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"Riot Jury Set Against Reds to Ask Laws," New York Evening Journal, March 25, 1935, 2.
1 2023-03-10T19:31:11+00:00 Anonymous 1 3 plain 2024-02-01T00:15:04+00:00 AnonymousThis page is referenced by:
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In Harlem court on March 25 (18)
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Newspaper stories reporting the hearings in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 25 focused on the appearance of the four Young Liberators. Although Harry Gordon also appeared in the court that day, the stories no longer grouped him with the other four men as they had on March 20. Police identified the Young Liberators as "ringleaders," a term attributed to them in the New York Sun, New York Times, to District Attorney Dodge in the New York Post, and used without attribution in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, New York Evening Journal, Home News, and Daily News, and in the Afro-American. The New York World-Telegram alone did not name the four men or describe their alleged role in the disorder, while the New York Age described them as charged with starting the riot.
The New York Times, New York Sun, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal, and the Afro-American all only published stories anticipating the four men's appearance; they did not report the outcome. Those newspapers may have been anticipating a spectacle at the hearing, which often accompanied the appearance of Communists. Police certainly thought that a possibility, as the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Daily News reported a heavy police presence. The hearing apparently did not deliver either disorder or any new information about the disorder. Stories in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, Daily News, Home News, and New York World-Telegram, and the New York Age, simply reported that detectives presented the Magistrate with bench warrants, after which he discharged the men as they had already been indicted and police turned them over to the detectives.
Journalists paid little attention to the other fourteen men who appeared. The adjournment of Harry Gordon's case while police continued their investigation of his alleged assault on Patrolman Young was reported in the Home News, New York American, and New York World-Telegram. The Home News identified two of the other men discharged as having already been indicted by Dodge's grand jury, Carl Jones and Milton Ackerman. Those men are likely the two unnamed Black men indicted for looting that the New York Herald Tribune reported were dealt with in that way. Neither story made any mention of the other four men who went through the same process, Nelson Brock, Reginald Mills, William Grant, and Douglas Cornelius. Only the New York Herald Tribune made mention of any other men, reporting three other unnamed individuals as having been convicted and had their sentences suspended and one who was released. Legal records indicate the later was Aubrey Patterson, the only person released on March 26. Only two people, Louise Brown and Warren Johnson, appear in the legal records as having been convicted and sentenced. Information on the remaining defendants comes only from legal records.
The lack of attention to those arrested in the disorder on this date reflected both the lack of spectacle in the hearings and in the details of the disorder revealed in prosecutions for relatively minor offenses, which contributed to the attention the press gave to statements District Attorney Dodge made on this date. However, Dodge would not deliver on his claims, leading journalists to turn instead to the public hearings of the MCCH. -
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In court on March 25
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After the weekend, District Attorney Dodge continued to work to focus attention on Communists. He displayed to reporters pamphlets seized from raids on the offices of Communist Party organization. Claiming he had found “good clues” in them, Dodge raised the possibility of bringing charges of criminal anarchy connected with the disorder, an approach promoted by the Hearst newspapers. Dodge also claimed to be discussing new legislation with the grand jury to “define” free speech to exclude promoting the overthrow of the government.
For all of Dodge’s bravado, the day’s grand jury hearing resulted in only one additional indictment related to the disorder. And it was not one that substantiated Dodge’s claims, but rather was “for nothing spectacular,” as a story in the New York Post put it: theft of paper towels with a value 15 cents.
Neither did the return to the Harlem Magistrates Court of Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators arrested in the disorder produce the spectacle that reporters had anticipated it would. Their appearance was another instance of Dodge’s grand jury investigation intersecting with the regular legal process. On this occasion more than half of those who appeared in court, six men in addition to the four Communists, had already been indicted by that grand jury. While extra police were detailed to the court, the hearings, like those at the end of the previous week, did not attract unusual crowds and were uneventful. Magistrate Renaud discharged the four men after detectives presented him with bench warrants. The officers then rearrested the men without conflict between their attorneys and the magistrate or any more discussion of their alleged activities. None of the newspapers made clear that the four Communists were being taken for trial in the Court of Special Sessions, on misdemeanor charges, not to the Court of General Sessions to face trial for felonies. While Dodge likely hoped that further questioning of the men would advance his investigation, additional evidence proved elusive. It would be almost two months before Miller, Samuels, Jamison, and Viabolo faced trial. During that time Dodge would not only fail to secure more indictments, his account of the role of Communists in the disorder would be contradicted in the MCCH hearings. The other six men discharged and rearrested drew little attention, with Nelson Brock, Reginald Mills, William Grant, and Douglas Cornelius not named in any newspaper stories and Carl Jones and Milton Ackerman identified in only one publication. Although these men faced more serious charges than those sentenced on March 23 — burglary in case of Brock, Mills, Grant, Jones, and Ackerman, assault on a white man in the case of Cornelius — there was apparently less interest in those details by this time.
