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Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 27, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
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- 1 2022-09-03T23:51:48+00:00 Anonymous Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives). Anonymous 3 plain 2022-10-11T21:11:41+00:00 Anonymous
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Police establish perimeter around Kress' store
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After Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street around 7:00 PM, he called for police reinforcements. A New York Evening Journal story celebrated the response as “the most remarkable “military” feat in the history of the department.” That portrayal was certainly how the police department would have sought to present the deployment. However, the arrival of additional officers appears to have taken longer than the story allowed, and to have been focused on establishing a perimeter around Kress’ store. The piecemeal arrival of reinforcements made that a protracted process. As police struggled to keep crowds away from Kress' store, those clashes served to disperse crowds along the avenues rather than stopping the violence. Unable to prevent windows being broken in businesses on 125th Street, police had to guard damaged stores, limiting the officers who could be deployed on the avenues. Guards appear to have prevented looting; they did not stop additional windows being broken. After crowds broke through on to 125th Street around 10:30 PM, there are only two further incidents in that area during the remaining disorder, an alleged assault on a woman and a shooting, both at the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Although other incidents whose timing is unknown may have occurred during that time, the evidence suggests that police perimeter held through that period.
The New York Evening Journal story lauding the police response reported “a small army of 700 police was beating back the rioters” on 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues. That number likely reflected the total deployment rather than the force that set up the perimeter around Kress’ store. It was in line with the number Di Martini reported to the Police Commissioner were in Harlem after midnight and fell between the totals reported by newspapers, with the 1000 officers mentioned by the Daily Mirror at one extreme, and the 500 officers reported by the Home News and New York Herald Tribune representing the other end of the range. While the officers coming from beyond the local precincts went initially to 125th Street, Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes that the reserve officers from Harlem's precincts went to their stations, on West 123rd Street and West 135th Street. Some of those officers may have been sent directly to other areas of Harlem, particularly those who arrived later in the evening.
The perimeter established by police extended from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier, the only sources that described police deployments. While Inspector Di Martini had summoned the reinforcements, the newspapers credited that deployment to Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, who commanded uniformed police in the borough of Manhattan, and would have taken over from Di Martini when he arrived around 9:00 PM. The department’s Emergency trucks attracted the most attention in newspaper stories, presented as the anchors of the police cordon. Six emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue in the strategy reported by the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier. Emergency trucks were more dispersed according to the New York Herald Tribune; two at West 125th and 7th Avenue, one at West 125th and Lenox Avenue, and one at West 127th and 7th Avenue.
The Emergency Services Division had succeeded the Police department’s Riot Battalion in 1925. Each truck had a crew of eight officers and, in addition to rescue equipment, carried a Thompson machine gun, three Winchester rifles and a Remington shotgun, as well as a tear gas gun, for use against "disorderly crowds." The twenty-two trucks in the department in 1935 were dispersed throughout the city. While the two located closest to 125th Street arrived relatively quickly, additional trucks would have taken significantly longer. Squad #6 was based on East 122nd Street, and had been involved in clearing shoppers from Kress’ store earlier. Squad #5, based on Amsterdam Avenue, arrived around 7:15 PM, according to Patrolman Eppler. The New York Evening Journal identified trucks as coming from Kingsbridge in the Bronx and from Coney Island at the southern end of Brooklyn, the later apparently arriving later: “It slithered perilously over wet streets but arrived in time for its crew to get into action.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle identified another squad from Brooklyn, Squad #16 from Herbert Street, as having crashed returning from Harlem, at 1:00 AM (a time when there was still significant disorder). Thompson did not mention the trucks. Neither did trucks appear in any of the published photographs of the disorder. Some of their crew did, identifiable because the rifles they carried - described as “riot guns” in newspapers stories and photograph captions - caused them to stand out from other police. They did not, however, have a machine gun that needed to be “set up,” as the Afro-American reported: each truck instead carried a single hand held ‘Tommy gun.’ Nor were the trucks equipped with enough of those weapons for all the crew to have one. And there are no reports that they used tear gas. Those weapons prompted several newspapers to use martial language in stories about the squads’ activities. The New York Evening Journal story on the police reinforcements described Harlem as a “seething battleground,” and the police as “beating back the rioters in a savage and organized attack.” An Emergency truck from the Bronx “leaped off the machine and tore into a crowd of window smashers” (perhaps at Herbert’s jewelry store at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, where another New York Evening Journal story described a similar scene). The Daily Mirror described Emergency trucks as "being sent to the battle zone."
