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"RAGES: Mischief Out of Misery," Time, 25, 13 (April 1935).
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2020-03-11T21:54:28+00:00
Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted
157
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2022-12-23T00:58:36+00:00
When Charles Hurley, a floorwalker, and Kress' store detective confronted Lino Rivera, an unemployed sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican boy, about stealing a pocketknife in Kress’ store, and started pushing him out of the store, the boy bit the hands of Hurley and a white window dresser who came to their aid, Steve Urban. Although having initially indicated that they wanted Rivera charged with assault, the two men ultimately did not ask police to arrest him. The incident is treated here as an assault as the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American and Daily News listed the two men among the injured.
As the incident between Rivera and the store staff triggered the disorder, it was widely reported in the press and a topic investigated by the MCCH. This analysis relies on testimony given in MCCH public hearings, by far the most complete and detailed evidence. Newspaper narratives varied in detail, consistently reporting only that a boy had been grabbed by store staff for taking merchandise, and later released, but omitting most other details. Several white newspapers also published separate stories based on statements made by Rivera at the West 123rd Station during the disorder or at his home the next day that included additional details of why he was in the store and his encounter with the store staff but not of subsequent events in the store.
Rivera had begun the day by taking the subway to Brooklyn, in pursuit of job as an errand boy, he told reporters for the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. Finding the job already filled, he returned to Harlem. Getting off the subway at West 125th Street, Rivera decided to go to a show or movie at one of the theaters that lined the street, perhaps at the Apollo Theater opposite Kress' store, as a story in the New York Evening Journal claimed. When the show ended, Rivera went into Kress' store, a detail also reported in the New York Sun. He said he did so because he had "nothing to do," according to the New York Post, "just to look around I guess," according to the New York World-Telegram, or "to walk through to 124th Street," according to the New York American, "to take a short cut home," according to the New York Herald Tribune. Testifying in a public hearing of the MCCH, Hurley, a twenty-eight-year-old white resident of the Bronx, said he was with the store manager Jackson Smith in an office overlooking the rear of the store when he saw Rivera take a pocketknife from a counter around 2.30 PM. Calling down to the store detective, he pointed out Rivera and then headed to the floor himself. Rivera later admitted to reporters that he did take the knife, after it "caught his eye," according to the New York Post or "attracted" him according to the New York World-Telegram and New York American, or because it "matched a fountain pen set he had," according to the New York Herald Tribune. (The New York Sun mistakenly reported that it was chocolate that Rivera had taken). When Rivera denied having the knife, Hurley took it from the boy’s pocket. Both Rivera and Hurley testified that the men started to push him out of the store. According to Hurley, near the front door Rivera became scared and started to lash out at them. Rivera reportedly told journalists from the New York World-Telegram, New York Post and New York Evening Journal that he had told the men he could walk out on his own, and tried to shake free of their hold, "really started fighting" when, as he also testified in a MCCH hearing, Hurley said, "Let's take him down the cellar and beat hell out of him.” Hurley denied making that statement; he told the MCCH hearing that he held Rivera around his shoulders while the store detective tried to calm the boy. As a struggle developed, another store employee, Steve Urban, a thirty-nine-year-old white window dresser, also grabbed hold of Rivera, according to Hurley. Once the group was through the front door and into the store's vestibule, a recessed area of the street surrounded by display windows, the store detective went to get a Crime Prevention Bureau officer. That police agency provided an alternative to having children arrested; its officers instead undertaking investigations of their conditions in order to refer them to social agencies to better prevent “juvenile delinquency.” Kress store staff turned most of the boys they caught shoplifting over to the Crime Prevention Bureau, according to Hurley, and had police arrest only one or two a week.
