-American attributed evidence that had there been “no mystery” about what happened to Rivera there would have been no rioting. (Both those stories, and the New York Amsterdam News, also attributed a similar statement to Inspector Di Martini, that “he would have released the boy where all could see,” that is not what the transcript recorded him as saying.)
The most extensive testimony about what happened in the store came from Louise Thompson, although she did not arrive until around an hour after Donahue had released Rivera and left. She described the groups of concerned Black women who remained in the store, the arrival of additional police, and their efforts to clear the store while refusing to answer questions about what had become of Rivera that resulted in a woman screaming and displays being knocked over. Thompson stood out among those who appeared at the hearing in offering extended narratives of what she had witnessed rather than having all that information drawn out by questions. Her delivery of that testimony “In a steady voice, as if she were reciting a poem or play” also stood out, at least to the journalist from the New York Age. The woman screaming was reported in the New York World-Telegram and Times Union, and as an ”outburst” in the New York Age, while the New York Amsterdam News referred more generally to “the first violence on the part of indignant women.” The later story blamed the failure of police to provide “proper explanations of the incident” for the women’s behavior. Those police efforts to mollify the women in the store were the testimony the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Worker chose to report. The Home News and Chicago Defender reported no details, only that Thompson had criticized police.
Thompson also testified about events on 125th Street after the Kress store closed and she and the other women inside were pushed out. She described crowds on the street and the corners at each end of the block, the arrests of Daniel Miller and Harry Gordon, and windows being broken. After leaving around 7:30 PM, she returned around thirty minutes later to find police violently keeping people at the corners of 125th Street away from the Kress store. It was only then, around 8:00 PM that she saw the leaflets distributed by the Young Liberators that much of the press had reported were responsible for inciting the disorder. The New York Herald Tribune made that testimony the headline of its story about the hearing: “Reds' Handbills Are Cleared As 'Chief Cause' of Harlem Riot - Came Out Two Hours After Peak of Fighting, Mayor's Board Learns at Outset.” The New York Times, New York Amsterdam News and, unsurprisingly, the Communist publication the Daily Worker also reported the testimony, with the New York Amsterdam News further highlighting its implications in an editorial: “Disappointing as this testimony must be to District Attorney William C. Dodge and Mr. Randolph Hearst, who have attempted to use the Harlem outbreak as an excuse for a citywide Red-baiting campaign, it is well that this issue was settled at the outset by the committee. Now, with the red herring out of the way, the investigating body can set out to probe the basic factors which really precipitated the riots - the discrimination, exploitation and oppression of 204,000 American citizens in the most liberal city in America.” None of those publications identified Thompson as the witness. The only other element of Thompson’s testimony that journalists reported was the arrest of Daniel Miller, in the New York Times, New York World-Telegram, and Times Union, together with the breaking of the store window, and the spread of rumors among the crowd, in the New York Age. Surprisingly, the Daily Worker was among the publications that made no mention of her descriptions of police violence on 125th Street.
Testimony about the source of the leaflets occupied more of the hearing than when they appeared. Joe Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, testified that his organization produced the leaflet, while he was on the street seeking information about what had happened in the Kress store. The information on which it was based came from Black men who brought news to the organization’s offices. James Ford, the head of the Harlem branch of the CP, said his organization was responsible for a second leaflet. The Young Liberators (YL) had approached them for help as they worried that protests at the store would turn into a riot. The CP leaflet was not distributed until after 9:00PM. That the YL and CP produced the leaflets was reported without the evidence that they appeared too late have caused the violence as the press had claimed in the Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Age, Afro-American, and Chicago Defender.
The MCCH also heard from senior police officers about what happened in the streets. Inspector Di Martini was at the Kress store after it closed, Captain Rothengast arrived on 125th Street around 8:30 PM, and Lieutenant Battle was in the neighborhood after 2:00 AM. Di Martini testified that he spoke to the store staff and heard that Rivera had not been assaulted. He tried without success to convince the people outside the store that the boy had not been harmed, both then and when he returned around 7:15 PM. Di Martini also described the crowds on streets as numbering only a few hundred, mostly young people, and looting of stores with broken windows, which led him to call for police reinforcements. Rothengast described the crowds as small in number, like Di Martini, but made up not simply of young people but “hoodlums,” and as targeting police with rocks more often than they did store windows. He also insisted that most of those on the street were not angry about the rumors that a boy had been beaten or killed, but “yelling and laughing.” MCCH members (and audience) also questioned him about deaths and shootings during the disorder, and what role police played in that violence. By the time Lieutenant Battle went on to Harlem’s streets, the disorder was largely over. He described finding “no excitement” on the streets, only some small groups and looted and damaged stores. Asked by Hays about whether the crowd had spared Black businesses, Battle insisted they had not. He also agreed with Hays that the disorder was “not a race riot.” This testimony about events proved to be of little interest to journalists. While Battle featured in most newspaper stories about the hearing, his testimony about what he saw on the streets was mentioned only in New York Age, with the New York Post, New York American, Home News, and Chicago Defender reporting his statement that there had not been a race riot. Similarly, only the Home News and Chicago Defender reported Di Martini’s testimony about his efforts to persuade people on the street, while the Daily Mirror and Daily Worker made fun of his statements that people in Harlem loved him, and for taking credit for Rivera being photographed, which was the only part of his testimony reported in the New York Herald Tribune and New York American. Rothengast’s testimony received even less attention. The New York Age reported it in detail, but the only other mentions were just of his description of participants as hoodlums in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, and in the New York American, which used “troublemakers” in place of hoodlums. Information about damage to stores and looting was not reported.