Harry Gordon, the other white man arrested on 125th Street at the beginning of the disorder, also returned to court. Although he was represented by an ILD lawyer, Edward Kuntz, Gordon was no longer grouped with the four Communists as he had been on March 20. He had not been indicted as a result of Dodge’s investigation. Instead, like most of the remainder of those who appeared in court with him, four other men, he had his case continued as police continued to gather evidence. Several newspapers did report Gordon’s appearance, perhaps because of his prominence in earlier stories or because he had allegedly assaulted a police officer and what proved to be ill-founded assurances from police that they were planning to present his case to the grand jury. Another white man in this group, Louis Tonick, who faced a charge of robbery, went unmentioned. So too did the three Black men, Bernard Smith, Leroy Brown, and Paul Boyett, the former two charged with inciting crowds and breaking windows, the latter with assaulting a white man. The alleged actions of those still appearing in the magistrates court were among the most violent of those arrested during the disorder, which is likely why police spent more time investigating them. Louis Cobb, who once again had his case continued in the Washington Heights court, the only individual arrested during the disorder to appear there that day, stood out not for the charge against him, looting, but for his extensive criminal record. His appearance likewise went unreported.
Just three prosecutions were adjudicated in the Harlem court. Aubrey Patterson, the butt of reporters’ jokes in stories about the police line-up, was released. Arrested for burglary but charged only with disorderly conduct, Patterson was represented by a lawyer, which may explain why the magistrate did not convict him as he did others in similar circumstances. His release removed him entirely from the disorder and cast him as a bystander. Prosecutors reduced the charge against Louise Brown and Warren Johnson from malicious mischief to disorderly conduct. No longer alleged to have broken windows, they became part of the disorderly crowds that police encountered on streets. Whatever evidence police presented that led the magistrate to convict them rather than releasing them as he did Patterson, it was insufficient to warrant imprisonment: he instead gave them suspended sentences. None of those decisions was reported in the press, other than in a New York Herald Tribune story that mentioned the conviction of three unnamed individuals and the release of one other, without providing any details of the charges that they faced or the sentences they received.
One more man, Nathan Snead, was convicted in the Court of Special Sessions, having been sent from the Harlem Court charged with petit larceny. In sentencing him to the penitentiary for a term of up to a year, the judges imposed the most punishment yet handed down to those arrested during the disorder. However, none of Snead’s appearances in court were reported, so just what he did to warrant such a sentence is unknown. A second man, Henry Stewart, charged with malicious mischief for breaking windows, was discharged. Those trials went unreported.
The appearance in the Court of General Sessions of the first six men indicted by the grand jury was reported by two newspapers even though they were simply released on bail. None were indicted as a result of Dodge’s investigation. All were charged with burglary, which promised felony convictions and marked them as major offenders in the disorder, unlike those convicted in the Magistrates Court. However, within a few days the prosecutions would have a different outcome.
The selective reporting of the day’s hearings across the city’s papers was the beginning of the less extensive press coverage of the legal process that would become the norm, with only some of those who appeared named and their offenses described, and soon only some hearings reported. The slow and fitful progress of the legal process lacked the spectacle of the mass hearings in the immediate aftermath of the disorder. To the contrary, it fragmented the disorder into a multitude of prosecutions, few of which involved any acts that on their own amounted to more than minor crimes. Eighteen of those arrested in the disorder appeared in the Harlem court on this date; subsequently, no more than half a dozen of those arrested in the disorder would appear in a court on one day. And even as those charged with more serious crimes moved beyond the Magistrates courts, only a handful of the prosecutions of those charged with more serious crimes resulted in the spectacle of a trial.
