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"Police Criticized on Harlem Unrest," New York Times, March 31, 1935, 25.
1 2020-10-13T16:58:11+00:00 Anonymous 1 3 plain 2022-11-01T20:57:47+00:00 AnonymousThis page is referenced by:
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2020-03-11T21:54:28+00:00
Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted
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2022-11-02T14:26:06+00:00
When Charles Hurley, a floorwalker, and Kress' store detective confronted Lino Rivera, an unemployed sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican boy, about stealing a pocketknife in Kress’ store, and started pushing him out of the store, the boy bit the hands of Hurley and a white window dresser who came to their aid, Steve Urban. Although having initially indicated that they wanted Rivera charged with assault, the two men ultimately did not ask police to arrest him. The incident is treated here as an assault as the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American and Daily News listed the two men among the injured.
As the incident between Rivera and the store staff triggered the disorder, it was widely reported in the press and a topic investigated by the MCCH. This analysis relies on testimony given in MCCH public hearings, by far the most complete and detailed evidence. Newspaper narratives varied in detail, consistently reporting only that a boy had been grabbed by store staff for taking merchandise, and later released, but omitting most other details. Several white newspapers also published separate stories based on statements made by Rivera at the West 123rd Station during the disorder or at his home the next day that included additional details of why he was in the store and his encounter with the store staff but not of subsequent events in the store.
Rivera had begun the day by taking the subway to Brooklyn, in pursuit of job as an errand boy, he told reporters for the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. Finding the job already filled, he returned to Harlem. Getting off the subway at West 125th Street, Rivera decided to go to a show or movie at one of the theaters that lined the street, perhaps at the Apollo Theater opposite Kress' store, as a story in the New York Evening Journal claimed. When the show ended, Rivera went into Kress' store, a detail also reported in the New York Sun. He said he did so because he had "nothing to do," according to the New York Post, "just to look around I guess," according to the New York World-Telegram, or "to walk through to 124th Street," according to the New York American, "to take a short cut home," according to the New York Herald Tribune. Testifying in a public hearing of the MCCH, Hurley, a twenty-eight-year-old white resident of the Bronx, said he was with the store manager Jackson Smith in an office overlooking the rear of the store when he saw Rivera take a pocketknife from a counter around 2.30 PM. Calling down to the store detective, he pointed out Rivera and then headed to the floor himself. Rivera later admitted to reporters that he did take the knife, after it "caught his eye," according to the New York Post or "attracted" him according to the New York World-Telegram and New York American, or because it "matched a fountain pen set he had," according to the New York Herald Tribune. (The New York Sun mistakenly reported that it was chocolate that Rivera had taken). When Rivera denied having the knife, Hurley took it from the boy’s pocket. Both Rivera and Hurley testified that the men started to push him out of the store. According to Hurley, near the front door Rivera became scared and started to lash out at them. Rivera reportedly told journalists from the New York World-Telegram, New York Post and New York Evening Journal that he had told the men he could walk out on his own, and tried to shake free of their hold, "really started fighting" when, as he also testified in a MCCH hearing, Hurley said, "Let's take him down the cellar and beat hell out of him.” Hurley denied making that statement; he told the MCCH hearing that he held Rivera around his shoulders while the store detective tried to calm the boy. As a struggle developed, another store employee, Steve Urban, a thirty-nine-year-old white window dresser, also grabbed hold of Rivera, according to Hurley. Once the group was through the front door and into the store's vestibule, a recessed area of the street surrounded by display windows, the store detective went to get a Crime Prevention Bureau officer. That police agency provided an alternative to having children arrested; its officers instead undertaking investigations of their conditions in order to refer them to social agencies to better prevent “juvenile delinquency.” Kress store staff turned most of the boys they caught shoplifting over to the Crime Prevention Bureau, according to Hurley, and had police arrest only one or two a week.
Sometime after the store detective left, Rivera bit both Hurley and Urban on the hands and wrist, "trying to get away," he told a public hearing, reportedly explaining to journalists from that New York World-Telegram and New York Post that "I didn't want a licking." The struggle in the vestibule attracted the attention of Patrolman Donahue, who was the nearest of several police officers on West 125th Street at the time (identified in some newspapers as a traffic officer and by Rivera in a MCCH hearing as a mounted patrolman). Donahue took Rivera back into the store, to near the candy counter at the front, to get away from a curious crowd gathering on 125th Street, and sent an officer to get an ambulance to provide treatment for Hurley and Urban. (He told the MCCH hearing that the officer was his partner Keel, or another patrolman namded Walton; the call log records the man's name as Miller, who was later identified by the store manager as a Black officer). The telephone call to Headquarters was logged at 2:30 PM, followed by one from Police Headquarters to Harlem Hospital at 2:35 PM, with the ambulance bringing Dr. Sayet recorded in the hospital records as having arrived at 2:40 PM. Those records provide better evidence of the timing of the incident than Donahue’s testimony that he witnessed the struggle at 2:15 PM. Soon after the ambulance arrived, the manager, Jackson Smith came to the front of the store, he testified in a public hearing, after being told a crowd had gathered by a staff member. Informed that a Crime Prevention Bureau officer had been called, Smith decided there was “nothing further for him to do,” and he returned to his office. A few minutes later Alfred Eldridge, a Black Crime Prevention Bureau officer, arrived. Usually the store staff would have turned Rivera over to Eldridge, who would have taken Rivera with him. However, on this occasion Hurley and Urban told Eldridge they wanted the boy arrested and charged with assault. Hurley told a public hearing he had gone to the rear of the store before Eldridge arrived, and did not want Rivera arrested, but the officer was clear that he spoke with both Hurley and Urban. The store manager similarly told a later public hearing that “Hurley wants to press charges for biting.” Eldridge could not take Rivera with him if he was arrested: “The job and purpose of our bureau is not to arrest a child," the told the MCCH hearing. He telephoned his superior, and told him that “the 5 & 10 wanted the boy arrested.” In response that officer told him to “let the patrolman take care of it due to the fact that he was first on case.” So after about 25 minutes at Kress, around 3:15 PM, Eldridge left the store.