The other evidence of the presence of Emergency trucks placed them in less warlike roles. Newspaper photographs show their crew among the officers who guarded damaged stores. A patrolman with a riot gun stands in front of Herbert’s jewelry store on northeast corner of 125th and 7th Avenue in a photograph published in the Burlington Free Press. Stories in the New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune described police with riot guns guarding the store (the Daily News, New York American and Home News described the officers simply as patrolmen). Another patrolman with a riot gun was photographed on the corner across 7th Avenue from the jewelry store. The image published in the New York Evening Journal is narrowly focused on the officer, whereas another version of that image published in the Daily Mirror shows a Black man walking past him, and the image published in the Daily News shows several Black men and women walking by on the sidewalk, evidence of the continued presence of people around 125th Street. Two additional patrolmen, one visibly carrying a rifle, stand in front of Sherloff’s jewelry store, just a few buildings north of the intersection, in an AP photograph published in the Los Angeles Times. Taken together, the images suggest that the crew of at least one Emergency Truck guarded stores at the intersection. Captain Rothengast, Patrolman Moran and Patrolman Eppler told the MCCH that they also guarded other stores on 125th Street, including Kress’ store. A photograph published in the Daily News shows a patrolman talking through a broken window with a man inside a store on 125th Street. Again, Black men and women are visible in the background on the sidewalk in the background, their presence indicating that police had not closed the streets.
The police perimeter appears to have focused on keeping crowds off 125th Street, not individuals and small groups. In addition to those visible in photographs, Captain Rothengast described seeing "groups of people in 125th Street – no more than 250" when he arrived at Kress’ store around 8:30 PM. A story in the Home News also reported that “In an effort to keep traffic moving, police permitted pedestrians to walk through 125th St. The sidewalks on both sides of the street were crowded.” Patrolmen Moran and Eppler testified that at least some of those people approached police guarding Kress' store asking about the boy beaten in the store, encounters also described by a reporter for the Afro-American. Allowing individuals to walk along 125th Street was not incident-free: around 8:30 PM, a white man was allegedly beaten in front of Kress’ store, with police arresting James Smitten for committing the assault. About twenty minutes later, police arrested Frank Wells for breaking a window in the Willow Cafeteria. Just before 10:00 PM, Detective Roge was hit by a rock in front of Kress’ store and another patrolman injured at 124th Street and 7th Avenue. At the same time, Louise Thompson described larger groups being pushed back by police. She told a MCCH hearing she saw "one policeman throw his billy into the crowds while the mounted police were riding them down” at the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, a scene similar to that captured by a photograph published in the Daily News. There is no evidence of where that photograph was taken, but a second photograph of police dispersing a group of Black men and women, the most widely reproduced photograph of the disorder, was taken at 125th Street and 7th Avenue according to the caption. It shows the island that that divided the north and south lanes on the roadway, which contained trees and were surrounded by the barriers like those visible in the photograph. A group of men and women are scattering in response to a uniformed patrolman moving toward them. One man is bent over; the caption describes him as falling down. He may also have been pushed down or hit by the patrolman; another man obstructs the view of what has happened between the two men. (One version of the caption claimed that the photographer was hit by a rock soon after taking the image, which might explain why the patrolman was trying to move the crowd).
One of the Black men killed during the disorder, Andrew Lyons, sustained a fractured skull "during the thick of a melee at 125th street and Seventh avenue," according to the New York Amsterdam News, or a block further west at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue according to the Times Union. Police clubs may have been responsible for those injuries, but the doctors who treated Lyons recorded that had been too groggy to tell his roommate or anyone else how he had been injured. No sources mentioned police firing revolvers or rifles to try to disperse the crowds.
On at least two occasions large crowds appear to have broken through the police perimeter. Louise Thompson told a MCCH hearing that around 9:00 PM a crowd broke through on to 125th Street. The Home News also reported that incident. Store windows were broken, Young's hat store looted, and two white men and a white police detective allegedly assaulted around that time. A second crowd broke through around 10:30 PM, resulting in more windows being broken and a white man allegedly being assaulted, and police arresting four Black men.
Most of the incidents on 125th Street before 10:30 PM did not result in arrests, likely because police were heavily outnumbered by crowds and constrained by the responsibility of guarding stores. Only at Kress’ store it seems were enough officers stationed to make arrests: there arrests were made not just around 10:30 PM but also just before 10:00 PM and at 8:30 PM. There are no arrests among those with known times in the period between the arrest of the picketers in front of Kress’ store at 6.45 PM and arrests on 125th Street between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM. There are approximately a dozen arrests made at unknown times and places that might have occurred during this time, but it is more likely that police were too outnumbered to make arrests, as Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes. While an arrest for breaking windows was made just before 9:00 PM, police made no arrests for the assaults and broken windows reported when a crowd broke through soon after.
