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Public Hearings - Riot (May 1935), 22, Subject Files, Box 410, Folder 7 (Roll 195), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
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2022-07-14T17:02:48+00:00
Police find Lino Rivera
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2024-01-29T16:32:22+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, police tried to locate Lino Rivera so they could show that he had not been killed or beaten. Chief Inspector Seely ordered the boy be located, according to the New York Times, which indicated that those efforts started after 9:00 PM when senior officers took charge of the police response. However, the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Times, Times Union, and Afro-American newspapers simply reported that police searched for Rivera throughout the night. They were unable to find him because the home address they had was incorrect: 272 Morningside Avenue rather than 272 Manhattan Avenue. (The New York Age story written early in the disorder included the incorrect address.) The Daily News reported that “the mistake was made” when Eldridge gave the address to an officer at the West 123rd Street station over the telephone — not that he had misrecorded the address as the New York Herald Tribune reported or that Rivera had given a false address as the Home News reported. According to Louise Thompson, a group of women who had tried to locate Rivera at the beginning of the disorder also had the wrong address, although one on the correct street: 410 Manhattan Avenue. Joe Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, also heard a rumor that Rivera lived at 410 Manhattan Avenue and went to investigate around 7:30 PM.
At 1:30 AM, Officer Eldridge was woken at his home on Whitlock Avenue in the Bronx by a telephone call telling him to report to the Chief Inspector at the West 123rd Street station, he told a hearing of the MCCH. The police officers who had been at the Kress store, Eldridge and Patrolman Donahue, had gone off duty at 4:00 PM. Until he was woken, Eldridge thought Rivera had been arrested and was unaware of what was happening in Harlem. He was able to go directly to Rivera’s home, arriving around 2:00 AM. He found him asleep, according to his testimony. The boy had not been there all night, as initially reported in the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun, but had gone out around 9:00 PM. Rivera had a cup of coffee and returned home after about twenty-five minutes because he "saw there was a lot of trouble around,” the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported. Rivera said Eldridge told him people thought he was dead, the New York World Telegram and New York Herald Tribune reported.
Eldridge took Rivera to the West 123rd Street station. Only the New York Sun described Rivera as “blubbering and frightened.” Rivera told a reporter for the New York World Telegram that he was at the station for about half an hour. During that time, police questioned him, he spoke with reporters and was photographed with Lt. Battle and Officer Eldridge. Newspaper stories that quoted his statements mentioned that he spoke to two different officers, Kear, according to the Daily News, and Captain Oliver, according to the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun. Battle told the MCCH that he asked Rivera “if he had been hurt by anyone and had he been arrested.” The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Sun, and New York American published separate stories about Rivera’s statements. The Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and Atlanta World appended his statements to larger stories on the disorder. Reporters also interviewed and photographed Rivera at his home later on March 20. The New York World Telegram, New York Herald Tribune, and La Prensa published separate stories based on those interviews, while the New York Times included Rivera in a larger story.