However, Eldridge testified he later found out that soon after he left, “the store officials changed their mind.” Donahue simplified those events in the public hearing, testifying that “The boy was not arrested, but was taken through the basement to 124th Street and sent home.” He did not mention Eldridge or who reversed the decision to arrest Rivera. Hurley’s self-interested statement that he did not want him arrested made Urban responsible. Urban himself was not among those who testified before a MCCH public hearing. It does seem that it was Urban who Donahue said was with him when he released Rivera; the officer referred to him not by name but as “the window dresser.” They took Rivera out the rear rather than on to 125th Street as there was a crowd in front of the store and Donahue “didn’t want to start something,” he told a public hearing. He was clearly anxious enough about the situation in the store to ignore another option that Eldridge had given him, “that in the event that Kress Store did not want to press charges, that the boy could be handed over to us for supervision,” according to the Crime Prevention Bureau officer’s testimony. After releasing Rivera on to 124th Street, Donahue left the store, at around 3.30 PM. Many of the fifty or so mostly black women shopping in the store observed these events, after their attention had been attracted by the struggle between the two men and Rivera, and the appearance of an ambulance. None of these women testified in a public hearing. A Black man named L. F. Cole told a MCCH public hearing that he saw Rivera being taken to the basement by two men. As they had not seen Rivera leave the store, groups of women concerned to find out what had become of him remained in the store until Smith closed it and police pushed them out sometime around 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM.
Bites are a relatively minor injury, and the hospital record indicates that both men received treatment at the scene and were not taken to the hospital. Hurley did still have a scar when he testified at a MCCH public hearing on April 20. Hays examined it, announcing that “I should say enough [of a scar] to indicate there was a bite,” adding in response to a question from the audience that he saw four teeth marks.” Only one other individual in the disorder is described as having been bitten, Arthur Block, a Black man. He appears among lists of the injured in only three publications, with no details provided of the circumstances in which he was assaulted.
The significantly less detailed narratives of what happened between Rivera and the store staff published in newspapers largely reflected what Inspector Di Martini told a journalist working for the Afro American and others in front of the store around 7.30 PM: "A boy stole some little article here this afternoon. The manager caught him, grabbed him by the arm, and was taking him in the back when a woman screamed. The crowd gathered. The manager did not press charges, and let the boy go home through the back.” (At the at time, Di Martini’s information came only from interviewing Jackson Smith and Hurley, as both Donahue and Eldridge were off duty and would not learn of the disorder until the next day). Missing from that narrative was Rivera biting the men, which was also missing from stories in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker. However, the assault was mentioned in the New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Atlanta World, New York Age, Philadelphia Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, La Prensa and in Time magazine and the New Republic. Only the New York American, Daily News and New York Herald Tribune included language that gave a particular slant to the assault, with the New York American and Daily News describing Rivera as “hysterical” in his response to being grabbed by Hurley and the store detective, while the New York Herald Tribune labelled him pugnacious. The New York Age reported that “someone” had hit Rivera, the New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle that Hurley or Urban “slapped him", or “slugged him” according to the Pittsburgh Courier, with the New York Age mistakenly reporting that he was being treated at Harlem Hospital. That story was in a special edition of the New York Age published in the midst of the confusion early in the disorder. Two stories, in the New York American and New York Sun, had Rivera leave the store rather than being released. A story in The New Republic by white journalist Hamilton Basso included dialogue, almost certainly invented, between Rivera and the two men who grabbed him and comments from a crowd around him (Basso also mixed up the sequence of events inside and outside the store after Rivera's release).
Several newspapers also published statements by Rivera made either at the West 123rd Street station after Eldridge, awoken at 1.30 AM, had located him and brought him to a police station around 2:00 A.M, or in his home the next day that provided more details of what happened before and when he was grabbed than the broad narratives. The New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Post, New York Sun, Atlanta World, and Philadelphia Tribune quoted Rivera at the police station describing biting the men and the threat to beat him that had precipitated that struggle. In an ANS agency photograph of Rivera, standing with Lt. Battle taken at that time journalists can be seen taking notes. It’s not clear if they questioned Rivera directly, or recorded answers he gave to police officers: the Daily News reported his statements as told to Deputy Chief Inspector Frances Kear, the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun reported he talked to Captain Richard Oliver, and the New York Herald Tribune quoted Eldridge rather than Rivera. The New York Evening Journal story also mentioned the reporter speaking with Rivera. The New York World-Telegram, and New York Herald Tribune published stories quoting statements made by Rivera at this home later on March 20; a New York American story combined statements from the station and at his home. The information that before entering Kress' Rivera had gone to Brooklyn looking for work, having left high school six months earlier, that his mother needed help because his father was dead was reported in the interviews published in the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. His father's death was also reported in La Prensa and the Brooklyn Citizen. Only the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal and New York Sun reported that Rivera went to a show after returning from Brooklyn. Only La Prensa reported that Rivera had a job when he first left school. That interview with Rivera in his home focused on emphasizing his lack of responsibility for the disorder and willingness to try to pacify the crowds had he been asked, and contained no details of what had happened in the store as he did not want to talk about them. That focus was in line with La Prensa's concern to distance Puerto Rican residents from the disorder. Rivera gave an account of what happened in the store again when he appeared in the Adolescents Court on March 23 for inserting slugs in a subway turnstile before the disorder, in answer to questions from the Magistrate.