The police perimeter appears to have held after 10:30 PM. Sometime before then, no later than 10:00 PM, and likely as early as between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM, groups had moved on from 125th Street to attack businesses on 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue, and later, Lenox Avenue. In response, police began to disperse across Harlem, driving along those streets in radio cars and taking up positions on street corners and guarding damaged stores. Exactly when the first police were sent beyond 125th Street is not clear. The first arrest made away from 125th Street, on West 127th Street between St Nicholas and 8th Avenues around 9:00 PM, appears to have been made by a patrolman on his way to 125th Street rather than being deployed elsewhere in Harlem. The arrest of Leroy Brown around 9:45 PM on 7th Avenue between 127th and 128th Streets is clearer evidence of a spreading police presence.
With the MCCH giving limited attention to this period of the disorder, witnesses who testified at their hearings did not provide the details they do of the earlier police response. Newspaper reporters and photographers were on 125th Street during this time, so would have seen some of these events and been able to obtain information from police. Inspector Di Martini spoke with a group of reporters including one from the Afro-American during this time. At the same time, those reporters would have had a limited view. The block was too long for those at one intersection to see the details of what was happening at the other intersection, or even for those at Kress' store to clearly see the nearby intersection with 8th Avenue. At the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue the Afro-American's reporter saw only "little knots of people on the corner;" "once he walked on, however, he found high police officials and the first detail of 500 extra policemen rushed to the area" and "a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues." It is unsurprising then that newspaper stories offer only general and fragmented accounts of this period of the disorder. Information on specific events comes from legal records, which are limited largely to the period around 10:00 PM when police made arrests, and narrowly focused on the actions of a single arresting officer.
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Police in front of Kress' store
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Although Inspector Di Martini told a MCCH hearing that he saw no “indications of further trouble” when he left 125th Street at 6:00 PM, he did station some officers at Kress’ store -"Sergeant Bauer, two foot policeman, one mounted policeman in the rear to prevent a riot” according to his testimony, or “a Sergeant and four patrolmen” on the 125th Street side and “a mounted patrolman and a foot patrolman” on the 124th Street side according to his report to the Police Commissioner immediately after the disorder. A patrolman stationed in front of the store told an MCCH hearing that there were 10-15 officers there around 6:15 PM; that total may have included officers on regular assignment on 125th Street. However many police were present, one was Patrolman Shannon, who like Bauer, had been inside the store earlier.
Patrolman Moran, who arrived after Kress' store was closed, described being instructed to “keep the crowd moving in front of the store.” He insisted he did so by requesting them to “move on;” the lawyers who questioned him at a hearing of the MCCH alleged he used force, pushing people and using his nightstick. By around 6:15 PM, Moran said the front of the store was “pretty clear” while a crowd walked up and down on the opposite side of the street. Louise Thompson told the MCCH that there “little knots of people” on the street (although she wrote in New Masses that the crowd in front of the store numbered in the hundreds, that across the street in the thousands). Two men set up a stepladder in front of the store, a Black man named James Parton speaking briefly and then as, Daniel Miller tried to speak to the crowd, a window in the store was broken and Patrolman Shannon arrested Miller. Outnumbered as they were by the crowd, police made the arrest following the practice of focusing on the leaders of crowds. Other officers then cleared the crowds from in front of the store, moving them first across West 125th Street and then towards 7th avenues. Thompson testified that “police got rough and would not let anyone stop on the street” and wrote “the cops who were becoming ugly in their attempts to break up the increasing throngs of people.” About fifteen minutes later Patrolman Irwin Young, assisted by several other officers arrested Harry Gordon when he climbed a lamppost to speak to the crowd. They bundled him into a radio car and took him to the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street. Again, police were trying to control the crowd by arresting men they perceived to be leaders, possibly identifying them as Communists with whom they regularly clashed. They had not arrested Parton, the Black man who introduced both Miller and Gordon. A few minutes later, Patrolman Shannon, Sgt Bauer and Patrolman Moran were involved in arresting two white men and a Black man after they refused to stop picketing in front of Kress’ store. Those men carried placards that identified them as members of an organization associated with the Communist Party, which again likely contributed to the decision to arrest them.