Inspector Di Martini took credit for having Battle appear in the images. “It was my idea to get Lieut. Battle to pose with the boy and get the picture into the streets as soon as possible,” he told a hearing of the MCCH. Battle said the reason Rivera posed with him was “for the moral effect.” Not made explicit in either statement was that having the boy photographed with a Black police officer added to the credibility of the image and cut across the racial divisions expressed in the disorder. “A lot” of pictures were taken, Rivera told a MCCH hearing, but only six different published images have been identified. An Associated Press photo that showed Battle seated with his arm around Rivera, who was standing, was published in the New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Sun. Rivera was only 4 feet 8 inches tall according to the New York Herald Tribune, so that pose put the two on the same level. Their height difference was visible in an image of them standing in the same pose taken by an International Photo Agency photographer. That difference was further emphasized in the photograph of this pose published in the Daily Mirror in which Battle is looking down at Rivera. (The Daily Worker took offense at Battle having "his arm protectively around" Rivera as the "Harlem masses...know that Battles would kill a worker on the slightest excuse.") Photographs taken by the International Photo Agency and Daily News revealed that Eldridge was on the other side of Rivera in both poses. Eldridge did not have an arm around Rivera, as Battle did, so was detached from their grouping. A second Black officer added to message Di Martini wanted to send. However, Battle was in uniform and well known as the senior Black police officer in New York City, while Eldridge was in plainclothes, a suit and tie, and not a public figure. It was likely on that basis that some photographers and editors decided not to include Eldridge. An ANS photo showed Rivera and Battle standing surrounded by white reporters, looking at a camera to their left. Where the other photographs showed Rivera unharmed, in contradiction of the rumors circulating in Harlem, the ANS image presented him as telling his story. Rivera, dressed in a leather jacket, is smiling in all the photographs. Photographed at home later that day, Rivera wore a suit and tie because he said his mother suggested he “dress for the picture." In the image published in the New York Evening Journal, he shows a pensive expression rather than smiling. (The New York Times reporter who visited Rivera at home described him as "a dejected figure," "overwhelmed by the fact that his desire for a ten-cent knife had precipitated the riot and resultant bloodshed.")
If the primary purpose of finding Rivera was to show that he was alive and unharmed, his appearance at the police station also brought some consistency to reports about the identity of the boy who had been in Kress' store. 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" and the leaflets their organization distributed an hour later later described a "12 year old Negro boy." The first newspaper stories published appear to have relied on those rumors and leaflets in describing the boy; with neither Eldridge nor Donahue still on duty, police apparently did not have more precise information until Rivera was found. 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. Other stories in Black newspapers 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 and New York World-Telegram, or a "Puerto Rican youth" in the New York Herald Tribune and Times Union. The New York World-Telegram 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.")
Police found Rivera too late for his appearance to impact the disorder, although it may have contributed to the violence not continuing the next evening. However, the delays in locating him fed rumors that he was not in fact the boy grabbed in Kress’ store. Reflecting questions raised in hearings, the MCCH report noted that, “The final dramatic attempt on the part of police to placate the populace by having the unharmed Lino Rivera photographed with the Negro police lieutenant Samuel Battle only furnished the basis for the rumor that Rivera, who was on probation for having placed a slug in a subway turnstile, was being used as a substitute to deceive people.” After members of the MCCH met with Mayor La Guardia soon after their appointment, on March 22, the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun both reported that “some” of them said that many in Harlem did not believe that Lino Rivera was the boy who had been caught in the Kress store. (Stories about the meeting in the New York Times, New York Post, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Daily Worker included no mention of those comments.) An Afro-American journalist reported the rumors before the first hearing of the MCCH: “At the present time Harlem is divided into those who has been presented by the police as the boy in the case, is not the boy who was beaten in the store. They declare that Lino is being paid off to be the scapegoat and a camouflage....The AFRO reporter has run scores of tips about the boy who actually stole the knife, or a bag of jelly-beans, as it was first given out. Everything so far has run up a blind alley. One clue to the real boy is that all during the riot he was referred to as a 12-year-old boy, but became a 16-year-old one with the finding of Lino Riviera." The New York Age hinted at those rumors when it described Rivera as “believed to have been the cause of the whole affair.” Writing in The New Masses, Louise Thompson reported that a man and woman who had been in the store said Rivera was older and taller than the boy they saw. Other publications did not raise the issue. However, as the Afro-American journalist predicted, questions about Rivera were raised in a hearing of the MCCH. In the first hearing, Police Lieutenant Battle was asked, "Is there any evidence that would indicate that Rivera is not the boy? There has been such rumor." He simply answered, "No." L. F. Cole, a thirty-year-old Black clerk who had been in the Kress store, also testified that he had "no doubt" that Rivera was the boy he had seen taken away by police. The question was raised again at the third hearing on April 20. Mention that he had been on parole after being caught putting slugs in a subway turnstile prompted an interjection from "Mrs. Burrows": "My impression is that this boy is not the boy. We have testimony here that he got into trouble before March 19th, 1935. They had a boy under supervision. This is not the boy. They got a boy through these people and this is the boy they presented." Hays, chairing the hearing, pushed the ILD lawyers for evidence that another boy was beaten in the store. They had found none nor could they establish that Rivera had received lenient treatment. A month later, Jackson Smith, the store manager, confirmed in the subcommittee's final hearing that Rivera was the boy he saw from the office, with Donahue and again outside the grand jury room after the disorder. After listening to several questions trying to undermine the certainty of that identification, Hays announced "there is no question about it." Given the lack of evidence to the contrary, there is no reason to think Rivera was not person grabbed in the store. The shoppers who saw him in the store could have assumed he was younger, given his height. Similarly, seeing that he was dark-skinned, they could have assumed he was a Black rather than Puerto Rican.