Until police found Rivera, newspapers described the boy caught shoplifting as a younger Black child, in line with the rumors and leaflets circulating in Harlem. Louise Thompson heard from the women she spoke to in Kress' store that a "colored boy" aged ten to twelve years had been beaten. The signs carried by the Young Liberators who picketed the store an hour or so later referred to a "Negro child," while the leaflets their organization distributed another hour later later described a "12 year old Negro boy." The first newspaper stories repeated those descriptions. The New York American mentioned a "colored boy" and a "10-year-old Negro boy," the Daily News a 12-year old "colored boy," the New York Evening Journal a 15-year-old "Negro boy," the Daily Mirror a "little colored boy," the Home News a "young colored boy," and the New York Sun a "Negro boy." Early stories in some Black newspapers featured similar descriptions, a "small Negro boy" in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and a 10-year-old "colored boy" in the Indianapolis Recorder on March 23, or simply referred to the boy's age not his race, a 16 year old boy in the Atlanta World on March 21, a 12-year-old boy in the New York Age, a 14-year-old boy in the Chicago Defender, and a 16 year old boy in the Afro-American and Pittsburgh Courier on March 23. Newspapers published on March 20 after police found Rivera identified him as a 16-year-old Puerto Rican, in the New York Post, New York World-Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle or a "Puerto Rican youth" in the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, Brooklyn Citizen (although later in that story Rivera was referred to as a "Negro")(The New York World-Telegram also pointed to the differences between Rivera and the boy of the rumors by putting Negro in quotation marks when reporting the rumors and the text of the Young Liberators leaflet.) By contrast, the New York Times referred to a 16-year-old "Negro boy" even after Rivera had been found, as did the New York Sun and New York Evening Journal. While the New York Times did eventually identify Rivera as Puerto Rican when he appeared in the Adolescents court after the disorder, the New York Evening Journal continued to describe Rivera as "Negro," while the New York Sun made no mention of his race. Those newspapers' persistent use of "Negro" may have been intended to convey that Rivera was dark-skinned; the New York American described him in those terms, as a "dark-skinned 16-year-old Porto Rican" in a story reporting an interview with the boy in his home, while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described him as a "Negro born in Porto Rico." Editions of the other newspapers published after Rivera was found, including the Black newspapers, simply switched to identify him as Puerto Rican. (Historian Lorrin Thomas argued that the New York Amsterdam News "failed to identify Rivera as Puerto Rican, referring to him instead as a “young Negro boy,”" but did not provide a citation. The March 23 issue of that newspaper is missing the news sections, but the March 30 issue identified Rivera as a "16-year-old Puerto Rican youth.")
Stories in the New York Evening Journal, Home News, La Prensa and Daily Worker misidentified Hurley and Urban as store detectives. None mentioned the store detective, Smith, perhaps because he was not bitten and therefore not identified in any official records. He may also have been confused with Jackson Smith, the store manager. Many stories gave the manager a larger role than he played, involved in grabbing Rivera, and making the decision to release him with Rivera in this office. That expanded role came at the expense not only of the store detective but also the police. Only the Daily News, and a vague statement in the New York Post story of what Rivera said mentioned that officers were at the store. The Daily News included only Eldridge, misidentifying him as the officer who released Rivera. Rivera said “two policeman came in” after he bit the men, the New York Post reported. The New York Evening Journal, Daily News, Atlanta World, and Philadelphia Tribune stories quoting Rivera omitted that statement.
Several newspaper stories included a Black woman interceding or screaming when the store staff grabbed Rivera, which some accounts claimed precipitated broader disorder. The statements of those on the scene suggest any outcry came when Donohue and Urban took Rivera into the basement. Rivera testified in the public hearing that a woman screamed “They’re going to take him down the cellar and beat him up!” While Hurley made no mention of that scream, L. F. Cole, a thirty-year-old Black clerk, did testify that when he saw Donohue and Urban taking Rivera to the basement “a woman made a statement that the boy had been struck.” Cole's choice not to describe the woman as screaming suggests the possibility that the woman simply called out, with the gendered language of the press rendering any shouting by a woman as a scream. "They're beating that boy! They're killing him!" were the “screams” reported by the New York Evening Journal. Speeding up events, the New York American, New York Post and Atlanta World, and the New Republic, describe the woman as running into the street, screaming "Kress beat a colored boy! Kress Beat a colored boy!" according to the New York American. The New York Sun made this response collective: “Emotional Negro women shouted that the boy was being beaten and this information was quickly relayed to the curious crowds which had gathered in front of the store.” Rather than reacting, the woman intervened in the narrative presented in Home News and La Prensa, and was pushed aside by Hurley, after which she screamed.
Margaret Mitchell was identified as the woman who reacted to Rivera being grabbed in the New York Evening Journal, Home News, Philadelphia Tribune and La Prensa (and later in stories about those arrested in the New York Amsterdam News, Afro-American, New York Post and New York Times). Here journalists with a truncated timeline of events were assuming that as she was arrested in Kress’ store it must have been when Rivera was grabbed. However, Donahue told the public hearing he had not made an arrest, and none of the store staff mentioned an arrest at this time. The circumstances of Mitchell's arrest recorded by police, the testimony of Louise Thompson and the New York Sun story suggest that it took place after the store was closed, as police tried to clear out the women who remained inside, with an officer named Johnson making the arrest. Similarly, in describing customers struggling with Hurley and Urban or attacking displays as Rivera was taken away the narratives of the New York Sun, La Prensa and the Home News collapsed together events that took place at different times. Testimony in the public hearings identified that struggle as coming later, when Kress’ manager decided to close the store and police cleared out those inside.