After the arrests, police continued to move on people who stopped on the sidewalks around Kress’ store – and perhaps clear some who had gone into the street itself, as the New York Herald Tribune reported the street reopened after being blocked to automobiles and streetcars. By 7:00 PM, the crowds had been pushed to the avenues (some of those on 8th Avenue for a short time moved to attack the rear entrance of Kress’ store, where two police officers were hit by objects thrown by those trying to get into the store). Additional officers who arrived seem to have been key to that success. “15 patrolmen, six mounted police and uniformed men of five radio cars” were on 125th Street by that time according to the New York Evening Journal. Inspector Di Martini also returned, around 7:15 PM.
The Daily News published a photograph of the disorder that showed police officers engaging with crowds. The caption for the image, which captures the largest crowd to appear in a photograph of the disorder, described only the actions of one of the two uniformed patrolmen visible: "“The raincoated policeman swings in against the angry crowd as his comrade tries to hold the police line. One colored man is lifting his arm as if to restrain the cop.” The use of force captured here is at odds with Patrolman Moran's insistence that officers simply asked crowds to move. While uniformed patrolmen carried nightsticks as part of their standard equipment, detectives in plainclothes were issued them for riot duty, according to the New York Evening Journal. As well as hitting people with their batons, police officers used the butts of their revolvers and riot guns as clubs. The Times Union directly contradicted Moran's claim police did not use those weapons to move the crowds in front of the store: "Police night sticks swung and soon the mob was dispersed." Only the Daily News reported police fired their guns to move the crowd, describing with unlikely precision that five shots were fired in the air. Inspector Di Martini told a hearing of the MCCH that he heard no gunshots on 125th Street, so if those shots were fired it was before he arrived around 7:15 PM. The caption makes no mention of where the photograph was taken; the group appears to be on the sidewalk, perhaps near Kress’ store or later near 7th or 8th Avenue. Unmentioned is the horse’s head visible on the right side of image, indicating the presence of a mounted patrolman.
Mounted patrolmen, part of the police crowd control force, were reportedly deployed “to ride people off the sidewalk,” Louise Thompson testified. Lt. Battle told Langston Hughes that "an officer on a horse can be more effective than twenty patrolmen on foot," as the horses are "trained to brush a crowd back without stepping on anyone." When a reporter for the Afro-American arrived around 7:30 PM “mounted police rode the sidewalk [in front of the store] keeping the crowd back.” Charles Romney likewise told a hearing of the MCCH that he saw "men on horseback were on the sidewalk to trample people." The New York Times and Daily News opted to describe the mounted police in more sensational terms as ‘charging’ the crowds. In the New Masses, Thompson presented a similar picture, juxtaposing the mounted officers with women protesting in terms echoing those used by other Communists: “Brigades of mounted police cantered down the street, breaking into a gallop where the crowds were thickest. Horses' hoofs shot sparks as they mounted on the glass-littered pavements. The crowds fighting doggedly, gave way. The women more stubborn even than the men, shouted to their companions, "What kind of men are you-drag them down off those horses." The women shook their fists at the police. "Cossacks! Cossacks!" they shouted here in Harlem on 125th Street.” Years later, interviewed for her autobiography, Thompson identified many of the mounted patrolmen as Black officers and described the women as actually fighting with them. Another Afro-American journalist simply described the mounted police as "somewhat rough" during the early hours of the disorder. Whatever approach they took, it was mounted police that the Afro-American credited with keeping large groups away from Kress and on the avenues.
While police cleared 125th Street of large groups and stopped any more assembling there, they did not – or could not -- close it off. Instead, “they patrolled 124th and 125th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues constantly to prevent more groups from assembling,” the New York Herald Tribune reported. Thompson testified that she walked up and down 125th Street after the arrests, but was only able to stop and speak with members of groups on the corner of 8th Avenue. Charles Romney told a hearing of the MCCH that when he arrived on 125th Street around 7:30 PM, walking from Lenox to 7th Avenue, he “noticed a crowd of police with sticks on their hands telling the crowd to go on.” Given the small numbers of police, those patrols did not protect the stores on the block from attack: Thompson testified windows were broken in almost every store between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM (although she was away from the area from 7:30 PM to 8:00 PM); and Romney likewise testified that at 7:30 PM "there were a lot of windows smashed." The New York Herald Tribune reported the same timeline, that “by 8 p.m. one or more windows in virtually every 125th Street store front in the block had been smashed.” Around that time the situation began to change as additional officers arrived, reinforcements that made it possible for police to set up a perimeter around 125th Street and keep people away from the stores.