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2023-02-09T20:01:58+00:00
Dodge grand jury hearing, March 21 (12)
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2024-01-23T20:02:05+00:00
With only a handful of those arrested during the riot arraigned in the Magistrates Court on March 21, the focus of the press shifted downtown to District Attorney Dodge’s grand jury investigation. As grand jury proceedings were closed, no details of the evidence presented were available to reporters, and only how many individuals the jurors voted to indict, not their names. Partly as a result, statements Dodge made to the assembled reporters dominated the stories. That he focused attention and blame for the disorder on Communists resulted in particularly prominent stories in the city’s anti-Communist newspapers. Among the Black newspapers, only the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide published any details of Dodge’s claims, while both the Amsterdam News and New York Age quoted editorials rejecting the idea that Communists were responsible for the disorder.
The first day of District Attorney Dodge’s grand jury investigation was widely reported in New York City’s white daily newspapers. Twenty-six witnesses appeared before the grand jury that day according to the New York American, Daily News, New York World-Telegram, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Home News; three other publications reported a different number, 25 witnesses in the New York Evening Journal, and 30 witnesses in the New York Post, New York Sun and Times Union (the Daily Mirror did not mention witnesses). According to the New York Post, more than seventy additional witnesses were in attendance, likely responding to the subpoenas sent the previous day. The New York Sun reported that Assistant District Attorney Saul Price questioned a number of those witnesses before the grand jury convened at 10:30 AM. The witnesses were described as mostly policemen in the New York Times and New York World-Telegram, and as a mix of policemen and Black witnesses by the New York Post, New York American, and Times Union, which all included the detail that the police were bandaged.
Several newspapers identified Lino Rivera as among the witnesses. ADA Saul Price questioned Rivera (before the grand jury convened at 10:30 AM, according to the New York Sun), with photographs of the pair sitting at a desk published in the Daily Mirror, New York American, and New York Evening Journal. Price told the assembled reporters that a threatening postcard had been sent to the boy’s home. It read: "Get out of this city or we will burn you alive. Fair Warning." The threat and text of the postcard were reported by the New York Sun, New York Evening Journal, Times Union, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Daily Mirror, and New York American. The New York Post and New York Times simply mentioned Rivera as “among the witnesses,” without noting the threat. No mention of the boy appeared in the New York World-Telegram. Price also told reporters he had placed Rivera under the supervision of Patrolman Eldridge of the Crime Prevention Bureau (the New York Evening Journal described him as also a “guard” for Rivera, the Times Union as assigned to Rivera as “safety measure;" the Daily Mirror reported a police guard for Rivera without mentioning Eldridge). The Daily News published a photograph of Rivera and Eldridge leaving the building. While the New York Times and Home News included Rivera among the twenty-six witnesses who appeared before the grand jury and the New York Evening Journal reported that he “testified,” other newspaper stories did not include him in those proceedings. The Daily News story had Rivera dismissed when Dodge left for the grand jury. The Times Union reported he would be called before the grand jury. No mention of Rivera testifying appeared in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, Daily Mirror, and New York American. Later, Jackson Smith, the manager of the Kress store, told a hearing of the MCCH that he had sat beside Rivera “before we went in to the Grand Jury room.” It is not clear on what day that happened.