The MCCH public hearings elicited more details of the assault, with Rivera, the two police officers, and Hurley all testifying, together with Jackson Smith, the store manager. Provided in five separate hearings spread over nearly six weeks, that testimony described the roles of Officers Donahue and Eldridge, which were missing from the initial newspaper reports. Few newspapers included these new details in their stories about the hearings. The most extensively reported hearing was the first, in which Donahue testified. The WT, New York Times, HN and TU, and later the NYA and AN, highlighted Donahue’s decision to release Rivera through the rear of the store rather than in view of concerned customers, as an “error in judgement,” as the Times Union put it, that helped trigger the disorder. While the HN, WT, TU, and AN reported Donahue had admitted that mistake, the hearing transcript does not include such a statement. Instead, it was Arthur Garfield Hays, chairing the hearing, who offered that assessment while questioning the officer. After Donahue testified that crowds in the store caused him to decide to release Rivera at the rear, Hays commented, “If you had let the boy go at that time there would not have been any excitement.” (8) (The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune and Daily Mirror did not mention Donahue, but focused on the Communists who testified and participated in questioning witnesses). Eldridge and Hurley did not testify until three weeks later, and Jackson Smith until two weeks after that, when they were not given any attention in the briefer newspaper stories about those hearings.
The MCCH Subcommittee report submitted to Mayor La Guardia on May 29 compiled and summarized the testimony from the public hearings to offer a more detailed narrative of events in the store than any provided in the press, but one that still left out key details. Neither Urban nor Eldridge are mentioned, nor is the store detective identified as the man who grabbed Rivera with Hurley. Nor does it make clear that charge for which Rivera faced arrest was assault not theft (2-3). The report was not made public until several months later, on August 10. None of the newspaper stories about the report published in the New York Times, NYHT, NYEJ, DN, HN, DW and NYA mentioned the events. They focused instead on the blame the MCCH leveled at police. (The New York Amsterdam News issue for this date is missing).
The summary of the testimony given in public hearings in the MCCH’s final report, the most widely circulated account of the disorder, named only Hurley and the store manager, and did not make clear that Urban was not the store detective who had helped confront Rivera. The report also implied that the arrival of the CPB somehow interfered with Rivera’s release: “While Mr. Smith, the manager, instructed the officer to let the culprit go free—as he had done in many eases before—an officer from the Crime Prevention Bureau was sent to the store.” (7) That framing seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the basis on which Rivera was held, that it was for theft rather than for biting the men for which Rivera faced arrest. It was Hurley and Urban, not the Crime Prevention Bureau officer, who stopped the incident from being resolved in the same way as any other case of shoplifting, albeit only temporarily.
None of the historical scholarship on the disorder offers a narrative of these events that is entirely in line with this evidence. The unpublished public hearings are a source for only one narrative of these events in the historical scholarship, Cheryl Greenberg’s description. She is also the only historian to cite other unpublished sources, Di Martini’s report and the Subcommittee report. For some reason, Greenberg relies on Di Martini’s report to describe only one store employee grabbing Rivera and being bitten, rather than both Hurley and Urban. That report was compiled the day after the disorder, on March 20, without time for the information gathering undertaken by the MCCH. While Greenberg asserted “The Mayor’s Commission agreed with the police description of the events,” both the Subcommittee report and the final report identify Hurley and another employee as grabbing Rivera. Greenberg also asserts that Rivera was released before police arrived, rather than by Donohue, as the MCCH reports describe. Di Martini’s report did not mention Rivera’s release, so the source for that element of Greenberg’s narrative is uncertain.
Other historians rely on the MCCH report. However, those narratives consistently misidentify the store manager, Jackson Smith, as one of those who grabbed Rivera, even though the MCCH report describes Smith only as witnessing the theft, and Hurley and another employee as grabbing the boy. Mark Naison, Lorrin Thomas and Jonathan Gill portray the manager acting alone, and Naison makes no mention of Rivera biting him or anyone else. The manager acts with an unnamed store guard in Marilynn Johnson’s narrative, replacing Smith the store detective. There is no mention of Rivera biting either man; they simply turn him over to a police officer. Nicole Watson likewise replaces the store detective with the store manager, who is bitten along with Hurley. Thomas Kessner is the only historian not to mistakenly include the store manager, describing Rivera as grabbed by two employees. Kessner, Greenberg, Johnson, and Watson all mention a woman shouting that the boy was being beaten up. Naison and Thomas more generally refer to a rumor spreading through the crowd, with no mention that women made up the bulk of those in the store. None mention whether the woman was arrested.
While Naison, Kessner, Johnson, and Thomas follow the MCCH report in describing police releasing Rivera through the back entrance, Gill and Watson offer narratives more at odds with the evidence. Gill echoes Greenberg in describing Rivera taken to the basement before police arrive (there are no notes in Gill’s book, so it is not clear if he is relying on Greenberg for that detail). Watson offers two possible narratives, that Rivera escaped as Donohue tried to quell the crowd as Time reported, or Donohue released him on Smith’s instructions. While the magazine story was published at a greater distance from the events than newspaper stories, no evidence that Rivera escaped rather than being released was found by the MCCH investigation. To the contrary, testimony in the public hearings and the MCCH’s report are consistent in saying that is not what happened, with Donohue’s decision drawing specific attention at the hearings and in the report as a ‘mistake.’ Watson’s account is not clear on just how unbalanced the weight of evidence is in regards to those events; she simply posits the description in Time against “other versions.”
Portraying the store manager as involved in grabbing Rivera obscures the number of staff employed by the store to undertake surveillance and policing, a store detective and a floor walker. (Other large stores on 125th Street employed similar staff; around this time, however, Black store detectives were employed at the nearby McCrory, W. T. Grant and Blumstein stores, which at least at the McCrory store often defused encounters between white staff and Black customers). That apparatus contributed to how routine it was to apprehend a boy shoplifting, something that did not warrant the involvement of the manager, but did reflect the kind of treatment Black customers received in white-owned businesses. Portraying store employees as releasing Rivera or the boy as escaping obscures the involvement of police in his custody. Given the level of violence Black residents suffered at the hands of police, a patrolman taking him to the basement would have heightened the concern of those in the store that Rivera would be subject to violence. -
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2020-02-25T18:03:35+00:00
Lloyd Hobbs killed
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2024-01-28T02:15:24+00:00
Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black teenager, was shot and killed by Patrolman John McInerney, who claimed Hobbs had been looting an auto supply store.