The MCCH heard testimony about one other event, the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs, from his younger brother Russell. His testimony, or at least as recorded by the stenographer, was a somewhat garbled version of what he had told his parents. He talked of stopping on 125th Street, not 7th Avenue, and the patrolmen running up on the pavement on a horse, not in a patrol car. Few white newspapers' stories about the hearing mentioned Russell's testimony, even as they reported Lloyd's death later that night. The New York Times, Daily News, and Daily Worker, together with the New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and Afro-American reported that Russell’s testimony contradicted the police account.
More attention was given to police actions in the disorder during the hearing than in the MCCH’s planned program thanks to the intervention of the audience. At this hearing, it was those who questioned witnesses that shaped the information presented, with a lesser role played by the reactions of the audience to the testimony than would be the case in later hearings. James Tauber and Edward Kuntz, lawyers from the ILD, and Communist Party official Robert Minor took the lead and drew the attention of journalists, with Charles Romney playing a lesser role. Just how many of the questions posed to witnesses came from those men and other members of the audience was difficult to establish. Both the stenographer recording the transcript and the journalists in attendance appeared to have had difficulty determining who was speaking, causing some of the statements made by audience members to be attributed to MCCH members (as happened in regard to who stated that Patrolman Donahue’s decision about where to release Lino Rivera was a mistake).
At this hearing, MCCH members objected to the substance of the audience’s question to police. While Oscar Villard and Eunice Carter questioned Captain Rothengast about the shootings and deaths that had occurred during the disorder and what role police had played in them, Hays, chair of the hearing, objected when Robert Minor asked him further questions about police violence. “We are not here to investigate the police.” Many in the audience, however, were seeking to do just that, prompting several other objections from MCCH members to questions that they judged to be “police baiting” that would not be permitted. Those interventions were sufficient in number to be reported in general terms in the New York American. Robert Minor’s questioning of Lieutenant Battle seemed to prompt that objection from Hays, who the transcript recorded simply as interjecting. The Home News and Chicago Defender attributed a charge of police baiting to William J. Schieffelin in response to Charles Romney’s questioning of Battle (while the New York Herald Tribune had Schieffelin accusing Minor in the exchange where the transcript recorded Hays admonition). Hays labelled questioning of Patrolman Donahue as police baiting according to the New York Herald Tribune. Surprisingly, the Daily Mirror did not use the term police baiting, reporting more blandly that a highlight of the day was Schieffelin warning Tauber to "treat witnesses with politeness." Whatever the particular incidents, it was clear what the New York Herald Tribune characterized as “heated exchanges” amplified the issues raised by the questions from lawyers and others affiliated with the CP shaped the hearing, producing what the Daily News described as “a field day for Communist exponents and cop-baiting attorneys for the International Labor Defense.”
By the end of the day, audience reactions also played a role. "The undercurrent of the antagonism against the police, noticeable throughout the day in the audience," the New York Age reported, "surged to its height during Rothengast's stay on the stand, culminating in numerous audible taunts and cat-calls just before the hearing ended for the day." In the coming hearings, such reactions would succeed in directing the attention of the MCCH to the role of police in the events of the disorder, with MCCH members limiting their objections to the tone of their questions and reactions rather than their substance. -
1
2022-11-11T17:08:57+00:00
The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (April 20)
35
plain
2024-05-31T19:07:56+00:00
Just eight witnesses testified in the public hearing held in the Washington Heights Magistrates court on April 20, and only five gave testimony about the events of the disorder. Three of those witnesses added details to the police narrative of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs. Patrolman Watterson was at the scene of the shooting. Detective O’Brien conducted the police investigation. Detective McCormick testified again about the statement he took from the boy at Harlem Hospital. Detective O’Brien also testified about the death of August Miller, together with Patrolman Kaminsky. Charles Romney, who had taken a prominent part in questioning witnesses, himself gave testimony about the crowds he encountered on 7th Avenue around 125th Street early in the disorder. Newspaper stories about the hearing generally focused on the testimony of the three other witnesses who testified about police brutality toward Thomas Aiken and on audience reactions that highlighted police violence and mistreatment. The Black press and a handful of white newspapers also gave attention to the testimony about the killing of Hobbs.