As with other events at the beginning of the disorder, the most detailed and consistent evidence is the testimony of individuals present on 125th Street in hearings of the MCCH. Newspaper stories were generally vague and inconsistent about how many police were on the scene at what times and how they responded to the crowds, and tended to exaggerate the size of the crowds and the number of people on the street. It does seem that credible that several hundred -- and perhaps as many as 2000-3000 people -- were in the area during this time, although not gathered in a single group. This was a larger number than gathered in any one place later in the disorder, contributing to the different way that police responded.
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Leaflets distributed
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The Young Liberators printed a one-page mimeographed leaflet in the early evening of March 19. Just where they distributed the leaflet is uncertain. "Some white youngsters were passing out handbills" when a reporter for the Afro-American arrived at 125th Street and 7th Avenue at 7:14 PM; Louise Thompson saw people with the leaflet on that corner just after 8:00 PM, suggesting a focus on 125th Street. “They were hurriedly passed put among the throngs of Negro idlers up and down teeming 125th Street,” according to the sensationalized story in Time magazine. The New York American claimed, “These papers received wide circulation throughout Harlem.” The leaflet was also pasted on building walls, according to the New York Evening Journal. Reading its text incited the crowds that had gathered on 125th Street, the police and District Attorney William Dodge claimed, making the Young Liberators, who they considered Communists, responsible for the disorder. The MCCH did not agree. Based on testimony from Louise Thompson that the leaflet did not appear on 125th Street until sometime between 7.30 PM and 8.00 PM, the MCCH final report concluded that the Young Liberators “were not responsible for the disorder and attacks on property which were already in full swing.” By 7.30 PM, “Already a tabloid in screaming headlines was telling the city that a riot was going on in Harlem,” the MCCH report also noted. Louise Thompson identified that newspaper as the Daily Mirror. Later on March 19, the CP distributed a leaflet, after the Young Liberators approached them concerned about the growing disorder, according to William Ford’s testimony in a MCCH public hearing. He said that leaflet was “written and distributed” about “9 or 10 o’clock.” Leaflets were still in circulation on Harlem’s streets around 2 AM. Sgt Samuel Battle told a public hearing of the MCCH he came into possession of two or three at that time, without specifying to which of the two leaflets he was referring.
Both leaflets identified Kress store staff as responsible for the violence against Rivera, with only passing mention of police. That narrative focused protests on the store, and white businesses, Bosses, more generally, rather than police, or the white population. In terms of that framework, attacks on Kress’ store, and on other white businesses later in the disorder, appear not straightforwardly attacks on property and economic power, but also as retaliation against violence by those who owned and worked in those businesses
A mimeographed page, the Young Liberators’ leaflet combined handwritten and typewritten text. At the top, the handwritten text read, “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman attacked by Boss and Cops = Child near DEATH.” The remaining typewritten text read:ONE HOUR AGO A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD NEGRO BOY WAS BRUTALLY BEATEN BY THE MANAGEMENT OF KRESS FIVE-AND-TEN-CENT STORE.
THE BOY IS NEAR DEATH
HE WAS MERCILESSLY BEATEN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT HE HAD ‘STOLEN’ A FIVE CENT KNIFE.
A NEGRO WOMAN WHO SPRANG TO THE DEFENSE OF THE BOY HAD HER ARMS BROKEN BY THESE THUGS AND WAS THEN ARRESTED.
WORKERS, NEGROES AND WHITE, PROTEST AGAINST THIS LYNCH ATTACK ON INNOCENT NEGRO PEOPLE. DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE BOY AND WOMAN.
DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE ARREST OF THE MANAGER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LYNCH ATTACK.
DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM.
JOIN THE PICKET LINE
ISSUED BY YOUNG LIBERATORS.
Predictably, the anti-Communist Hearst newspaper the New York Evening Journal gave the greatest space to the leaflet, publishing both the full text of the Young Liberators' leaflet and photographs of it (and the YCP leaflet and two placards carried by pickets, under the headline "Insidious Propaganda That Started Harlem Riot," and a front-page photograph of the men arrested protesting in front of Kress’ store). A portion of the Young Liberators' leaflet appeared in a combination of AP photographs published in several newspapers. In addition to the New York Evening Journal, the HN, WT and the New Republic published the text of the leaflet. The NYHT quoted only about half of the leaflet, stopping after the first use of “lynch attack.” None of those published versions of the circular included the final line, “JOIN THE PICKET.” That line did appear in the version published by the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the only Black publication in which the leaflets appeared. That line is visible in the photograph published in the NYEJ, was in the version of the leaflet in the MCCH’s final report, and was raised by Hays in the public hearing of the MCCH (Taylor answered that he did not know to what it referred [31]). The text published in the HN omitted the line DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM, substituting instead “Demand the hiring of Negro workers in Harlem department stores. Boycott the store." That phrase transposed the call not to buy in the store into the terms of boycott the campaigns of the previous year, effectively treating the tactic as having a single goal. The NYP quoted only the handwritten headline of the leaflet, the characterization of the incident as “this lynch attack,” and the call for protest. Time quoted only the headline, and the AA only the first two phrases from the headline, omitting “boss” so that the charge of violence was only against police. Quotations in the NYS were garbled versions of the actual leaflet text, including words and phrases that appeared but in the wrong form: "A Child Brutally Beaten." "A Twelve-Year-Old Child Was Brutally Beaten for Stealing a Knife from a Five and Ten Cent Store." "Workers Protest Against This Lynch Attack." The DN misreported the leaflet as making the more provocative charge that the boy had been beaten to death. Initial stories about the disorder published by the NYT and Am did not mention the leaflet, but added them to their narrative the next day, 3/21.