Around 7:30 PM, Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell had made the short trip from their home on St. Nicholas Ave to the Apollo Theater on 125th Street for a show, not emerging until 12:30 AM. When they stepped back onto 125th St, they saw crowds down the block at the intersection with 7th Ave, and went to investigate. They followed as police pushed the crowd north on 7th Ave. As people milled in front of a damaged auto parts store at 2150 7th Avenue near 128th Street, a police radio car pulled up, and one of the officers inside, Patrolman John McInerney got out. Fearing that they would be beaten by the police, the boys and the others in front of the store ran up 7th Avenue. Here the accounts of the boys and seven Black eyewitnesses and those of the two white patrolmen diverged.
In assessing the case, the two reports gave significant weight to the character of Lloyd Hobbs and his family. The subcommittee argued that "the record of Lloyd Hobbs and that of his family are presumptive evidence that he was not the kind of boy who would engage in looting." The final report of the MCCH described the boy as "having a good record in school and in the community, and being a member of a family of good standing and character." Lloyd Hobbs had been born in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1916, the second youngest of five children of Mary and Lawyer Hobbs. (The story published in the New York Amsterdam News on April 6, 1935, accompanied by a photograph of Mrs. Hobbs, gave her first name as Carrie, but it was recorded as Mary in the census in 1930, 1940, and 1950). The boy's name was recorded as Lawyer in the 1930 census and as Lawyer, Jr in the "Social and Economical History" of the family written by James Tartar, but elsewhere in that document and in all other sources as Lloyd. The family farmed in Virginia until 1927, and still owned 83 acres there, when Lawyer's ill health required him to get work "which would not necessitate his being in the sun," according to his wife. He had worked previously in New York City, so the family relocated there. Lawyer found work first as a sexton at Union Baptist Church, then for a construction company. Mary Hobbs worked first as a domestic servant, the most common occupation for Black women, before becoming one of a much smaller group employed in factory work, in her case at a lampshade company. That was her occupation in the 1930 census; Lawyer's occupation was recorded as chauffeur. At that time the family lived at 228 West 140th Street, their home since they arrived in New York City. By April, 1931 both parents had lost their jobs, and the family joined many in Harlem applying for work and relief from private and government agencies. Sometime in the intervening years Lawyer Hobbs found some work as a helper on a truck owned by Charles Bell (perhaps a brother-in-law; a sister-in-law named Senora Bell lived with the family in 1930).
McInerney and his partner, Patrolman Watterson, claimed that as they were driving south, their attention had been drawn to the auto parts store by the noise of breaking glass, and they had seen Lloyd in the window handing items out to those on the street. Three of the eyewitnesses, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Marshall Pfifer, said all the windows of the store had been broken at least an hour earlier and nothing remained in the display by the time the Hobbs brothers arrived there. The patrolmen said that Lloyd climbed out of the window with items in his hands as they pulled up, and when McInerney pursued him up 7th Avenue and called on him to halt, continued to run. When those running from the patrolman got to 128th Street, Lloyd broke away from the group and turned west on to 128th Street. McInerney then shot the boy. Warren Wright, standing in the entrance of the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue, south of the store, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Samuel Pitts standing on the corner across 128th Street from the auto supply store, in front of Battle's Pharmacy, to which the crowd was running, John Bennett, in 201 West 128th Street toward which Lloyd turned and ran, and Marshall Pfifer, standing on the corner of West 128th Street on the other side of 7th Avenue, all testified that the boy had nothing in his hands as he ran and that McInerney did not call to him to halt before shooting him. After the bullet hit Hobbs and he fell to the ground, McInerney and Watterson, who had remained in the car, backing it into 128th Street, said Lloyd dropped a car horn and socket set, which McInerney picked up. Seven witnesses said that there was nothing on the ground next to the boy.
The two patrolman loaded Lloyd Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital. Russell Hobbs had kept running up 7th Avenue and had not seen the shooting. He learned from the crowd at the scene that it was his brother who had been shot and driven away and immediately ran home to tell his parents, Lawyer and Mary Hobbs. The family rushed to Harlem Hospital. When they found Lloyd, he told them, “Mother, the officer shot me for nothing. I was not doing anything.” McInerney, guarding the boy, said "Why didn't you halt when I told you to?" Lloyd offered the same account when questioned in the hospital by Homicide Bureau detectives, in a statement recorded by a police stenographer.
Lloyd Hobbs appeared in all seven published lists of those injured in the disorder, in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
In the following days, Lawyer Hobbs went to the 28th Precinct several times trying to make a complaint against the officer who had shot his son. He also sought help from the New York Urban League, giving them a statement about what had happened to his son on March 28, which they sent to the MCCH. As a result, Hobbs and his family were among the witnesses asked to come to the MCCH's first public hearing on March 30. Only Russell testified that day, briefly describing how his brother had been shot. A few hours later, at 6:30 PM, Lloyd Hobbs died in Harlem Hospital, the fourth death resulting from the disorder. While the New York Times, Daily News, New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and Afro-American referred to Russell's testimony in reporting Hobbs' death, the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, Home News, Daily Mirror, New York American, and Chicago Defender reported only the boy's death in their stories.
The next week, at the MCCH hearing, 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, 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. Assistant District Attorney Saul Price heard the testimony of the three eyewitnesses soon after the hearing and had them appear before the grand jury on April 10 so they could consider charges against Patrolman McInerney. The grand jury also heard from Russell Hobbs, both his parents, McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, the police stenographer, the detective who investigated the shooting, John O'Brien, and the owner of the automobile supply store. Patrolman McInerney also offered to testify, but the grand jury opted not to hear him. They dismissed the case.