Most of the testimony about the events of the disorder concerned the killing of Lloyd Hobbs by police. Patrolman Watterson’s testimony about how Hobbs was killed followed the narrative in the police report about which the MCCH investigator James Tartar had testified in the previous hearing. Watterson confirmed that he and his partner had heard a window break, seen a man climb in and start handing out items to those on the street, and then stopped their car by the group. He had heard McInerney call out to Hobbs to halt. However, as he was driving the car, he did not see the shooting nor could he identify Hobbs as the man in the window, as only McInerney had been close enough to see him. When Watterson reversed the patrol car into West 128th Street, he testified that he saw items lying by the boy which McInerney picked up. He then got out of the car to point a rifle at the gathering crowd so McInerney could put Hobbs in the vehicle and they could leave the scene. Detective O’Brien testified that he met McInerney and Hobbs at the hospital, but failed to find any witnesses to the shooting. He did not, however, speak to the boy’s family, who were aware of witnesses. Hays questioned O'Brien about the lack of information in the police records about the items allegedly found with Hobbs, introducing questions about that evidence not raised at the previous hearing. Detective McCormick provided additional details of the circumstances in which he recorded the boy’s statement. As had been the case with the testimony about the killing in the previous hearing, it was reported in a variety of different ways. The Black press published the most detailed accounts, with the New York Amsterdam News reporting all three witnesses, the Norfolk Journal and Guide the testimony of Watterson and O'Brien, and the Afro-American only Watterson (this edition of the New York Age issue was missing). The Home News reported Watterson and McCormick’s testimony, the New York Times the testimony of Watterson and the Daily News the testimony of O’Brien and an interjection by Mary Hobbs. The New York Herald Tribune and New York World-Telegram mentioned Watterson only as the subject of an audience outburst. The New York Sun and the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal and New York American, ignored the testimony about Hobbs as they had in stories about the previous hearing.
The testimony about the death of August Miller was the first evidence that the MCCH heard about that event. Patrolman Kaminsky testified that he had been summoned to Harlem Hospital after a taxi dropped off August Miller. He began to interview him but only established his name and address before Miller lost consciousness. Detective O’Brien was also assigned to investigate the death of August Miller. His testimony described failed efforts to find the taxi driver who had taken Miller to the hospital and any witnesses at the location from which the driver told the nurse he had come. He also recounted interviewing Miller’s employers. None of the stories about the hearing mentioned this testimony.
Charles Romney described events on 7th Avenue around 125th Street between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM, around the time Louise Thompson was in the area. His testimony echoed what she had told the MCCH, that excited crowds had gathered, and were being moved on by police who refused to provide any information, and that windows in many stores had been broken. None of the newspaper stories mentioned his testimony, even as they gave a prominent place to Romney’s challenges to Hays and to police.
The audience again inserted their perspectives into the hearing, on this occasion disrupting the MCCH’s program, or at least the how the press reported it, more extensively than at the previous hearing. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Journal, and the Afro-American, made the disruptions the headline of their stories, while the New York Times, New York American, New York Amsterdam News, and Norfolk Journal and Guide used headlines that highlighted the issue raised by the audience, police brutality and mistreatment. Twice the audience interrupted the hearing. Patrolman Watterson testified in a low voice, perhaps with the intention of limiting what the audience could hear, prompting calls to speak “louder” and finally a Black Communist named Edward Welsh to call from the rear of the room, “Will the dog bark a little louder, please?” This exchange was widely reported, in both the white New York World-Telegram, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and Daily News, and in the Black Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, and Norfolk Journal and Guide – but not in the Hearst publications or the New York Sun. Hays regarded Welsh's call as an insult, not an opinion, and demanded Welsh leave. He refused amid vocal support from the audience that eventually forced Hays to call a ten-minute adjournment. Only the New York Times, Daily News, and Afro-American reported Welsh addressed Hays before leaving, although not what he said. Welsh's statement, recorded in the transcript of the hearing, put into words what was behind the boos and jeers of the audience: Watterson “insulted the intelligence of every man and woman in this courtroom. Every word that left his lips is a lie.” Charles Romney provoked the second interruption. Making vague claims about police intimidation as Hays tried to get him to answer questions about what he saw on March 19, Romney burst out, “I am sick of this. I want to say that if any policeman interferes with me or any of my relatives I will take the law into my own hands.” The audience’s enthusiastic reaction amplified the criticism of police and illustrated their ability to shape what the MCCH heard, even as the stenographer omitted it from the transcript. People jumped to their feet and cheered, according to the New York Times and Norfolk Journal and Guide, broke into “‘tumultuous applause” according to the New York Evening Journal, and chanted “Down with the law! We don’t want the law!,” according to the Daily News and New York American. The result was “such a hubbub arose that it was futile to call another witness. Mr Hays struggled with the disorderly spectators from half an hour,” according to the New York Herald Tribune. MCCH chair Charles Roberts joined in his efforts to limit the hearing to the MCCH agenda to no avail, an intervention only reported in the New York Sun and Afro-American.
The audience at the hearing did not recognize the distinction between the testimony on the events of the disorder and the testimony about police brutality at an earlier date which the subcommittee was investigating as a separate topic. Through their reactions they placed the events of the disorder in the context of police mistreatment and brutality, thereby making police violence a cause of the disorder. The New York American made that connection explicitly in the headline for its story, “White Police Blamed for Harlem Riots.” While the story itself vaguely alluded to unnamed witnesses making that claim, no one actually did, suggesting that the audience reactions shaped the journalist’s understanding of the testimony. While the New York Times sought to dismiss the reaction as the work of a radical minority, it reported “police witnesses seemed to antagonize nearly every one. Every statement made by a patrolman or a detective that was in any way controversial was met with boos and whistling.” The audience made a similar impression on the journalist from the New York Herald Tribune, who described the audience as seemingly “inspired by bitter hatred of the police.” The Black press added an explanation of that attitude missing from those stories. It was “Harlem’s long and smoldering resentment against police brutality” to which the audience gave voice according to the New York Amsterdam News. A similar explanation was offered in the Norfolk Journal and Guide, that the hearing was characterized by "smoldering hostility to police in general and outspoken resentment...at particular policemen involved in the disturbances of March 19 and 20," the latter greeted with "boos and hisses" whenever they spoke. The Afro-American offered a more mixed and somewhat critical picture, “Harlemites, afraid of a general ‘whitewash,’ others who believe that police brutalities are too often covered up, and others who want to air their pet opinions about the race problem in general, heckled, booed and yelled.”