Sometime after the store detective left, Rivera bit both Hurley and Urban on the hands and wrist, "trying to get away," he told a public hearing, reportedly explaining to journalists from that New York World-Telegram and New York Post that "I didn't want a licking." The struggle in the vestibule attracted the attention of Patrolman Donahue, who was the nearest of several police officers on West 125th Street at the time (identified in some newspapers as a traffic officer and by Rivera in a MCCH hearing as a mounted patrolman). Donahue took Rivera back into the store, to near the candy counter at the front, to get away from a curious crowd gathering on 125th Street, and sent an officer to get an ambulance to provide treatment for Hurley and Urban. (He told the MCCH hearing that the officer was his partner Keel, or another patrolman named Walton; the call log records the man's name as Miller, who was later identified by the store manager as a Black officer). The telephone call to Headquarters was logged at 2:30 PM, followed by one from Police Headquarters to Harlem Hospital at 2:35 PM, with the ambulance bringing Dr. Sayet recorded in the hospital records as having arrived at 2:40 PM. Those records provide better evidence of the timing of the incident than Donahue’s testimony that he witnessed the struggle at 2:15 PM. Soon after the ambulance arrived, the manager, Jackson Smith came to the front of the store, he testified in a public hearing, after being told a crowd had gathered by a staff member. Informed that a Crime Prevention Bureau officer had been called, Smith decided there was “nothing further for him to do,” and he returned to his office. A few minutes later Alfred Eldridge, a Black Crime Prevention Bureau officer, arrived. Usually the store staff would have turned Rivera over to Eldridge, who would have taken Rivera with him. However, on this occasion Hurley and Urban told Eldridge they wanted the boy arrested and charged with assault. Hurley told a public hearing he had gone to the rear of the store before Eldridge arrived, and did not want Rivera arrested, but the officer was clear that he spoke with both Hurley and Urban. The store manager similarly told a later public hearing that “Hurley wants to press charges for biting.” Eldridge could not take Rivera with him if he was arrested: “The job and purpose of our bureau is not to arrest a child," the told the MCCH hearing. He telephoned his superior, and told him that “the 5 & 10 wanted the boy arrested.” In response that officer told him to “let the patrolman take care of it due to the fact that he was first on case.” So after about 25 minutes at Kress, around 3:15 PM, Eldridge left the store.
However, Eldridge testified he later found out that soon after he left, “the store officials changed their mind.” Donahue simplified those events in the public hearing, testifying that “The boy was not arrested, but was taken through the basement to 124th Street and sent home.” He did not mention Eldridge or who reversed the decision to arrest Rivera. Hurley’s self-interested statement that he did not want him arrested made Urban responsible. Urban himself was not among those who testified before a MCCH public hearing. It does seem that it was Urban who Donahue said was with him when he released Rivera; the officer referred to him not by name but as “the window dresser.” They took Rivera out the rear rather than on to 125th Street as there was a crowd in front of the store and Donahue “didn’t want to start something,” he told a public hearing. He was clearly anxious enough about the situation in the store to ignore another option that Eldridge had given him, “that in the event that Kress Store did not want to press charges, that the boy could be handed over to us for supervision,” according to the Crime Prevention Bureau officer’s testimony. After releasing Rivera on to 124th Street, Donahue left the store, at around 3.30 PM. Many of the fifty or so mostly black women shopping in the store observed these events, after their attention had been attracted by the struggle between the two men and Rivera, and the appearance of an ambulance. None of these women testified in a public hearing. A Black man named L. F. Cole told a MCCH public hearing that he saw Rivera being taken to the basement by two men. As they had not seen Rivera leave the store, groups of women concerned to find out what had become of him remained in the store until Smith closed it and police pushed them out sometime around 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM.
Bites are a relatively minor injury, and the hospital record indicates that both men received treatment at the scene and were not taken to the hospital. Hurley did still have a scar when he testified at a MCCH public hearing on April 20. Hays examined it, announcing that “I should say enough [of a scar] to indicate there was a bite,” adding in response to a question from the audience that he saw four teeth marks.” Only one other individual in the disorder is described as having been bitten, Arthur Block, a Black man. He appears among lists of the injured in only three publications, with no details provided of the circumstances in which he was assaulted.