Dodge himself presented the cases to the grand jury, despite assigning that role to ADA Price the previous day, a change only the New York Post noted. Dodge and Price spent much of the day in the grand jury with the result that the body voted for seven indictments charging twelve individuals. While the New York Post, and New York Times reported only the number of people indicted, the New York American, New York Evening Journal, Daily Mirror, Times Union, Daily News, New York World-Telegram, New York Sun, and New York Herald Tribune also mentioned the crimes with which they had been charged: inciting riot in the case of five men, assault in the case of two others, and burglary for the remaining five men. (The next day Dodge announced he had decided not to prosecute the men charged with rioting in the Court of General Sessions, for a felony, but instead in the Court of Special Sessions, for a misdemeanor, according to stories in the New York Sun, Times Union, and New York World-Telegram.) While the seventeen men indicted as a result of Dodge's investigation can be identified, either by notes in the court docket book or in the testimony of ADA Kaminsky at the first public hearing of the MCCH, which of those men were in that group is not clear. Certainly those charged with riot included Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators, the only group indicted together for riot, who were all prosecuted in the Court of Special Sessions, as Dodge intimated they were the men indicted on this date. However, none of the others identified as indicted by Dodge's grand jury are recorded as charged with riot. While the two indictments for assault reported on this date were the only ones for that offense reported as resulting from Dodge's investigation, three men identified as indicted in that process were charged with assault: James Hughes, Isaac Daniels, and Douglas Cornelius. Any of the ten men in the group charged with burglary could have been indicted on this day.
Dodge spoke to the reporters before and after he went into the grand jury, and again after he later met with police officials. Those statements and responses to questions from reporters expanding on his claim the previous day that Communists were responsible for the disorder dominated stories about the grand jury, reported in varying detail and emphasis by different publications. A handful of newspapers noted that Dodge’s statements came at different times; most simply combined them in some way.
On his way into the grand jury, according to the New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal, Dodge told reporters: “The Reds have been boring into our institutions for a long time, but when they begin to incite to riot it is time to stop them.” "They have been safe because we are sticklers for free speech, but when that free speech undermines our laws and causes riots drastic action must be taken.” Those were Dodge’s most widely reported statement, in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, Daily News, New York American, New York Herald Tribune, Daily Mirror, and New York Sun. The New York Evening Journal, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, and New York Post added, “We must stiffen our laws.” Only the Daily Mirror reported Dodge suggesting that as “dealing with rioters on the basis of their having committed misdemeanors is not practical” an alternative would be to use Sect. 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which provided a sentence of ten years for those advocating the overthrow of organized government by force or violence.” Given the reaction provoked when Dodge made the same call several days later, it is unlikely that would have gone unreported by other publications. (A reporter from the New York American raised the use of this statute in questions posed to Commissioner Valentine after he left a meeting with Dodge later in the day.)
In seeking action against those involved in the disorder, Dodge also argued that those found guilty should be removed from Home Relief rolls and if aliens, deported. He would make those recommendations to the Mayor and the Home Relief Bureau and Commission of Immigration respectively. The New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and New York Sun reported those proposals; they were not mentioned, somewhat surprisingly, in the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal, New York American, and Daily Mirror, that otherwise amplified Dodge’s anti-communism.
Some of the charges Dodge made against the Communist Party were also absent from the three Hearst newspapers. They did not join the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun in reporting that Dodge said, “Half the troubles in labor unions are caused by Reds.” However, the New York Evening Journal together with the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Times Union, New York Times, did report his charge that Communists had sent threatening letters to judges. The Times Union named General Sessions Judge Joseph E. Corrigan, Judge Otto A. Rosalsky, and Edward R. Finch as recipients, the New York Post Corrigan and Rosalsky, the New York Evening Journal Corrigan and Finch, the New York Times only Finch, and the New York World-Telegram just “various judges.”