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In court on March 26
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Magistrates Renaud and Ford continued to dispose of those arrested during the disorder, but on March 26, for the first time, no newspapers reported any of those hearings (although reporters were likely in the courtrooms, as several newspapers routinely published stories about court proceedings). Each magistrate convicted three men and continued the investigation of an additional man. All six of those convicted had faced more serious charges, burglary in four cases, malicious mischief in the other two, that prosecutors reduced to disorderly conduct when they returned to court. What went unreported, then, were additional instances in which alleged participants in looting or breaking windows were revealed instead to have been only members of the crowds that police encountered on the streets.
Renaud imposed a sentence of five days in the Workhouse or a fine of $25 on the three men he sentenced. Albert Bass and Bernard Smith were able to pay that fine. Smith was not released, however, as he was also charged with riot, for which Renaud sent him to the grand jury. David Terry did not pay the fine, so spent five days in the Workhouse.
The three men Ford sentenced in the Washington Heights court had been arrested together and charged with burglary. Ford suspended the sentence of Raymond Taylor. Preston White and Joseph Payne he sentenced to close to the maximum term in the Workhouse, five months and twenty-nine days. The two men must have had criminal records, as Ford had denied them bail. Given Taylor’s sentence, those records rather than their actions in the disorder, likely led to their sentences.
As the regular legal process continued, Dodge's grand jury investigation suddenly came to halt. Only the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal and New York American, and Home News reported the announcement that the grand jury would return to "routine business" for the rest of the week. Just the day before, the New York Evening Journal had confidently predicted to the contrary that "at least a dozen more [persons] will be named in bills to be returned within a short time," with most of those charged "Communists or allied radicals." While the statement said the grand jury would return to such work in April, the temporary halt proved to be the end of the investigation. The only Communists charged by the grand jury would be Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators. At the end of the week, on March 30, the first public hearing of the MCCH would hear testimony that they were under arrest by the time the crowds spread beyond the Kress store, at odds with the blame Dodge sought to place on them. In April and into May, it would be the MCCH, not the grand jury, who would investigate the start of the disorder. -
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Dodge grand jury hearings suspended, March 26
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The additional indictments and more serious charges that Dodge mentioned on March 25 did not manifest the next day. To the contrary, stories in the New York Evening Journal, New York American, and Home News reported that Dodge announced that the grand jury would return to “routine” business rather than hearing further witnesses to the Harlem disorder for the rest of the week. When a new grand jury was impaneled in April, this group would “devote much of its time to the riot inquiry,” according to the New York American and Home News, or “devote itself exclusively to the rioting inquiry,” according to the New York Evening Journal. That statement went unreported in newspapers that did not share the anti-Communist editorial position on the disorder of those publications. None of the stories explicitly explained the change. The New York Evening Journal came closest, reporting Dodge as saying that routine work had "accumulated in the last few days."
Also largely unreported was the attack on Dodge invoking the criminal anarchy statute by Arthur Garfield Hays, one of the members of the MCCH investigating the disorder alongside the DA. The New York American’s brief story on Dodge’s statement mentioned Hays as having criticized the DA’s investigation, asserting that “the criminal anarchy law, under which Dodge is seeking indictments, was used 'only when the Governments want to 'get' a man.'" The Home News made the disagreement the focus of its story, headlined “Mayor’s Riot Committee Splits with Dodge as Hays Raps Plan to Invoke Anarchy Law.” Hays was quoted making the same charge as appeared in the New York American, and adding, “They are never used against Fascists.” The New York Evening Journal did not mention Hays. The Daily Worker did report Hays' attack, in a story on the MCCH that did not refer to Dodge’s statement. Both the city’s Black newspapers folded Hays’ criticism into their stories, the New York Amsterdam News on March 30, and the New York Age in a later story on the first public hearing of the MCCH on March 30.
When ADA Alexander Kaminsky appeared at that public hearing on March 30, sent by Dodge to discuss what his investigation had accomplished, he testified that to date it had resulted in 12 indictments, confirming that the grand jury had voted no additional indictments after March 25. Pushed by Hays to name those individuals, Kaminsky said he could identify only the five men who had pled guilty: Carl Jones, Joseph Wade, James Hughes, Thomas Jackson, and Hezekiah Wright. He also mentioned that four others had been charged with unlawful assembly and transferred to the Court of Special Sessions. That those men were widely recognized as being the four Young Liberators was evident in Hays' follow-up questions about whether they had been charged because of their political beliefs. In answer, Kaminsky said he was sure that the grand jury would not do that.