Audience reactions also raised questions about the police testimony regarding the killing of Lloyd Hobbs that made their way into the stories about the hearing, as they had in regard to the identity of the boy in the Kress store in the previous hearing. On this occasion it was the story in the Home News that most clearly captured that process. In response to Watterson’s testimony, ”Several spectators called out questions to the witness implying that McInerney shot indiscreetly and could easily have captured Hobbs had he tried.” Mention of McCormick’s testimony was also accompanied by the questions that the audience raised. “Hecklers implied that the police had faked the interview and had never given the boy the chance to speak for himself.” -
1
2022-12-03T20:38:38+00:00
In court on March 22
35
plain
2024-05-31T19:08:31+00:00
While Dodge had promised more dramatic action from the grand jury on its second day of hearings on the disorder, the number of indictments it voted failed to even match the results of the first session. After eight witnesses testified, the grand jury indicted just four individuals, all for burglary. Moreover, the seriousness of what Dodge had presented the previous day was undercut when he announced that the five men indicted for riot, including the four alleged Communists, would no longer be tried in the Court of General Sessions, but instead for lesser, misdemeanor offenses in the Court of Special Sessions. Dodge did return to the grand jury room in the afternoon with a typewriter and a mimeograph machine seized from the offices of organizations affiliated with the Communist Party, the ILD and Nurses and Hospital League, and two unnamed witnesses. He apparently claimed the equipment had been used to produce the leaflet circulated in the early hours of the disorder. No indictments resulted from that evidence; the grand jury instead adjourned for the weekend.
As the anti-Communist investigation lost momentum, Magistrates Renaud and Ford continued to move those arrested in the disorder through the legal process. Four men, three arrested after the disorder, appeared in court for the first time, one in the Washington Heights court, three in the Harlem court, joined there by fourteen others returning after being investigated. Although additional police were stationed at the Harlem court, around forty officers the Daily News and New York Times reported, those hearings did not draw the crowds who attended on March 20 even as reporters again filled the courtroom. Nonetheless, police searched several of those who entered the courtroom for weapons, and turned away those who “bore indications of connection with the Young Liberators, the Communist organization which fomented the disorder” according to the Daily News.
The outcomes of the hearings were mixed, revealing again both the varied nature of the events of the disorder and how few of those responsible for the violence had been apprehended by police in their indiscriminate response to the disorder. The three men appearing for the first time in the Harlem court had been arrested after the disorder, Daughty Shavos and Clifford Mitchell the previous evening, and Jackie Ford the same day. Police arrested Shavos and Mitchell in their homes on West 119th Street and on Lenox Avenue, respectively, with merchandise allegedly taken from Louis Levy’s store and charged them with burglary. Just how police knew to go to the men’s home was not mentioned. Merchants had called for police to search for stolen merchandise, but these were the only arrests of this kind made after the disorder. In 1943, when the legal response to disorder in Harlem was more narrowly focused on looting than in 1935, one in five of the individuals arrested would be charged with receiving stolen goods. Renaud sent Mitchell and Shavos to the grand jury. Jackie Ford’s arrest came after Julia Cureti identified him as one of those who broke windows in her restaurant, although there is no evidence of where the identification or arrest occurred. Unlike those men, Hashi Mohammed, the only person arrested in the disorder who appeared in the Washington Heights court on March 22, had been arrested on March 20. He had been treated for “internal injuries” so likely had been in Harlem Hospital until this time. Mohammed was one of only four men charged with possession of a weapon but given that he would later be acquitted of that charge, police may have made that allegation to justify the violence that led to his injuries. Police had allegedly found either a knife or a gun after arresting Mohammed for breaking windows. They could not substantiate that second charge, as on March 22 he was instead charged with disorderly conduct. Magistrate Ford found Mohammed guilty, as he had nineteen others arrested during the disorder two days earlier.
Magistrate Renaud also convicted three of those returned to his court, Elizabeth Tai, Arthur Davis, and Herbert Hunter, of disorderly conduct. The three had been arrested by the same police detective for allegedly breaking into a grocery store on Lenox Avenue and taking merchandise. Evidence to substantiate that allegation had clearly not been found as the charge against all three was reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change effectively removed Tai, Davis, and Hunter from those who had acted to target property and returned them to the crowds on the street. Police offered some evidence that the three had not simply been spectators, as Renaud convicted them all, but there is no indication of just what they did that fell within the "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior" the law encompassed. Renaud did not judge it to be very serious, as he sentenced Tai and Hunter to only five days in the Workhouse and Hunter to ten days.