Dodge’s claims were staple anti-Communist charges. The New York Post reporter recognized them as such, noting that the “inquiry threatened to turn into a red-baiting campaign.” That prospect concerned the New York Herald Tribune, which saw "red-baiting" as one of "passions, fears and follies" that the disorder could incite, and wished that Dodge had restrained himself from "making allegations and proclaiming crusades." A New York Sun editorial (reprinted in the New York Age on March 30) was more dismissive of Dodge’s charges commenting that “seeing red is an official privilege, diversion and avocation at the moment; no disorder can occur without being attributed to those terror-inspiring Communists whose shadows darken the sky at noonday.” So too was a story in the Afro-American later in the week, which asserted that “Colored goody, goodies—ministers, social workers, et al—who are whooping it up that last week’s rioting was the work of Communists, and who are ready to deny freedom of speech to 'radicals who come to Harlem,' are, right now, a greater menace to Harlem than the Reds.”
After Dodge left the grand jury, the Daily News, New York Times, New York American, New York Herald Tribune and Home News reported he made a more specific claim about the Communist role in the disorder. "We have evidence that within two hours after that boy stole a knife the Reds had placed inflammatory leaflets on the streets. We know who printed those leaflets and where they were printed.” That allegation echoed what police had told reporters in the immediate aftermath of the disorder; those papers that did not include it in their stories may not have seen it as new information.
Following a meeting with several police leaders, including Commissioner Valentine, that lasted around an hour and a half, Dodge returned to his broad attacks on Communists. While the New York American and Home News stories suggested a statement (and the New York American reported slightly different wording), the New York Times reported Dodge as responding to questions from reporters. Dodge likely announced his plan to have the grand jury undertake a city-wide investigation of radical agitators. It was in answer to a question as to whether that investigation would be focused on Communists that Dodge asserted, "I am not interested in the labels by which they are known. We are interested in any people, no matter what they call themselves, who believe and advocate the overthrow of the Government.” He went on, “A challenge has been thrown down to law and order, and the Grand Jury, the District Attorney and the Police Department have accepted that challenge.” Despite repeated questions, he declined to offer further details. That it was late in the day by the time the meeting was over likely contributed to how few papers reported; other reporters had left.
Despite the unity of purpose Dodge claimed with the police department, Commissioner Valentine did not echo the DA’s plans to target Communists. He took the opportunity of appearing before reporters to announce a summary of the report Inspector Di Martini had submitted about the disorder. The New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York World-Telegram, and New York Times reported Valentine pointed to four causes for the disorder: "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," as summarized by the New York Sun. The New York Times and Home News offered slightly longer summaries that described the woman who screamed as “hysterical” and the appearance of the hearse as “accidental.” The Daily Mirror mentioned only the role of the Young Liberators and the appearance of the hearse, quoting Valentine as saying that he believed “that the hearse which drew up in front of the store Tuesday was part of the plot.” The remaining reports of Valentine’s statements in the New York Post, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Daily Worker described him as simply blaming Communists for the disorder. The New York Post, New York Evening Journal, Times Union, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily News made no mention of Valentine's statement in their stories.
The reporter for the New York American also put a series of “written” questions to Valentine reflecting the newspaper’s anti-Communist agenda, asking: “Why are Communists allowed to roam in Harlem?"; "Why was the situation allowed to get out of control?"; and "Why were no steps taken to invoke the penal law regarding advocacy of criminal anarchy?” Only the New York Times joined the New York American in including his answers in its story, publishing more extensive answers to some questions, with the New York Evening Journal following suit the next day, while the New York Post summarized those answers as Valentine indicating “that his men would be careful not to violate constitutional rights of agitators.” Valentine had answered that the Constitution gave Communists the right to assemble, that the situation did not get out of control, and that there had been arrests under the criminal anarchy statute but “It is difficult to convict under this section. The smart fellow does not advocate anarchy. He is very cautious not to overstep himself."
