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

The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (March 30)

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.

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