Two other men charged with burglary, Henry Goodwin and Frederick Harwell, also had the charges against them reduced, but to petit larceny, not disorderly conduct. In their case police were able to produce evidence they had taken merchandise, if not broken into a store to do so. However, what they had taken did not have a value of $100 or more so did not warrant a felony charge. Renaud consequently sent Goodwin and Harwell for trial in the Court of Special Sessions, joining Jackie Ford and another man who allegedly broke windows, William Jones. By contrast, police presented sufficient evidence against five other men arrested for looting and charged with burglary, John Henry, Oscar Leacock, James Williams, Arthur Merritt, and Amie Taylor, for Renaud to send their cases sent to the grand jury along with those of Shavos and Mitchell. Nonetheless, police investigations had failed to find enough support to sustain the charges of burglary they had made against half of those who appeared in court on this date.
Paul Boyett was alone among those who appeared in not having his case decided. The need for continued investigation likely resulted from the efforts to find witnesses to confirm Patrolman Conn’s claim that Boyett had been one of those who assaulted Timothy Murphy rather than being among the spectators drawn to the attack on the white man as he claimed. Even with fewer cases, the press reported only some of those appearances, as had happened on March 20, with no mentions of Boyett, those sent to the Court of Special Sessions, and three of those sent to the grand jury.
Dodge’s investigation intersected with the regular legal process both in the Harlem Magistrates Court and in the grand jury. Police served warrants for the arrest of three of the men who returned to the court, James Hughes, Charles Saunders, and Isaac Daniels, as they had already been indicted by the grand jury. In doing so they identified the three as among the unnamed individuals whose indictment Dodge had announced over the previous two days, Hughes and Daniels the two men indicted for assault and Saunders one of the five indicted for burglary. Renaud discharged the men, and police then took them into custody. (Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators may also have been brought back to the court as the Home News and Daily Mirror both reported the men were present but did not appear as police awaited warrants based on their indictments.) In the grand jury, out of the public eye, cases referred by the magistrates on March 20 began to be heard alongside those based on witnesses gathered by Dodge. The grand jury indicted all six of the men referred by magistrates, voting charges of burglary against Arnold Ford, Joseph Moore, Robert Tanner, Joseph Wade, and Hezekiah Wright.
The first of those arrested during the disorder appeared in the Court of Special Sessions for trial. Both the men, Earl Davis, sent by Magistrate Ford from the Washington Heights court, and Thomas Babbitt, sent by Magistrate Renaud from the Harlem court, faced a charge of petit larceny. While the magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions convicted both men, they sentenced them to only ten days in the Workhouse — the same short term that Renaud gave to those he convicted of disorderly conduct on the same day. For all the willingness of police to shoot at looters, those sentences showed that judges treated small scale looting — two cases of soap in Babbitt’s case, unspecified merchandise from a tailor in Davis’ case — no more punitively than being part of crowds in the streets. Neither proceeding was mentioned in the press. -
1
2022-12-06T03:27:53+00:00
In the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20
32
plain
2024-05-31T19:09:04+00:00
Thirty blocks to the north, the hearings before Magistrate Ford had very different outcomes from those in the Harlem court that suggested that the area above West 130th Street over which his court had jurisdiction had seen less violence and more indiscriminate policing. While the police presence at the Washington Heights courthouse was similar to that at the Harlem courthouse, spectators appear to have been fewer in number. Forty uniformed patrolmen were stationed on all the street corners surrounding the building, along the corridors inside and in the courtroom itself. If the sensational New York Evening Journal is to be believed, there were thirty more officers "hidden in a nearby garage," three emergency trucks on hand, and some police on the courthouse roof. None of the journalists who reported from the court mentioned crowds inside the courtroom or on the surrounding streets. That may in part have been because police brought only twenty-nine men and one woman to the Washington Heights court for arraignment, less than half the number who appeared in the Harlem court. The white men arrested during the disorder were all arraigned in the Harlem court; only Black men and women appeared in the Washington Heights court.
Julius Hightower, an eighteen-year-old Black man whom police alleged had broken windows, was first of those arrested to appear before Magistrate Ford. He was one of the youngest of those arrested; two other eighteen-year-olds appeared after him, James Smith and Elva Jacobs, the only woman to appear in the Washington Heights courtroom. Well over half of the arrested men, eighteen of the thirty, were aged between twenty and twenty-nine years, a similar proportion as appeared in the Harlem court. Fifty-year-old Joseph Payne was the oldest of those arrested, one of nine men over thirty years of age, the others evenly split between those aged in their thirties and those in aged their forties.
Hightower faced the same allegations as the first defendant in the Harlem court, breaking windows, as did the man who followed Hightower, forty-two-year-old Robert Porter. The assistant district attorney initially charged him with the offense of malicious mischief, which punished damage to property, but foreshadowing how the prosecution of those who appeared in the Washington Heights court would differ from what happened in the Harlem court, the charge was changed to disorderly conduct. That was also the offense with which Porter was charged. The decision to charge the men with disorderly conduct indicated police could offer no evidence that they had broken windows. It was not specified just which of the broad range of actions considered breaches of the peace that the offense covered that police charged Hightower and Porter with committing. Police had likely indiscriminately grabbed them from crowds, perhaps as part of the efforts to clear the streets.