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2022-01-31T20:16:15+00:00
Crowd inside Kress 5, 10 & 25c store
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2024-01-19T01:39:32+00:00
After Patrolman Donahue released Lino Rivera and then himself left Kress’ store around 3:30 PM, groups of shoppers remained. They wanted to know what had happened to the boy and to see that he had not been harmed. Over the next two hours, the manager and several police officers unsuccessfully tried to reassure them and others who came into the store to investigate what was happening. During that time Clara Crowder, a twenty-year-old white clerk, fainted and was attended by an ambulance, and Margaret Mitchell, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, was arrested for disorderly conduct. Sometime around 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM, the manager decided to close the store, and police cleared out all those inside.
Events inside Kress 5, 10 & 25c store after Lino Rivera had been grabbed by store staff moved far more slowly than newspaper narratives portrayed. Whereas reporters strung together the specific incidents they identified into a tight sequence, testimony to the MCCH’s public hearings provided additional information that spread those events over almost two hours.
The Black women and a few men who remained in the store did not immediately start shouting and overturning displays, nor was Margaret Mitchell immediately arrested. They gathered in small groups of two or three. A few minutes after Donahue had released Rivera and left the store, Smith, the manager, as he told a public hearing of the MCCH, had become concerned about their presence and went to the shop floor to investigate. “Some women were going around saying a boy had been beaten, an ambulance had come and she knew it. I went to two groups trying to explain to them that nothing had happened to cause any excitement.” Having no success, Smith went out to 125th Street, where he found Patrolman Miller, a Black officer who had earlier called for the ambulance to treat Hurley and Urban, who he asked to “come in and see if he could not explain to those people.” The women “didn’t pay much attention” to Miller. By 4:00 PM, “the thing was getting to be worse,” Smith testified. That likely meant both that the number of people inside and outside that store was growing, and that, as Thompson later described happening inside the store, as they waited for proof the boy had not been harmed, “patience began to give way to indignation. Their voices rose.” Smith found additional police on 125th Street. Patrolman Timothy Shannon arrived in the store at 4:00 PM. By 4:20 PM he decided he needed to call for radio cars with additional police officers, who arrived within five minutes. Those officers had no more success than those before convincing the women and men in the store that Rivera had been let go, the message Hurley said they were delivering. Ten minutes later, Smith called the station and told them “the thing was beginning to get out of control and to do something.” Like the manager of the neighboring Woolworth's store, he clearly felt "under considerable tension" when a "commotion takes place with a [Black] customer." Sgt Bauer was sent. At some point Shannon claimed that he formed a committee of three shoppers, two men and one woman, whom he took to the basement to see that Rivera was not there, and then went with “from one crowd to another but they would not listen.” No other witness or source mentioned such a committee, and Shannon could not identify its members.
The situation had not improved after 4:30 PM, when Smith testified the number of people in the store had grown to around 100, and Sgt Bauer told him, “'I don’t know what we can do.' We didn’t want to start a riot. We didn’t want to excite them.” Smith decided that he needed to close the store and called the police station again and “pleaded for enough men to close the doors without causing trouble.” Around the same time, Louise Thompson, a Black Communist activist and journalist with many friends among the authors and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, entered the store. She had been shopping at the Woolworth’s store further along 125th Street when she saw groups of people gathered on the sidewalk. Asking around to find out what was going on, a man told her “something was going on in the store and that a boy was beaten,” she testified. Thompson then went into Kress’, which she would describe later in her autobiography as a store “where you have all of these small counters throughout the store,” and found “little clusters of people standing here and there in the store,” with “most of the girls behind the counter ... still in their places but no floor-walkers or officials were in evidence,” she wrote in a version of her testimony published in the New Masses. Approaching the largest group, standing by the candy counter, Thompson learned that they believed a boy had been beaten up by store staff, and that they intended to “stand here until they produce him.”
