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

Public Hearing of the MCCH's Subcommittee on Crime (March 30)

At 10:00 AM on Saturday, March 30, the members of the MCCH took their seats at the front of a courtroom in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court. 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. 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 Dodge was conducting in the grand jury. In addition to Lino Rivera, two Black witnesses testified 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 Donohue, 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.
 

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