The significantly less detailed narratives of what happened between Rivera and the store staff published in newspapers largely reflected what Inspector Di Martini told a journalist working for the Afro American and others in front of the store around 7.30 PM: "A boy stole some little article here this afternoon. The manager caught him, grabbed him by the arm, and was taking him in the back when a woman screamed. The crowd gathered. The manager did not press charges, and let the boy go home through the back.” (At the at time, Di Martini’s information came only from interviewing Jackson Smith and Hurley, as both Donahue and Eldridge were off duty and would not learn of the disorder until the next day). Missing from that narrative was Rivera biting the men, which was also missing from stories in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker. However, the assault was mentioned in the New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Atlanta World, New York Age, Philadelphia Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, La Prensa and in Time magazine and the New Republic. Only the New York American, Daily News and New York Herald Tribune included language that gave a particular slant to the assault, with the New York American and Daily News describing Rivera as “hysterical” in his response to being grabbed by Hurley and the store detective, while the New York Herald Tribune labelled him pugnacious. The New York Age reported that “someone” had hit Rivera, the New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle that Hurley or Urban “slapped him", or “slugged him” according to the Pittsburgh Courier, with the New York Age mistakenly reporting that he was being treated at Harlem Hospital. That story was in a special edition of the New York Age published in the midst of the confusion early in the disorder. Two stories, in the New York American and New York Sun, had Rivera leave the store rather than being released. A story in The New Republic by white journalist Hamilton Basso included dialogue, almost certainly invented, between Rivera and the two men who grabbed him and comments from a crowd around him (Basso also mixed up the sequence of events inside and outside the store after Rivera's release). -
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2021-11-01T19:47:39+00:00
Black-owned business signs (6)
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2023-04-16T02:29:23+00:00
Six businesses were identified as having signs in their windows identifying them as Black owned. Stories in both white and Black newspapers presented such signs as a more widespread part of the disorder and as a key reason why Black-owned businesses were generally spared from damage and not looted. On placards and directly on windows with whitewash or soap were written “Colored,” "Black" and “This Store Owned by Colored,” the Afro-American reported. Three of the identified businesses fitted those generalizations, with a reporter for La Prensa describing signs that read "Colored" on a billiard hall and the Castle Inn on Lenox Avenue, and a sign reading "This is a Store Owned By Colored" in the Monterey Luncheonette reported by the Afro-American. Three other stores reportedly used a variation on those signs. Seven signs identifying a store named “Winnette’s Dresses” as a “Colored Store” are visible in both a photograph of an arrest taken during the disorder published in the Daily News, and a photograph taken the morning after the disorder showing a group of Black boys in front of the store published in the Afro-American.
The sign on the Williams's drug store used the same phrase, "Colored Store" with the additional phrase "Nix Jack," repeating the combination twice on its side windows. There is no information on the meaning of the phrase "Nix Jack." Roi Ottley, writing in his column in the New York Amsterdam News about the looting during the disorder as targeted at white-owned businesses, ended with an echo of that phrase: "THIS IS A COLORED COLUMN, NIX JACK!" The Cozy Shoppe customized the phrase to fit its name, rendering it as "Colored Shoppe." The Home News reporter departed from those descriptions, apparently confusing the nature of the signs displayed. Explaining how it was that "Most of the damage was done to shops which were known to be operated by white persons," the reporter claimed "The colored persons who owned stores protected their shops against vandalism by picketing their establishments. They carried signs stating that the store was operated by colored people." No other sources mention pickets in front of Black-owned stores. There was no mention of signs being displayed in store windows in the Daily Mirror, New York American, New York Sun, or in Harlem's Black newspapers, the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News, or in the MCCH Report.
Signs appeared in Black-owned businesses as a response to windows being broken in nearby stores, providing material evidence that those throwing objects at windows chose their targets rather than being an irrational "mob." In some stories, those attacks were indiscriminate until signs appeared; other stories leave open the possibility that the signs reflected store-owners sense of the targets of those throwing objects at windows. "The mob made no choice, at first, of victims," in the most elaborate story, in the New York Evening Journal, "And then one colored man who owned a small restaurant pasted a sign in the window. It bore one word: "Colored." The mob passed him by and when others saw how the "miracle" was worked, signs flashed up in store windows throughout West Harlem. Those owned by Negroes, in most cases, were not broken into." The dismissive tone of the story was typical of that newspaper's treatment of Black subjects; attributing the posting of signs to an individual and the protection from damage that resulted to a "miracle" diminished the decisions those on the streets made about what stores to target that Black store-owners recognized. By contrast, the Black reporter for the Afro-American, emphasized “Stores owned by colored persons in the rioting area had to rush improvised signs reading ‘Colored, “Black,” “This Store Owned by Colored," but cast the signs as based on an understanding of the intentions of those attacking stores, created "in order to be spared in the rain of bricks, whiskey bottles, and other missiles."