The CP leaflet, also a mimeographed page, similarly began with handwritten text that read, “FOR UNITY OF NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS! DON'T LET THE BOSSES START RACE RIOTS IN HARLEM!”. The typewritten portion went on:The brutal beating of the 12-year-old boy, Riviera, by Kress's special guard, for taking a piece of candy, again proves the increasing terror against the Negro people of Harlem. Bosses, who deny the most immediate necessities from workers' children, who throw workers out of employment, who pay not even enough to live on, are protecting their so-called property rights by brutal beatings, as in the case of the boy Riviera. They shoot both Negro and white workers in strikes all over the country. They lynch Negro people in the South on framed-up charges.
The bosses and police are trying to bring the lynch spirit right here to Harlem. The bosses would welcome nothing more than a fight between the white and Negro workers of our community, so that they may be able to continue to rule over both the Negro and white workers.
Our answer to the brutal beating of this boy, by one of the flunkies of Mr. Kress, must be an organized and determined resistance against the brutal attacks of the bosses and the police.
WORKERS, NEGRO AND WHITE: DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE DISMISSAL AND ARREST AND PROSECUTION OF THE SPECIAL GUARD AND THE MANAGER OF THE STORE.
DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS ARRESTED.
DEMAND THE HIRING OF NEGRO WORKERS IN ALL DEPARTMENT STORES IN HARLEM
DON'T LET BOSSES START ANY RACE RIOTS IN HARLEM.
DON'T TRADE IN KRESSES.
Issued by
Communist Party
Young Communist League
The Daily Worker published the CP leaflet text, while not publishing the Young Liberators' leaflet, perhaps because the public position of the Young Liberators was that the organization was not affiliated with the CP. The handwritten headline of that leaflet appeared at the end of a WT story, after the full-text of the Young Liberators' leaflet: “In another manifesto, signed by the Communist party and the Young Peoples’ League, a plea was made “for unity of Negro and white workers—don’t let the bosses start race riots in Harlem!” While the New York Evening Journal published a photograph of the leaflet, no other white newspapers reproduced the text, nor did it appear in the MCCH final report. The Norfolk Journal and Guide was the only Black publication in which the leaflet text appeared.
Initial newspaper stories reported that police said that the leaflets were responsible for moving the crowds on 125th Street to violence. The sensationalized version of that story employed metaphors of fire that placed the leaflets at the start of the disorder: leaflets were the “match which ignited Harlem and pitted its teeming thousands against the police and white spectators and shopkeepers” in the Daily News, “inflammatory handbills, the spark that fired the tinder” in Newsweek, and "inflame the populace" in a New York Age editorial; and in the NYS and DM leaflets fanned the crowd’s fury. The NYEJ opted for a more racist image evoking slavery, in which the leaflet was “largely responsible for whipping the Negroes to a frenzy.” The New York Age columnist the "Flying Cavalier," described the leaflets as as an example of the Communist "technique in the making up of their messages which would incite a lamb to jump on a tiger—if the lamb didn’t think first." Other newspapers framed the leaflets in terms of rumors: as having started the rumor in the NYHT, as “the chief agency which spread the rumor in the HN; and as having “helped spread resentment” in the NYP. (The WT described the leaflet without giving it a specific role; the “tinder for the destructive conflict” was the rumor that a boy had been beaten and killed, “assiduously spread by Communists.”) Writing in the New Republic, white journalist Hamilton Basso devoted two paragraphs to weighing the role the leaflet played in the disorder. He concluded that it “helped to rouse the crowds to violence,” but rejected the idea that the leaflet’s purpose “was deliberately to provoke a race riot” as requiring belief in “the stupid Red Scare of the Hearst press.”