The MCCH nonetheless continued to investigate the boy's killing, hearing testimony from McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, and Detective O'Brien, who investigated the shooting, at a hearing on April 20 marked by angry interjections from the audience. Four additional witnesses to the shooting testified at an MCCH hearing on May 18. James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, also obtained information that McInerney had not turned in the items he claimed to have found next to Lloyd Hobbs until April 8, more than two weeks after he shot the boy. That interval raised the possibility that the patrolman had not found the items at the scene but had obtained them later, when he needed to justify the shooting. As a result of that information and the testimony of additional eyewitnesses, Assistant District Attorney Saul Price presented the case to the grand jury for a second time on June 10. After hearing from the new witnesses, and from Tartar about the absence of the allegedly stolen items from police records and the Police Property Department until April 8, the grand jury again dismissed the case without hearing testimony from McInerney.
The police department had committed to an internal hearing on the case before ADA Price had decided to resubmit it to the grand jury. The hearing took place on June 14; in attendance were James Tartar and E. Franklin Frazier, the Howard University sociologist who had recently started work leading the MCCH's investigation of Harlem. It was the first time that anyone outside the police department and the district attorney's office heard Patrolman McInerney's testimony. While Tartar and Frazier were unpersuaded, senior police officers found the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs was justified, reprimanding the patrolman only for his delay in handing in the items he claimed to have found at the scene.
While two grand juries and a police department hearing exonerated McInerney, the MCCH and the Black press did not share that view. Arthur Garfield Hays and Oscar Villard gave a central place to McInerney killing Hobbs in the report of the subcommittee submitted to Mayor La Guardia on June 11, 1935. The report of the subcommittee characterized the killing of Lloyd Hobbs as "inexcusable." E. Franklin Frazier included that material in the final report of the MCCH, framed in even harsher terms: the killing of the boy was "a brutal act on the part of the police." Police Commissioner Valentine was unmoved by that censure. He responded to both reports by asserting that Lloyd Hobbs had been looting the store and that two grand juries had exonerated McInerney.
Lawyer Hobbs' income allowed the family to settle in a fourth-floor apartment at 321 St. Nicholas Avenue in 1932, having moved twice in the preceding year, as many in Harlem did during the Depression. A lodger helped pay the rent in 1935. James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, described the residence as "a comfortable apartment, clean, nicely arranged, nicely furnished and well ventilated."
Throughout their time in the city, the Hobbs children attended school. By 1935 the eldest, twenty-year-old Cassie, was working, but her twin sisters Hazel and Zenobia remained students at the Textile High School, Lloyd was a student at Haaren High School, and his younger brother Russell a student at Frederick Douglas Junior High School. Lloyd would have graduated in June, according to a story in the New York Amsterdam News.
After Lloyd's death, the family continued to live at 321 St. Nicholas Avenue until at least 1950. All the family members resided there in 1940. Fifty-six-year-old Mary, who provided the information to the census enumerator, did not identify an occupation. Lawyer was working as a laborer in a sugar refinery, Cassie and Zenobia as seamstresses in a dress factory, Hazel in a lampshade factory, and Russell as a clerk in a food store. All but Zenobia were still living in the apartment in 1950, although as Cassie was recorded as divorced she had likely not resided there for all of the intervening ten years. Neither Lawyer nor Mary, who was listed as sixty years old, were working by that time. Hazel had joined Cassie working as a seamstress, while Russell now worked as a driver for a construction company.
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2022-11-09T23:43:21+00:00
The public hearing on March 30
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There is no reliable record of what was said in the public hearing. A transcript of the hearings was recorded but it did not consistently identify who asked questions of witnesses or the reactions of the audience (nor the recess taken for lunch on March 30). Arthur Garfield Hays, who chaired the hearing, considered them a “poor report." By the same token, newspaper stories on the hearing varied widely in their emphases and detail. Reporters also appeared to have frequently misattributed comments made during the hearing. None of the newspaper stories reported testimony about events after disorder broke out on 125th Street or events beyond 125th Street described by witnesses.
Unsurprisingly, Harlem’s two Black newspapers provided the most extensive accounts of the hearing. The New York Age published the most detailed story, summarizing the testimony of all but two witnesses — Russell Hobbs and Inspector Di Martini (it did offer details of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs elsewhere in the story). The New York Amsterdam News took a different approach, providing a summary of what it judged to be the key information: that Patrolman Donahue chose to release Rivera out of sight of those in the store; that the leaflets distributed by the Young Liberators and Communist Party did not appear until two hours after the disorder began; and that Rivera was the boy grabbed in the store. Only three other newspapers highlighted several of those issues: the New York Age, without giving Donahue’s testimony the same significance; and the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, without attention to the identification of Rivera. Other newspapers emphasized only one of those topics.
In the largest group of newspapers, it was Patrolman Donahue’s decision to release Rivera out the rear exit and so out of sight of those in the store which was the focus. 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 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 officer. After Donahue testified that crowds on 125th Street caused him to take Rivera into the store, Kuntz commented, “If you had let the boy go at that time there would not have been any excitement.” 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, were the only accounts that also reported Inspector Di Martini had testified “he would have released the boy where all could see.” Again, that statement is not in the transcript. Instead, it records that Di Martini said, “The policeman who was there did not take those people into his confidence. I am of the opinion that the people did see this boy led from the store.” As Hays questioned Donahue, both ILD lawyers, Tauber and Kuntz, and James Ford, the head of the CP in Harlem, all interjected with questions of their own, likely leading some of those listening to confuse who was speaking and what was being said. As the MCCH's stenographer would have sat at the front of the courtroom, it was likely the reporters who were mistaken. It is striking given how those eight newspapers interpreted Donahue’s testimony that the New York Herald Tribune and New York Age reported Donahue’s testimony without mentioning its implications — and that the Daily News, Daily Mirror, and Daily Worker did not include it at all.