More police officers then arrived and went to the rear of the store, where Smith’s office was located, Thompson wrote. They were the additional officers that the manager had had requested. At this time, Smith told a public hearing, he closed the store doors. His testimony was that happened at 5:30 PM, but other evidence suggests that Smith might have been mistaken about the time. Around 5 PM, Clara Crowder, a twenty-year-old white clerk, fainted while “aiding another employee,” according to the records of the ambulance that attended her. That ambulance, the second sent to the store, arrived at 5:05 PM. Thompson testified that she was outside on West 125th Street when she saw it arrive, having been one of the last to leave the closed store. It seems likely that Crowder was behind a counter, and fainted during the struggles between the people in the store and police that began after a woman inside the store screamed and pots, pans and glasses were knocked off displays. Smith testified that damage happened as the door was closed. Thompson also described hearing the closing bell as part of the noise in the store in her article in New Masses.
Jackson Smith and Patrolman Timothy Shannon testified that a woman screamed and knocked merchandise off counters after the store was closed, but only Thompson described the circumstances that produced that noise. She did not see the woman who screamed, but was part of the crowd who rushed to where the noise came from, the rear of the store. Police there pushed those women and men back and refused to answer when women asked “if the boy was injured and where he is,” Thompson wrote in New Masses. The officers also “began to get rough.” A woman with an umbrella retaliated; she either hit an officer, according to Thompson’s testimony, or “knocked over a pile of pots and pans,” according to her article. Many of those in the store rushed to leave once the noise and struggles with police began, both Thompson and Smith testified. It is likely that it was around this time that police in the store arrested Margaret Mitchell, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, although none of those who testified about this period of time in the store mentioned the arrest. Police charged her with “throwing pans on floor and causing crowd to collect,” according to Inspector Di Martini’s report on the disorder. It was only once the store was closed that merchandise was knocked off displays, according to the testimony of those in the store.
A small number of people resisted leaving the store, “refusing to move until they got some information about the boy,” Thompson wrote. Gradually police officers pushed them too out of the store; Thompson was one of the last to leave, about half an hour after she entered. On the street at that time, she testified, were several hundred people, most “in front of the Apollo Theatre,” opposite Kress’ store across 125th Street. By the time Inspector Di Martini, in charge of the four precincts that made up the Sixth Division, arrived at 5:40 PM, to investigate the reports of disorder, the store was closed and only a few employees remained inside. He interviewed Jackson Smith and Charles Hurley, he testified. “After finding out that no assault had been committed and thinking that something might occur, I stationed Sergeant Bauer, two foot policeman, one mounted policeman in the rear to prevent a riot.” Di Martini then spent some time talking to groups of people gathered on West 125th Street, telling them Rivera had not been beaten. As he saw no “indications of further trouble,” the inspector testified that he left around 6:00 PM.
Newspaper narratives truncated the extended standoff between the Black women and men and store staff and police into a rapid sequence of events, eliding the role of Black residents’ distrust of a police force that routinely disregarded their rights and subjected them to violence in fueling the disorder. The New York American, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, Daily News, and Daily Mirror included none of the events in the store in their narratives of the disorder, jumping from Rivera being grabbed to the crowds outside Kress’ store. Those in the store, reported to be mostly Black women, began to damage displays immediately after Rivera had been taken to the basement in the narratives published in the Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, and La Prensa. The New York Times, New York Sun, and Time greatly inflated the size of that crowd, from 50 to 500 customers. The Home News reported they “started to wreck the store, pulling dishes off of the counters and, in some instances, tipping over tables on which merchandise was displayed,” the New York Times that they “went on the rampage, overturning counters, strewing merchandise on the floor and shouting,” La Prensa that “All the people of color who were in the store at the time began to throw all the articles that were on the tables to the floor and to shout in protest.” The New York Sun opted for the most sensational language, that they “had been galvanized into a frenzy of sabotage. Glass in the counters was shattered, tables overturned and merchandise torn and hurled about.” By contrast, the New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily Worker (on March 29) reported crowds jamming the store after rumors about a boy being beaten or killed circulated, demanding he be released (the Daily Worker had earlier reported, on March 21, the involvement of a member of the ILD, Reggie Thomas, in leading the women’s protest. He was not mentioned in subsequent stories, and did not testify in the MCCH public hearings, suggesting that he was not in fact present in the store.) Patrolman Shannon was identified by the New York Times and New York Sun as one of the police officers who investigated what was happening in the store, and summoned the reinforcements who cleared the store (Time identified him as "an Irish policeman;" the New York Evening Journal and New York American mentioned Shannon arresting Miller.) The Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Evening Journal simply had police notified, then appearing and clearing the store.