The only direct evidence of when the Young Liberators' leaflet was distributed came from Louise Thompson. She told a public hearing of the MCCH that the leaflets were not in circulation when she left 125th Street around 7.30 PM. It was when Thompson returned around 8.00 PM that she “first saw the leaflet” in the hands of several people, but not anyone handing them out. Thompson was not a disinterested witness; as a member of the Communist Party she would not have wanted to see them held responsible for the disorder. L. T. Cole, who like Thompson had been inside Kress’ store after Rivera was grabbed but was not a Communist, told the MCCH he saw pamphlets in the crowd around 8.00 PM (the number is smudged in the transcript so that time is uncertain). Inspector Di Martini’s report supported that timeline, locating the appearance of “a number of pamphlets under the heading of the YL and YCP” after the crowd that gathered the rear of Kress’ store around 7.00 PM had been dispersed. Presumably that timing was based on the statements of officers on 125th Street -- but not Patrolman Moran, who told the MCCH he was on duty in front of Kress’ store from 6.00 PM throughout the night and did not see leaflets passed out. Copies of the leaflets were attached to the report. They may have been the copies that Sgt Battle told the MCCH public hearing that he had gathered near the end of the disorder, around 2 AM.
Newspaper stories presented a different timeline that had the leaflet appear earlier, around 6.00 PM, for which there was no direct evidence. The NYEJ and HN, the New York Post the next day, and the New Republic, reported that the Young Liberators' leaflet appeared about an hour after Kress’ staff grabbed Rivera, which would have been around 3.30 PM. When DA William Dodge spoke to reporters on March 20, the DN and WT (and Am 3/22) reported him as saying that the leaflets appeared within two hours of the incident in the store. No one at the scene described that timeline. It was likely based on the text of the leaflet, which read “One hour ago a twelve-year-old boy was brutally beaten by the management of Kress five-and-ten-cent store.” At that time, however, the Young Liberators were unaware of what had happened in the store. It was not until around 5.00 PM, as police were clearing people from Kress’ store, a black man brought news to the offices of the Young Liberators, James Taylor testified. Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, was asked about the timing referred to in the leaflet; he replied that he did not know whether that was correct.[29] The NYT story reporting Dodge’s comments had the “first of the Communist handbills” appear at 6:00 PM. That timeline is at least plausible; it would have been around an hour after the Young Liberators learned of an incident in Kress’ store. It was not, however, a timeframe that fitted with Di Martini’s report. The DN had the Young Liberators distributing the leaflets as they picketed Kress’ store, at a time not specified in the story. However, that detail is part of the truncated timeline police provided that had all five men they arrested arriving at Kress’ store at the same time, rather than separately over a period of forty-five minutes starting around 6.00 PM as testimony from those at the scene indicated. The pickets were the final protesters to arrive at Kress’ store, around 6.45 PM. Thompson saw them, so would have seen leaflets being distributed at that time.
William Ford’s testimony in a MCCH public hearing is the only evidence related to the origins and timing of the CP pamphlet. The CP leaflet appeared after members of the Young Liberators visited Ford, about an hour after distributing their leaflet, he testified. They “were very much disturbed” that “these leaflets had not been able to allay mass resentment in Harlem,” and instead “a rumor had got around that a race riot had started in Harlem.” The CP immediately produced a leaflet intended “to stop race rioting,” Ford testified, and he went to Harlem around 8 PM. The leaflet arrived an hour or two later, about “9 or 10 o’clock.” The MCCH report stated that that CP leaflet was issued “about the same time” as the YL’s leaflet. None of the newspapers mentioned the time that the leaflet was distributed.
District Attorney William Dodge and Police Commissioner Valentine both amplified the police narrative when they spoke to reporters on March 20 after Dodge appeared before the grand jury to seek indictments against alleged participants in the disorder. The leaflets remained central to that charge, and to the evidence that the authorities presented in an effort to substantiate it. Valentine summarized Di Martini’s “departmental report on the cause of the rioting” as detailing “that a Negro youth had been caught stealing, that a woman had screamed, that the "Young Liberators" had met, that they had thereafter disseminated "untruthful deceptive and inflammatory literature" and that all these events had been climaxed by the appearance of a hearse in the vicinity,” the NYS reported, a chronology also reported in the Am (3/22), WT, TU [3/21_LaG] and BDE. (The hearse is not the final element in Di Martini’s report; it is mentioned before the YLs). Two days later Dodge showed the grand jury a typewriter and mimeograph machine. The fruits of police raids on the offices of several organizations affiliated with the Communist Party, the machines were used to produce the YL’s leaflet, he told the grand jury, according to stories in HT, NYP, Am, DN, NYT. (The mimeograph machine was taken from the Nurses and Hospital Workers League, the organization which employed one of the men arrested for trying to speak in front of Kress’ store, Daniel Miller, the NYP and Am reported). According to the DN, after the grand jury examined that material, “Dodge said arrests might be expected momentarily.” There are no reports of any arrests related to the leaflets.