Testimony about the leaflets distributed by the Young Liberators and Communist Party were the focus of stories in the New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York Age. That evidence provided the headline in the New York Herald Tribune: “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 story did not identify the source of that testimony (Louise Thompson); it simply reported that “the committee learned” that information. The story also somewhat misleadingly described the source of the leaflets as the concern of “most of the hearing.” (The testimony of the leaders of the YL and CP constituted eleven of the fifty-one pages of testimony; in addition, several other witnesses — Battle, Cole, and Thompson — were briefly asked about the pamphlets. When Di Martini mentioned them, Hays responded by saying they were not distributed until after disorder, referencing Thompson's earlier testimony.) The Daily News, in a story under the byline of their crime reporter Grace Robinson, omitted the testimony about the time the leaflets appeared that became central to the MCCH’s narrative of events, instead continuing to cast them as “having brought the riot into being” and focusing on who was responsible for them. That story, which appeared in early editions, was headlined “Blank Drawn at Probe of Harlem Riot,” focusing on Taylor’s statement that “somebody upstairs” at the YL’s office had composed and distributed the leaflet while he was seeking information on what had happened to Rivera. The reporter characterized Taylor as having “neatly shrugged off” “blame for the riot.” (In later editions the headline was changed to “Harlem Riot Takes Its Fourth Victim” and the story was revised to not only lead with Hobbs’ death but to highlight an exchange between Hays and Di Martini about whether the police should put out leaflets of their own in the future, the Inspector’s testimony about the hearse that arrived at the rear of Kress’ store and other elements of Taylor’s testimony with only a passing mention of the pamphlets.) The New York Age also reported only that the testimony confirmed that the groups were the source of the pamphlets; it made no mention of the evidence that they were distributed too late to have triggered the disorder. Instead, the New York Age pointed to Louise Thompson’s testimony that the first window was broken in the Kress store before any speech was made as having “refuted” “reports that the Communists had taken the first steps in starting the actual violence.”
Seven additional newspapers mentioned the pamphlets without making them a focus. The New York Times included a subheading “Source of Pamphlet Sought” that drew attention to Tauber’s testimony that he did not know who printed the pamphlet. The story went on to note that “testimony” “indicated” that the pamphlets did not reach the street until after the disorder started, in the process noting that there had been two pamphlets, from the YL and CP, the only story to note that detail. Taylor’s testimony that the YL produced the leaflets was also reported by the New York American, without the detail that he did not know by who, and the Afro-American, which included his statement that it been “somebody upstairs.” Neither newspaper mentioned the time the pamphlets were distributed. It was Ford’s testimony about the second pamphlet, produced by the CP, that was reported in the Home News and in the Chicago Defender and Associated Negro Press stories. Those stories mentioned the time the pamphlets were distributed; they did not make clear that Ford was referring to the second and later of the two pamphlets nor report Taylor’s testimony. Unsurprisingly, the Daily Worker also noted testimony that the leaflets were distributed too late to have caused the disorder, attributing that evidence to "witnesses, including some of the police."
The stories in the New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and New York Post that made no mention of the pamphlets reported only testimony from the morning session of the hearings, suggesting that those reporters had left when the hearings recessed for lunch. The Daily Mirror reporter may have thought the hearing ended at the recess, as the paper’s story mistakenly claimed that “the inquiry into the origin of 5,000 incendiary pamphlets advocating Revenge for the murder of Martyr Rivera, which, distributed to milling pedestrians in 125th St., aroused them to their riot frenzy,” had been delayed to the next hearing, which it reported would be on Monday instead of the next Saturday.
Anti-Communist Hearst newspapers the New York Evening Journal, New York American and Daily Mirror that might have been expected to highlight testimony about the pamphlets circulated by radical groups chose to instead focus on clashes between lawyers affiliated with the Communist Party and witnesses and members of the MCCH. They likely did so because the testimony on the leaflets relieved the CP of blame for starting the disorder, as those publications had charged. The New York Post, which rejected efforts to blame CP for the disorder, also focused on those clashes. Other papers mentioned instances of conflict without focusing attention on them; for eg, the Daily News noted that the hearings “developed at times into a field day for Communist exponents and cop-baiting attorneys for the International Labor Defense.” There was no mention of such incidents in the New York World-Telegram and Times Union.