Briefer mentions in other newspaper stories generally echoed that framing. Among Black newspapers, the Norfolk Journal and Guide went furthest in emphasizing that Black-owned businesses initially were damaged: "Some Negro establishments were among the 200 which lost their plate-glass windows and had the window contents looted. Finally, some Negro stores in the affected area...had to resort to self preserving signs such as 'Colored' 'Owned by Colored' and 'Black.'" The Philadelphia Tribune ambiguously alluded to earlier attacks, while also erroneously expanding the violence to homes, reporting "Risks to live became so grave Tuesday night that Negroes put up signs on their stores and homes to indicate "colored" lived there." Signs are simply presented as a response in the Indianapolis Recorder, "As the swarms of rioters swooped down upon the business district breaking store windows and stealing merchandise signs saying "Colored Store" went up." Among white newspapers, those brief mentions emphasized the lack of damage to businesses that put up signs, without reference to what had happened earlier. Two such mentions came in additional stories in the New York Evening Journal. "The mob wrath in most instances touched no windows whose proprietors had had opportunity to scribble "colored" in white chalk on the glass," wrote Joseph Mickler. Robert D. Levit similarly noted, "They carefully left unmolested those store which displayed hastily constructed signs with the word " Colored"." The story in the New York Post included a similar description, that "Many Negro storekeepers scrawled on their windows, with soap, the word "colored" and the heat of the mob was never sufficient to cause the Negroes to attack their own." While stories in the Daily News did not mention signs, they appeared in the background of a photograph of two police officers making an arrest, drawing a mention in the caption: "On the dress store window are signs proclaiming it to be a ‘colored shop,’ to protect it from the raiding marauders."
Two more stories, in the New York Times and New York World-Telegram, described signs in windows the next day rather than during the disorder. Those signs may have gone up after the disorder, as storeowners became aware of details of the previous night's violence, or the white reporters may not have seen those signs during the disorder. The later seems more likely. The signs in Winnette’s Dresses photographed after the disorder had been present, and photographed, during the disorder; likewise the sign on the Cozy Shoppe window filmed after the disorder was also reported during the disorder. In both the New York Times and New York World-Telegram stories, not only Black-owners put up signs. "Negro proprietors had large white-washed signs on their windows announcing that “This shop is run by COLORED people.”," the New York Times reported, adding, "Several white store owners took the cue and covered their windows with signs announcing that "This store employs Negro workers.”… " The previous year the boycott campaign had tried to expand the number of stores with Black staff. Newspaper stories offered contradictory claims about whether such businesses were attacked during the disorder: the New York Post, and Pittsburgh Courier reported they were spared, the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide reported they were among those damaged.
A further set of store-owners' responses are included in the New York World-Telegram. "On every Negro store in Harlem today there were signs bearing this legend, "Colored Store." One said:-"Do not break this window. This is colored"." Also, "There are many Chinese restaurants in Harlem, and they have placed similar signs on their windows. Chain stores have filled their windows with empty pasteboard boxes. Others have nailed boards across their windows." The only other mentions of Chinese-owned businesses as targets of attacks were of a single Chinese laundry posting a sign reading "Me Colored Too," reported by the Associated Press, in the New York Herald Tribune and Daily News (two newspapers that otherwise did not mention signs in their stories on the disorder), and in Time Magazine. That sign captured the issue raised by attention to those businesses: how did those attacking white-owned businesses regard those from other ethnic groups. The New York World-Telegram story implied that Chinese-owned businesses, of which there were 209 (3.5% 209 of 5791) dispersed throughout Black Harlem, were not attacked, that those on the streets during the disorder agreed their owners were 'colored too.' Newspaper stories in the New York Herald Tribune, Daily News and New York World-Telegram about the laundry contradicted that view, reporting that the business' windows were broken after the sign was displayed. However, there are no other reports of damaged or looted Chinese-owned stores. By contrast, La Prensa reported several Hispanic-owned businesses that suffered damage and looting, and no mention that such stores sought to identify themselves as a "colored store." The final response described by New York World-Telegram offered further recognition among storeowners of who the violence targeted. Rather than signs identifying why they should be spared from attack, white-owned stores barricaded their windows, seeking to prevent damage from objects that would be thrown at them.