Whether Magistrate Ford heard other accounts of windows being broken in the rest of the day’s proceeding cannot be discerned from any of the surviving sources. None of the twelve men and one woman who appeared later in the day whose alleged offenses were recorded had been arrested for breaking windows. However, for fifteen other men charged with the offense of disorderly conduct — half of all those who appeared before Ford — there is no record of what police alleged they did. Over the course of the day, the prosecutor used the charge of disorderly conduct not only in cases of men arrested for breaking windows, but also for men arrested for assault and looting. In the Harlem court, ADA Carey took the same approach, with men arrested for assault, looting, and inciting crowds, as well as breaking windows, charged with the offense of disorderly conduct. What was different in the uptown court was how extensively the charge was used, in two-thirds of the prosecutions compared to less than one in five, 15%, of the cases Carey prosecuted in the Harlem court. The difference suggested both less violence and more indiscriminate policing had occurred above West 130th Street.
Twenty-seven-year-old Richard Jackson followed Porter. Police had arrested him for assault. The next four men to appear before Ford after Jackson faced the same allegation. However, where in the Harlem court Carey charged only one of the men arrested for assault, Rivers Wright, with disorderly conduct, all six men in the Washington Heights court faced that charge. Those decisions could indicate that the alleged acts of Jackson and the other men did not result in injury or more likely that police did not have evidence that they participated in an assault. The latter was almost certainly the situation of the final three men in that group, Albert Yerber, Ed Loper, and Ernest Johnson, arrested just before daylight on March 20 (together with Charles Alston, who was injured and would not appear in court for several weeks). Police officers had pursued and arrested the group after claiming to have heard shots fired from a building at patrolmen stationed on a street corner but found no guns in their possession. The short sentences of two days in the Workhouse that Ford gave to Jackson and the other man arrested for assault, Salathel Smith, suggests that they too had not been involved in violent assaults.
After the string of men arrested for assault, police brought Lamter Jackson before the Magistrate. The twenty-four-year-old man had been arrested for looting. That was the accusation that Ford likely heard most frequently over the course of the day, as was Renaud’s experience in the Harlem court. Jackson faced a charge of petit larceny, as Earl Davis did later in the day, indicating evidence they had taken merchandise but not that they had broken into a store to do so. As in the Harlem court, an arrest for looting more often resulted in being charged with burglary, which involved breaking into a business in addition to taking merchandise: four men, including the fifty-year-old Joseph Payne, and Elva Jacobs faced that charge. the prosecutor charged one man arrested for looting, James Smith, with disorderly conduct. If anyone arrested for inciting crowds or possession of a weapon appeared before Ford, they were among those charged with disorderly conduct for whom there is no record of their alleged offense.
Magistrate Ford departed from Magistrate Renaud in remanding only one in six of those who appeared before him, four men and Elva Jacobs, a third as many as Renaud did in the Harlem court. All five had been arrested for looting. He also sent only two for trial in the Court of Special Sessions, Earl Davis and Lamter Jackson, the men arrested for looting who faced charges of petit larceny, and referred no one to the grand jury. None of the men arrested for assault was remanded or sent for trial, nor were any of those arrested for breaking windows or unknown offenses. In all twenty-three cases where men were charged with disorderly conduct, Ford adjudicated the prosecutions. Renaud had held a quarter of those facing that charge in his court for investigation, which contributed to him adjudicating only nine cases. However, it was the significantly higher proportion of defendants who faced charges of disorderly conduct that produced the disparity in outcomes: as reporters noted, the cases that appeared before Ford were not as serious as those on Renaud’s docket. Whatever evidence police presented, it did little to distinguish those individuals from the many spectators watching the events of the disorder. Perhaps because of the lesser charges they faced, none of those who appeared in the Washington Heights court was represented by a lawyer, as fourteen men and two women were in the Harlem court.
Ford handed down guilty verdicts to nineteen of the men he put on trial, including both Hightower and Porter, arrested for breaking windows, James Smith, the one man arrested for looting charged with disorderly conduct, and all but Ernest Barnes of the fifteen arrested for unknown offenses. Yerber, Loper and Johnson, Ford acquitted. The testimony that Ford heard must have been quite different from the sensational stories about snipers targeting police that reports of the arrests generated in several white newspapers. Unlike the acquittals in the Harlem court, those in the Washington Heights court were mentioned in two newspaper stories but with no details. While the sentences that the convicted men received would prove to be typical of those given to those arrested during the disorder, that they had been convicted only of disorderly conduct created a picture of the events above 130th Street, where those who appeared in the Washington Heights court had been arrested, as less violent than in the blocks to the south where those who appeared in the Harlem court had been arrested.
-
1
2022-11-11T17:12:58+00:00
The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (May 18)
27
plain
2024-05-31T19:09:40+00:00
Ten witnesses testified at the hearing in the Washington Heights Magistrates court on May 18; only four provided evidence about the events of the disorder. Jackson Smith, the manager of the Kress store, testified about events in the store and on 125th Street. The MCCH had been seeking his testimony for two months, but as the last witness to what happened in the store to appear, he had little new to add to what they had already heard. While he saw Rivera take the knife, as Hurley had testified, he had remained in his office so had not seen his staff struggle with the boy. Nor was he involved in Patrolman Donahue’s decision to take Rivera into the basement and release out the store’s rear exit. Smith did make the decision not to charge the boy, but made clear that it was Hurley’s decision about whether to charge him with assault that resulted in Donahue releasing him. The new information Smith provided concerned efforts to calm shoppers and his decisions to summon an increasing police presence and ultimately to have them clear the store once he decided to close. Again, he participated only in the initial efforts to convince shoppers and did not witness how police treated them. He then remained in the store throughout the disorder and witnessed the arrests of Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators who picketed the store. While most newspaper stories mentioned Smith’s appearance, they did not treat his testimony as adding anything new. The New York Herald Tribune explicitly reported that "all of [the testimony about the events of March 19] had been gone over in previous meetings,” while the New York Sun described Smith as having “once more told” how Rivera had been apprehended. Even the MCCH members had limited interest in his testimony, with Oscar Villard suggesting that Charles Romney “was taking too much time by going over evidence already covered,” according to the New York Sun. More attention was paid to the Southern accent — the “Dixie drawl” — in which Smith delivered his testimony than its substance. The Home News, New York American, Daily News, New York Times, New York Sun, New York Post, and New York Age all referred to it. The New York World-Telegram mentioned only that Smith and several clerks had remained in the store throughout the disorder.
