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• 1 2022-11-11T19:35:05+00:00 Investigations (May 4-May 17) 17 plain 2024-02-15T14:10:08+00:00 As neither Jackson Smith, the manager of the Kress store, nor Louis Eisenberg, the owner of store allegedly looted by Lloyd Hobbs, had appeared at the May 4 hearing, the subcommittee’s investigation of the events of the disorder had to continue until the next hearing, scheduled for May 18. The appearance of both men was secured in the interim.
  
  MCCH members meeting on May 7 did agree to take further action to have Smith testify. A. Phillip Randolph proposed they write to Mayor La Guardia requesting he write to the company "asking them to cooperate by having the manager of their 125th Street store present at the next meeting." No such letter is in the files. It may have been unnecessary. Hays was not at that meeting, so the outcome of his discussions with the Kress company attorneys was likely not known to the other MCCH members.
  
  Louis Eisenberg took up Hays’ offer to avoid the public hearing. He would later tell an MCCH investigator surveying his business that he opposed the hearings because they “permitted any Tom, Dick, and Harry to cross examine people.” The private hearing that heard his brief testimony on May 18 was recorded by a stenographer, but otherwise did not appear in records of the MCCH’s work. To the contrary, compilations of the Subcommittee’s activities by MCCH staff recorded that it held no private hearings.
  
  Securing the store owner’s testimony was not the only additional investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs undertaken by the MCCH notwithstanding the grand jury’s decision not to charge Patrolman McInerney. James Tartar continued to pursue information on the whereabouts of the items that the police officer claimed the boy had stolen and that he had recovered next to him after he was shot. An interview with ADA Price confirmed that McInerney brought the horn and socket set to the DA's office on April 1st, while a visit to the property clerk's office at police headquarters revealed that those items were not delivered there until April 8, 1935. For Tartar and Hays, the interval of almost two weeks before anyone saw those items supported the testimony of eyewitnesses that Hobbs had nothing in his hands when shot, calling into question a justification for his shooting. Getting answers about those items became part of the program for the May 18 hearing.
  
  Three additional witnesses to McInerney shooting Hobbs were also located. Just how is not clear. Tartar claimed credit, somewhat obliquely, although there are no documents related to those witnesses in the MCCH files. "Your investigator,” he wrote in a narrative report of his investigation, “feeling that the case was of such great importance as an example to show how the citizens of Harlem are murdered by police officers and then charged with having committed a crime in order to justify the officer's act, sought to gather more witnesses if there were any." He found four. However, a man called Clarence Wilson would testify that he had been sent by a member of the MCCH to Lawyer Hobbs, the boy’s father, for the addresses of three witnesses. Wilson found the fourth witness when he went to bring those men to the hearing. Those men likely had either approached the Hobbs family, as the three other eyewitnesses had, or been found by them. The boy’s death clearly continued to loom large in the Harlem community’s view of the disorder.
  
  Gathering that information about the events of the disorder took place alongside continued investigation of police brutality and mistreatment. Robert Patterson appeared at the MCCH offices on May 11 to complain that police forced their way into his home and arrested him on the basis of an anonymous complaint on May 5. Charles Romney, who had played a prominent role questioning witnesses, asked to testify about being a victim of brutality. So did James Middleton. The MCCH appeared to no longer be cooperating with Communists groups in investigating cases. Two men and a woman affiliated with Communist groups, Cyril Briggs, “Mr Campbell” and Ethel Lewis, would testify about police breaking up mixed race groups, but came from the audience to do so rather than being on the program.
  
  Surprisingly given the earlier reports that the MCCH had been overwhelmed by complaints of brutality, Hays told the MCCH meeting on May 14 that the upcoming hearing on police brutality would be the last "for some time as he did not have any more material." While he left the door open for hearings at a later date if he had accumulated sufficient cases, on May 28, he would tell the other MCCH members that "he did not see the necessity" for the subcommittee on crime to hold any further hearings. That the investigations of the events of the disorder and of police brutality had not only become intertwined but also ended at the same time likely contributed to Hays' decision to include them both in a single report, notwithstanding his original vision of them as separate topics.
• 1 2023-06-27T17:47:10+00:00 MCCH Meeting (May 7, 1935) 6 plain 2024-01-28T17:41:13+00:00 The only source for the MCCH meeting on May 7 was the minutes. Hays did not attend the meeting and no report from the subcommittee on crime was recorded.
  
  Those in attendance must have discussed the hearing the previous weekend, as they voted to take further action to get Jackson Smith, the manager of the Kress store, to testify. Having already had Hays write to the Kress company management, on this occasion A. Phillip Randolph proposed they write to Mayor La Guardia requesting he write to the company "asking them to cooperate by having the manager of their 125th Street store present at the next meeting."