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2022-03-11T22:00:36+00:00
Leaflets distributed
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2022-11-11T02:26:05+00:00
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 James 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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Crowds incited by Black women (3)
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Women made up a large proportion of those inside Kress’ store when Charles Hurley and Steve Urban grabbed Lino Rivera, and in the crowd inside and outside the store in the hours immediately after. During that time, three woman allegedly incited crowds, but not by calling for action. Two unnamed women, one inside Kress' store and one on 124th Street, shouted that Rivera had been beaten or killed rather than the direct calls to act attributed to men. Knocking pans to the floor, as Margaret Mitchell allegedly did, was a similarly indirect way of causing a crowd to gather, different from the speeches and pickets attributed to men.
The prominent place of women in the events that began the disorder was unusual; men typically initiated outbreaks of violence, joined later by women. In this instance, however, the site was a store in a retail district, realms of shopping and consumption associated with women. However, the women were not presented calling for action, so not cast as leaders in the same way as the men alleged to have incited crowds. Some newspapers amplified that distinction by casting these women in stereotypical terms as not entirely in control of their actions, as “emotional” in the New York Sun, as “frantic” and “excitable” in the New York Herald Tribune, as “hysterical” in the New Republic, as screaming rather than shouting in the New York Evening Journal, New York American, New York Post and New York Sun, and the New Republic and Newsweek, as having “shrieked” in Time and “shrilled” in the New York Times, their cries as “gossip-mongering” in the New York Herald Tribune.
The women who alerted those around them to Rivera being beaten and the hearse arriving were effectively acting as protectors. Historian Marilynn Johnson has pointed that women's experiences in the racial disorders of the first half of the twentieth century included that role, as well as being victims of violence, and from mid-century, participants in looting. Where Johnson's examples are women acting who tried to protect family or loved ones from white violence, in 1935 Black women sought to protect a boy unrelated to them. Those actions were within societal expectations of women's roles, as Johnson noted, but by extending beyond family they echoed the extension of women's role in consumption to include the political act of picketing white businesses the previous year.
Away from the store where Rivera was apprehended, and from 125th Street, no women shouting or leading crowds are mentioned in newspaper stories or arrested by police, with one exception, Roi Ottley's column in the New York Amsterdam News. In one column Ottley described women as inciting men to looting: “Women stood on the fringes of the mobs and dictated their choice to their men folk, who willingly obliged by bringing forth the desired article.” Ottley also cast women as inciting violence without joining the crowds on the streets in an earlier column: “Women hanging out of windows screamed applause to the reign of terror...and prodded their men-folk on with screeching invectives.” No other source reported such scenes. Writing a column rather than a news story, Ottley’s account was impressionistic rather than specific, making it difficult to link to other evidence. He also casts women in secondary roles, with men acting on their behalf, which may echo attitudes toward women as much as their behavior. Certainly, the women in and around Kress’ store took action themselves. There were also a small number of women among those arrested for activities other than inciting crowds, three for looting and three for breaking windows. There are also three women among those reported as injured/treated for injuries during the disorder
The presence of Black women in the crowds beyond 125th Street indicated by those arrests was recorded in some accounts of the disorder. The Daily News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times and Norfolk Journal and Guide all included women and men in their general descriptions of the crowds. The Daily News highlighted their presence among those who broke windows in a headline, “Women Join Mob of 4,000 In Battering Stores,” without mentioning women breaking windows in the story itself.
Other papers, however, such as the New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York World-Telegram and the Black newspapers the Afro-American and Chicago Defender included women only in the initial crowds inside and outside Kress’ store. Photographs also captured only the women’s presence on 125th Street, in a crowd facing a patrolman swinging his baton, among a group being scattered by police, and knocked to the ground. Women are not mentioned in stories about the events of the disorder published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Post or New York Age.