The MCCH heard the testimony of three additional eyewitnesses to the killing of Lloyd Hobbs on May 18, as well as further information about the items the boy had allegedly stolen. Marshall Pfifer and Warren Wright testified at the hearing, while Clarence Wilson reported the testimony of John Bennett, who was too sick to attend the hearing. All three men told the same story as Malloy, Moore, and Pitts had in the earlier hearing: Hobbs was not carrying anything and McInerney had not called out for him to stop before shooting him. Pfifer had watched from the same corner as the earlier witnesses, whereas Wright and Bennett saw those events from different perspectives. Wright was at the entrance to the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue, south of the automobile supply store, while Bennett was in 201 West 128th Street, toward which Hobbs was running when McInerney shot him. While their testimony did not include any new information about the killing of Hobbs, it was new evidence that provided a basis for presenting the case to the grand jury again. Detective O’Brien testified for the second time, bringing with him the horn and socket set that police alleged Hobbs had taken from the automobile supply store but which none of the eyewitnesses had seen in his possession. O’Brien repeatedly denied knowledge of when the items were turned over to the property clerk, frustrating Hays’ efforts to elicit testimony that McInerney had them for nineteen days after he arrested Hobbs, which James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, had established. While that long interval gave the patrolman the opportunity to have obtained the items after he arrested the boy to justify the shooting, O’Brien also for the first time reported that McInerney had noted recovered items in the arrest record on March 20. (While that evidence apparently confirmed that the patrolman had not obtained the items later to help justify shooting Hobbs, Tartar would later claim that the record had been altered to add that information.) Black newspapers the New York Age and Afro-American again reported this testimony in more detail than the white press (this issue of the New York Amsterdam News has not survived), but only the New York World-Telegram mentioned all three eyewitnesses. Pfifer also appeared in the New York Age and New York Times, whereas the Home News and the New York Sun mentioned only Wright. Who had possession of the allegedly stolen items was discussed in both Black newspapers, the New York World-Telegram, New York Times, and Home News (without mentioning O’Brien in the Afro-American and New York World-Telegram). Only the New York World-Telegram dramatized that evidence, reporting, “One of the mysteries in the case is the appearance several days ago after Hobbs death of loot of which there had been no record at the time he was shot.” Which MCCH members heard this testimony was not entirely clear. MCCH records identified only Hays, Villard, Roberts, Robinson, and Randolph as being at this hearing, the smallest group to attend the subcommittee on crime’s hearings. An audience member was also recorded in the transcript as identifying Grimley as also present.
The effect of the audience interventions in this hearing are more difficult to determine than in the preceding hearings. The New York Age described the audience as creating “incessant confusion,” suggesting that its journalist no longer perceived the interventions as contributing to what the MCCH learned from the testimony. The New York Herald Tribune also saw less significance in the audience’s behavior, presenting it as just the latest example of the “turbulence at almost every session.” Other white newspapers reported the hearing as similar to those that preceded it without those judgments, “one of the most stormy” according to the New York Post and the “liveliest” in the assessment of the Home News. Charles Romney’s role in disrupting the hearing was also treated as less significant, by the New York Herald Tribune, as what he had done “on several previous occasions.” MCCH members had also heard enough from Romney. Villard’s suggestion that he was taking too much time going over Smith’s testimony about when Rivera was apprehended led to an outburst from Romney attacking the MCCH for protecting witnesses (which was not recorded in the transcript). After a recess, the MCCH members decided that Romney would no longer be allowed to question witnesses, holding to that position over objections from the audience. At the same time, Hays allowed other audience members to question Smith. Just who they were is not always recorded in the transcript or reported in the press, but Fannie Horowitz and Mrs. Burroughs were identified. Rev. Robinson also took up the issue of whether Rivera was the boy who had been in the store that audience members had introduced in the hearings on March 30 and April 6. He questioned Smith about his identification of Rivera for some time before Hays declared the issue resolved. Hays did however have James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, testify that no boy ten years old or younger had been treated for injuries at Harlem Hospital to further confirm the identification of Rivera.