The second ambulance that arrived at the store, to attend Clara Crowder, was mentioned only in the Daily News. That story somewhat vaguely claimed that the appearance of the ambulance inflamed rumors that Rivera had been killed. The New York Herald Tribune also mentioned Crowder was attended by an ambulance, but mistakenly identified it as the same one that had come to attend Hurley and Urban. That ambulance had returned to Harlem Hospital two hours earlier. Similarly, the Home News and La Prensa reported Margaret Mitchell as being arrested in Kress’ store, but identified her as having intervened when Rivera was grabbed. The Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, and New York Evening Journal (and New York Times on March 24) reported Mitchell was arrested having run screaming into 125th Street immediately after Rivera had been grabbed. Only the New York Sun’s story allowed for Mitchell’s arrest to be later, as the store was being closed: “The woman whose cries that the boy had been murdered, rekindled the vandalism after the police had succeeded in quenching it earlier in the evening, is Margaret Mitchell, 18, of 283 West 150th street. Her cry was taken up and passed to the milling crowd outside the store.” The next day, in reporting Mitchell’s arraignment in the Harlem Magistrate’s Court, the Home News combined its description of her trying to intervene when Rivera was grabbed with the later events mentioned in Di Martini’s report. While reiterating that she “attempted to take the Rivera boy from the department store detectives and cried out that the guards were beating the youth,” the story added that after Rivera had been taken to the basement, she was “urging other colored people in the store to demand the release of the boy, started throwing merchandise to the floor and upset many of the counter displays.”
The historians who have described these events have not identified the leading role played by women in protests inside Kress’ store, even as the MCCH report noted that the shoppers in the store were women. Mark Naison, Thomas Kessner, and Marilynn Johnson summarized events in the store, adding details about merchandise being thrown on the floor from newspaper stories to the narrative in the MCCH report. Cheryl Greenberg simply described the crowd as having dispersed, discounting protests in the store. So too did Lorrin Thomas, who attributed that response to the arrest of a woman for “inciting the disturbance,” implicitly making that arrest occur soon after Rivera was released, not later when police cleared the store. (No other narratives mention that arrest). Naison identified those involved as "black shoppers," while Kessner identified two Black women as crying out, but not who else was in the crowd. The other historians simply referred to crowds. Jonathan Gill and Nicole Watson include no details of events inside the store in their descriptions of the events at the beginning of the disorder. That the shoppers in Kress' store were women is unsurprising given the gendered nature of consumption in the 1930s. However, the role of those women in the early stages of the disorder is more unexpected given historians' attention to men's role in initial outbreaks of violence. As Marilynn Johnson has pointed out, women's experiences in the racial disorders of the first half of the twentieth century extended beyond that looting with which they were associated in the 1960s to include not just being victims of violence but also protectors. Where Johnson's examples of women acting in that role were trying to protect family or loved ones from white violence, in 1935 Black women sought to protect a boy unrelated to them. While, as Johnson notes, those actions were within societal expectations of women's roles, they did represent a broader scope, echoing the extension of women's role in consumption to include the political act of picketing white businesses the previous year. In Kress' store, Black women once again stood up to white businessmen.