The most widely reported exchange involved ADA Kaminsky, the third witness to testify, and ILD lawyers. It was the focus of the New York Evening Journal and New York Post stories and their headlines, and mentioned with details in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Age, and New York Amsterdam News, and the Daily Worker, and in passing in the Chicago Defender. The New York Evening Journal led with the “verbal clash,” but described only Tauber demanding to question the ADA and him responding "I prefer not to be a party to a field day by irresponsible persons." The story also mentioned Tauber’s claim that police had raided the offices of several organizations affiliated with the CP after the disorder, targeting those groups because of their political views — hence the story’s headline: “RIOT TERROR CHARGED TO POLICE.” Kaminsky’s response to Tauber’s effort to question him and the charges made by Tauber were also reported by the New York Post, which extended the exchange to include protests by the ILD lawyers and an exchange between Hays and Kaminsky: “'I don't think you ought to call these men irresponsible because their views are different from yours,' Mr. Hays told Mr. Kaminsky, who shrugged and said: 'That's your viewpoint.'” The Daily Worker reported Kaminsky's statement and the same retort from Hays without a further response from Kaminsky. The Home News story included the same exchange, while the New York Amsterdam News included elements of it, Hays “chiding” Kaminsky without a response from the ADA. The elements in those exchanges appeared differently in the transcript. Before Tauber sought to question the ADA, Hays asked Kaminsky about whether those indicted before the DA’s grand jury had been charged “for their political views?” Kaminsky responded, “I am quite sure that the grand jury would not indict people for their political views.” When Tauber asked to question Kaminsky, Hays simply said, “I think not,” before Kaminsky declared “I refuse to be a party to a field day by irresponsible persons. So far this has been simply an occasion for police baiting.” When Tauber and Minor raised the raids, Hays asked Kaminsky if he knew anything about them, which he said he did not. He then sat by while Hays asked the ILD lawyers about their allegations, eventually asking to be excused as he was not a witness . The story in the New York Herald Tribune reported it was an audience member who called out “that’s your viewpoint,” not in response to Hays, but after Kaminsky claimed the ILD was using the hearing for "police-baiting.” In that narrative, Hays refused to allow Tauber to question Kaminsky before the ADA made his remark about irresponsible people. Similarly, no exchange between Hays and Kaminsky featured in the New York Age's account. Like the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Worker, it included the audience reaction, applause for the lawyers’ protests and hissing when the ADA left the stand. Kaminsky’s response to Tauber was mentioned in the New York Times, which added that he accused Tauber of “police baiting,” and that Hays refused to allow the questioning on the grounds that the lawyers would be representing men prosecuted by the DA. (The New York World-Telegram and Times Union mentioned Kaminsky’s evidence without reference to the clash.)
If the garbled reporting and transcription of this exchange might be explained by the difficulty of discerning what was being said when people shouted at and over each other, those circumstances do not explain the complete absence from the transcript of another clash reported by several newspapers. In that case, the Home News and the Chicago Defender and Associated Negro Press reported that when Battle, a Black police lieutenant, was recalled to testify for a second time in the afternoon, Charles Romney questioned him until stopped by Schieffelin declaring “there would be no more 'police baiting.'” The passage was identical in all three stories; the stories in the Black newspapers were published after the Home News story, so may have taken the text from that story. However, Bessye J. Bearden, credited as the author of the Chicago Defender story, worked as a New York correspondent for the paper, so could have been in the courtroom.
The police officer who was recalled to the stand in the afternoon in the transcript was Captain Rothengast, a white officer; after Hays asked him about the circumstances in which police shot Lloyd Hobbs, his testimony was interrupted so that Russell Hobbs, Lloyd’s younger brother could testify. When Rothengast returned to the stand, Romney was one of those who questioned him. Later, when someone questioning Rothengast complained that the officers who had killed people during the disorder had “gone free,” Hays interjected to say, “We are not here to investigate the police.” The New York Times and New York American identified the subject of that “rebuke” as Minor not Romney; the New York Times, which attributed the statement to Schieffelin not Hays, described what Minor said as police baiting, while the New York American described it as “as similar rebuke” to an earlier accusation of police baiting (which could refer to Kaminsky’s statement, as there was no intervention in Rivera’s testimony, which is when the story said it took place). The New York Herald Tribune reported that Hays said “he would have no police baiting at the hearing” during Donahue’s testimony; there was no intervention by him in the transcript of that testimony other than offering people the opportunity to ask questions. While Rothengast was a white officer, and Battle a Black officer, it does appear that these stories misreported the name of the officer testifying during this clash. The Daily Mirror reported another exchange during Rothengast’s testimony as “another highlight” of the hearing. The story described Schieffelin warning Tauber, one of the ILD lawyers, to treat witnesses with politeness. That statement did appear in the transcript, without a clear identification of who said it, and addressed to “Mr Allen,” a name that otherwise did not appear in the transcript.
Reactions from the audience likely contributed to focusing attention on those incidents. Newspaper stories portrayed those reactions in different, somewhat contradictory terms. The New York Amsterdam News and New York Age described a tense crowd that on occasion made their feelings known. Those outbursts came at the end of the day according to the New York Amsterdam News: “The undercurrent of the antagonism against the police, noticeable throughout the day in the audience, 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.” Such outbursts were more frequent in the New York Age’s account and tied to the actions of the ILD lawyers and their supporters on which the Hearst newspapers focused: “The hearing itself was characterized by an air of unrest and incipient disorder on the part of the crowd which was greatly augmented by the presence and active participation in the proceedings of numerous lawyers representing various 'left wing' organizations. A large part, if not the entire crowd of spectators also exhibited definite 'radical' leanings and frequently interrupted the hearing with their audible comments and criticism.” The Daily News and New York Evening Journal, portrayed the audience in similar but less threatening terms as “restless and sometimes irritable” and having “stirred uneasily” when the ILD lawyers questioned witnesses. By contrast, the New York World-Telegram and Home News highlighted outbursts of laughter as illustrating that the audience was “interested and even jovial” and “good-natured,” portrayals that conjured racist stereotypes.
Only Harlem’s Black newspapers focused attention on the identification of Rivera as the boy who had been arrested and released in the Kress store. That topic was mentioned in only three white newspapers, the New York Post, Home News, and Daily Worker. Both reported only Battle’s testimony that he had no evidence Rivera was not the boy; neither mentioned Cole’s testimony affirmatively identifying Rivera (which was reported only in the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News). In contrast, neither the New York Age nor New York Amsterdam News mentioned Battle’s testimony on the boy’s identity. Instead, the New York Age presented Cole’s testimony as “one of the most important revelations of the day’s testimony.” Rather than either man’s testimony, the New York Amsterdam News highlighted the testimony of Rivera himself and “the failure of any interested person to accept the committee's invitation to present evidence to the effect that another youth was the real victim.” The Daily Worker more generally noted that, "Throughout the hearing, the Mayor's Committee sought to dispose of rumors, still persisting in Harlem, that the Rivera boy had been substituted by the police for the real victim."
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2022-11-11T16:55:54+00:00
The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (March 30)
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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, 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 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, then 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 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.