If Hays did not adopt the suspicion of Rivera promoted by audience members, he did take up the critical stance toward Lieutenant Battle that the audience had displayed at the previous hearing. His criticism of Battle for not stopping warrantless searches brought applause from the audience, reported by the Home News and New York Age. Hays also turned to the audience to confirm allegations that police stopped residents on the street and searched them for numbers, slips from the form of gambling prevalent in Harlem. Twenty-five people stood, dramatizing the claims about harassment. Hays challenged Inspector Di Martini and Captain Rothengast about those illegal practices. As a result, criticism of police was again the headline to stories in the New York Times, Home News, New York World-Telegram, Afro-American, and New York Age. Thanks to the reactions of the audience, the role of the police in the events of the disorder would have been at the front of Hays' mind when he turned to drafting the subcommittee’s report immediately after the hearing. -
1
2022-11-11T17:11:55+00:00
The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (May 4)
26
plain
2024-05-31T19:10:17+00:00
Three witnesses testified in the Washington Heights Magistrates court to events on 125th Street at the beginning of the disorder at the hearing on May 4. A slightly smaller group of MCCH members heard the testimony than at the previous hearing, with only Toney (again) and Delany of the Black members absent and Ersnt (again) and Scheiffelin of the white members. Harry Gordon and Daniel Miller, the two white men who tried to speak to crowds outside the Kress store, testified about how they came to be in the area and the circumstances of their arrest. Their account of how they came to be there was new; the details of their arrests fit with testimony the MCCH had heard earlier from Louise Thompson and Patrolman Moran. While only the New York American mentioned Miller’s testimony about being beaten at the police station after his arrest, what Gordon said was more widely reported. Detailed summaries appeared in the New York Times, Home News, New York Age, and Atlanta World, while the New York American and Afro-American mentioned only that he been beaten by police. Reflecting the racial focus of the Hearst press, the New York American highlighted that Gordon and Miller were white in its headline. While Thompson had briefly mentioned Gordon's beating in her earlier testimony, Gordon provided details, and added violence during his time in custody, testimony that attracted the attention of journalists who otherwise showed little interest in details of the events of the disorder. However, stories about the hearing in most white newspapers did not mention the men’s testimony, focusing instead on the behavior of the audience (and the police brutality case that occurred away from the disorder, the killing of Samuel Laurie, about which the MCCH heard testimony).
The third witness, Benjamin Todman, was the driver of the hearse seen outside the store. He testified he had been on his way to a garage where the hearse was parked, on West 124th Street in the block behind the Kress store. Only the New York Evening Journal reported his testimony.
The audience continued to insert their perspectives into the hearing and disrupt the MCCH’s agenda as significantly as they had in the previous hearing, perhaps more so. Certainly a larger number of newspapers made the audience the headline of their stories than had in their stories reporting the previous hearing. The New York Evening Journal and Afro-American, who had used such headlines in their earlier stories, were joined by the New York World-Telegram, New York Post, New York Sun, Daily News, New York Times, and the New York Age. Among the white press only the Home News and New York American, and the Atlanta World among the Black press, opted for headlines about the subject of the testimony, police brutality (this edition of the New York Amsterdam News has not survived). The New York World-Telegram, New York Sun, and Daily News went further, reporting only the audience without mention of the testimony to which they had reacted. Two white publications with different political positions explicitly marginalized the positions taken by the audience, casting them as at odds with or not contributing to the investigation. The Hearst publication the New York Evening Journal reported that “unruly and obstructionist audiences at the hearings virtually prevented the discovery of any facts.” The MCCH “encountered an audience so disorderly that it made little progress in the examination of witnesses,” according to the New York Post, a regular critic of the Hearst press.
What the white press increasingly reported simply as disorder continued to be efforts by the audience to shape the MCCH agenda and highlight the issues in the events of March 19 and 20. The hearing began with a direct challenge to MCCH’s agenda from members of the audience. Welch, Tauber, Ford, Mrs. Burroughs, Vernel Williams of the Harlem Lawyers Association, and Romney himself, pushed Hays to hear testimony on Romney’s allegation that his recent arrest was an effort by police to intimidate him. Hays, anxious to complete a report on the events of the disorder, insisted that testimony about that topic had to be heard first. Neither of the major disruptions later in the hearing related to events of disorder, but both focused on police. An unidentified woman criticized the patrolman who had killed Samuel Laurie, calling out after he had testified that he had been a police officer for three years that “That’s three years too long.” The second disruption was again provoked by Charles Romney, who called for stool pigeons to be removed from the hearing, a reference to Lieutenant Samuel Battle to whom he had already applied that label.
In response to the testimony that was heard, audience members continued to amplify the criticisms of police. While Gordon testified, the audience was “thrown into uproar” (Atlanta World, Home News), heckled and booed (New York World-Telegram), and “voiced its anger” (Afro-American, New York Times). The effect of those reactions was better captured by the descriptions in the New York Age that the audience “interrupted [with] demonstrations against the police” and in the New York Sun that “Jeers, boos and catcalls from the audience punctuated the testimony of witnesses.” The noise was an intervention that emphasized testimony that described police violence. What distinguished this hearing from the last was that these interventions crossed racial lines. An audience reported as being made-up almost entirely of Black men and women was “all with Gordon,” as the Home News put it, a white man, and directed much of its anger toward Lieutenant Samuel Battle, a Black police officer, who had predictably been tasked with representing the police department. Such interracial action would have thrilled the Communist Party members at the hearing, who were working to organize Harlem along those lines. It likely also lay at the root of the increased emphasis in the white press on marginalizing the contribution of the audience to the information being gathered in the hearings.