Although a story in the New York Evening Journal the day before Dodge suspended the grand jury hearings had confidently predicted that "at least a dozen more [persons] will be named in bills to be returned within a short time," with most of those charged "Communists or allied radicals," Kaminsky's widely reported appearance was the last mention of Dodge’s investigation and of grand jury hearings related to the disorder in the press.
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Dodge grand jury hearing, March 25 (1)
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While the grand jury was not in session over the weekend, Dodge affirmed his commitment to the investigation to several reporters on Saturday, March 23. He emphasized his concern with a specific target, those who advocated the overthrow of government by force and violence, according to stories in the New York American, New York Times, Daily News, and Home News. Although the statement did not appear to directly reference Communists, most of those newspapers identified them as the target in their headlines: “Dodge Plans War on Reds in Harlem” in the Daily News; “Dodge Declares War on Red Leaders” in the Home News; and “Dodge Expects Arrest of Red Leaders” in the New York Times. The anti-Communist New York American predictably reported the DA’s comments in more detail and attempted to link them to further charges as it had previously in posing questions about the criminal anarchy statute. Its story quoted Dodge as invoking the Constitution and posed questions to him about involving federal authorities, which he declined to answer. That story, and those in the New York Times and Daily News, also reported that books and papers seized in the raid on the ILD offices were being examined for evidence.
When Dodge spoke to the press on Monday, he affirmed he was in fact following the path that the New York American reporter had raised two days earlier. He mentioned charges of criminal anarchy, which carried a sentence of up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000, in connection with the disorder. However, newspaper stories differed on just what he said, with the New York American, Home News, and New York Sun reporting such charges “might be returned,” the New York Herald Tribune that the DA had evidence that “would justify” such charges, the Daily News, Times Union, and New York Post that indictments would be sought, and the New York World-Telegram that indictments were being sought. The New York Times did not publish a story about Dodge or the grand jury. There is no evidence that Dodge actually presented such charges; certainly, the grand jury did not vote for any indictments for criminal anarchy.
In raising criminal anarchy, Dodge told reporters that his investigators had found “some good clues,” a phrase reported in the New York American, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, Times Union, and Home News. The New York World-Telegram substituted “splendid new leads.” As examples, he displayed pamphlets seized in the earlier raids on the offices of Communist Party organizations, saying although he could no reveal their content, they were “hot stuff.” His claim that the documents were advocating the overthrow of the government was widely reported, in the New York Post, New York Sun, Home News, Times Union, New York Herald Tribune, and New York World-Telegram, as was the assertion that they had been "distributed to young school children.” Curiously given their anti-Communist focus, none of the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal, New York American, and the Daily Mirror, mentioned the pamphlets.
Instead, the New York American (in a separate, earlier story) and New York Evening Journal, joined only by the New York Post, reported Dodge again speaking about the grand jury considering new legislation so “irresponsible agitators would be prevented from goading thoughtless people toward the overthrow of the American form of government, by violence.” The New York Evening Journal summarized its purpose as “designed to curb Communistic activities in the interests of the public safety.” The New York Post described the legislation as “defining” free speech, with all three stories reporting that he insisted it would not be a restriction on free speech. The two Hearst newspapers were also alone in including in their stories that Dodge had met with federal officials and planned to turn his evidence over to them.
For all of Dodge’s bravado, the day’s grand jury hearing resulted in only one additional indictment related to the disorder. Unreported in the Home News, New York Sun, New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Evening Journal, the indictment charged a man with taking goods worth 15 cents. Only the Times Union reported the value of the goods. The New York American described the alleged offense as “theft of toilet articles,” the New York World-Telegram as “stealing several rolls of paper towels from a shop window.” The Daily News simply identified the charge as burglary. Only the New York Post, continuing its criticism of Dodge’s anti-Communist focus, made a connection between the case and the DA’s rhetoric, describing the indictment as “for nothing spectacular.”