Mayor La Guardia did not echo the DA and Police Commissioner in directly blaming Communists for the disorder. While the statement he issued that was distributed and displayed in Harlem the evening after the disorder followed the same police narrative, and mentioned the leaflets, it did not present them as triggering the disorder. Instead, they were used to characterize those responsible: “The maliciousness and viciousness of the instigators are betrayed by the false statements contained in mimeographed handbills and placards.” That statement indirectly implicated the Young Liberators and Communist Party, who had signed the leaflets (as the DW noted, 3/21). However, the circular presented the disorder as “instigated and artificially stimulated by a few irresponsible individuals,” who went unnamed. Questioned by journalists, La Guardia "would not say whether he agreed with the police that the instigators were Communists," the New York Herald Tribune reported.
Newspaper stories about the MCCH public hearing treated the testimony regarding the time at which the leaflets appeared in a variety of ways. The HT and an editorial in the AN highlighted how that testimony undermined what police said in the aftermath of the disorder. “Reds' Handbills Are Cleared As 'Chief Cause' of Harlem Riot” was the headline of the HT story [3/31, 1], which reported that “The committee learned that the circulars did not appear on the streets until 8:30 p. m., fully two hours after the worst of the rioting was over. Therefore, the committee was asked by Communist lawyers to conclude that the literature could not have been a cause of much loss of property or life.” The title of the AN editorial, “The Road is Clear,” described the testimony that “The much-publicized Young Liberator pamphlets, carrying the false reports, did not appear on the streets until two hours after the worst rioting was over” as “one important fact” established by the MCCH. “With the red herring out of the way,” the editorial went on, “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. The NYA, HN, and NYT reported the testimony on when the leaflets appeared without addressing the implications of that evidence for the police narrative of the disorder. The Am and Daily News mentioned other aspects of Taylor’s testimony about the leaflet, but not when it was distributed, with the Daily News continuing to describe the leaflet as having "brought the riot into being." No mention of testimony about the leaflet appeared in stories about the hearing in the WT, TU, NYP, and NYEJ. In other words, the anti-communist Hearst newspapers that had given the most attention to the leaflets did not respond to the testimony at odds with their narrative.
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2021-11-12T19:41:03+00:00
Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant windows broken
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2022-03-25T22:29:56+00:00
A branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain at 200 West 125th Street is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 116th Street, Lenox Avenue and West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. After walking north on Lenox Avenue from West 116th Street, the reporter turned left on West 125th Street, walking west toward Kress' store where the disorder originated. They did not name this business, including it as a restaurant on the west corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue ("Restaurant, esquina oeste de la calle 125 y Séptima Ave."). The MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935 identified a white-owned restaurant at 200 West 125th Street that was a branch of Chock Full O'Nuts. Louise Thompson mentioned the "Nut Store" on the southwest corner of 125th St and 7th Avenue in recounting her movements during the disorder to the MCCH hearing, as a landmark that located where her group was standing, and a business she went into later that evening. The reporter would not have been referring to the northwest of 7th Avenue; a branch of the United Cigar chain was on that corner.
The Businesses on the other three corners of the intersection also had windows broken during the disorder. The United Cigar store and Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the northeast corner were guarded by police and protected from looting, while Regal Shoes on the southeast corner was reported looted. Police trying to clear people from West 125th Street around Kress' store to the west had pushed the crowd toward this intersection, creating large crowds, some of who broke away and threw objects at the windows of stores on 7th Avenue. After 9.00 PM, emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection, as part of the perimeter Inspector McAuliffe ordered police to establish around the main business blocks of the street, from 8th to Lenox Avenues, from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror, New York Herald Tribune and Pittsburgh Courier. The presence of such large numbers of police does appear to have resulted in only isolated looting of stores on the corners and the two surrounding blocks of West 125th Street even if it came too late to protect store windows.
No one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows. There is no Tax Department photograph of the southwest corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue taken between 1939 and 1941. A store entrance with a triangular pediment (which may have been a feature of Chock Full O'Nuts luncheonettes, is visible in the photograph of 202 West 125th Street, but no details of the store can be made out.