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• 1 2022-03-13T20:54:35+00:00 La Guardia's statement "To the People of Harlem" 34 plain 2024-02-14T19:41:09+00:00 On March 20, Mayor La Guardia circulated a statement about the disorder, “To the People of New York City.” The document was released to the press and printed “in bold type on placards 20 by 24 inches in size,” the New York Herald Tribune reported. “Bundles of [the placards] were delivered to the West 123d Street station,” that story continued; the New York Times described the delivery as “two patrol wagons of circulars,” which it reported were “two foot by two and a half foot” in size. Patrolmen distributed the placards to Harlem’s stores, which displayed them in their windows, as was shown in a photograph published by the New York Evening Journal and reported by the New York Times, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York World-Telegram. The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York World-Telegram, New York American, and Daily Worker published the full statement. Among the Black newspapers, the Norfolk Journal and Guide provided a brief summary rather than the full text. The statement was not mentioned in the New York Amsterdam News, New York Age, or Afro-American or in the Daily News, New York Sun, or Daily Mirror (and reported only with the photograph in the New York Evening Journal).
  
  The statement read

  To the People of New York City: The people of New York City must know that the overwhelming majority of the Negro population of West Harlem are splendid, decent, law-abiding American citizens.
  
  The unfortunate occurrence of last night and early morning was instigated and artificially stimulated by a few irresponsible individuals. A very small fraction of 1 per cent of the population took part in the demonstration and violence. Small groups of vicious individuals marauded throughout the section, from time to time; committing acts of violence, attacking individuals in cowardly fashion and breaking plate glass of stores unoccupied during the night.
  
  Malice and viciousness of the Instigators are betrayed by the false statements contained in mimeographed handbills and placards.
  
  Attempts may be made to repeat the spreading of false gossip, of misinformation and distributing misrepresentation in handbills or other printed matter.
  
  I appeal to the law-abiding element of Harlem to carefully scrutinize any charge, rumor or gossip or racial discrimination being made at this time.
  
  Every agency of the city is available to assist in investigating all such charges. I expect a complete report from several sources giving me details of everything that occurred. As soon as I receive these reports they will be made public.
  
  I am appointing a committee of representative citizens to check all official reports and to make a thorough investigation of the causes of the disorder and a study of necessary plans to prevent a repetition of the spreading of malicious rumors, racial animosities and the inciting of disorder.
  
  F. H. LA GUARDIA.
  Mayor.

  
  Three versions of the statement are in the MCCH files. In a draft version the sentence announcing the committee read, “…and a study of necessary DEFENSIVE plans to prevent a repetition of the spreading of malicious rumors and the instigation of RACIAL disorder,” with the word “racial” crossed out in pencil. In a second draft, “defensive” is crossed out, “racial animosities” inserted, and “instigation of racial disorder” changed to “inciting of disorder” to produce the final text. That those edits were intended to avoid casting the events of March 19 as a “race riot” was made clear when a reporter from the New York Herald Tribune questioned La Guardia about the choice of the phrase “unfortunate occurrence” to describe the disorder. He asked, "You do not regard the trouble up there as a race riot?" "No," he replied, "you see, we have to be careful. We don't know yet what was the underlying cause of the trouble. We can't say on the basis of what we know that it was fundamentally racial. Certainly an outburst like that which happened Wednesday night doesn't go off unless there was smouldering some underlying feeling. What the causes of that were are what I want the fact-finding committee to find out. It may go back 100 years."
  
  Notably, La Guardia’s statement did not follow police and District Attorney Dodge in holding Communists responsible for starting the disorder — although the New York Evening Journal misleadingly described La Guardia’s statement as doing just that, as having “flatly charge[d] radicals with the responsibility for much of Harlem’s riots.” Instead, as both the New York World-Telegram and New York Herald Tribune noted, it did not mention the Young Liberators or Communists by name. A journalist evidently asked La Guardia about that omission, as the New York Herald Tribune reported, “He would not say whether he agreed with the police that the instigators were Communists.” The Daily Worker, nonetheless, chose to ignore that reticence and characterized the statement as “cue from the red-baiting Hearst press” and “Attacking the Young Liberators, without mentioning them by name.”
  
  The NAACP press release on March 22 that claimed credit for La Guardia’s decision to appoint a committee and the telegram the organization sent him that formed the basis of that claim (and a press release about the telegram) are in the NAACP files. The NAACP press release was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, and Home News.
  
  Only historian Lindsey Lupo has discussed La Guardia's statement, in a chapter on the MCCH in a broader study of riot commissions. Her study is the most detailed account of the MCCH. She highlights the revisions to the statement as evidence that the mayor was "hesitant to deem the violence as 'racial,'" which she interprets as at odds with the biracial committee he would appoint. That interpretation did not acknowledge that La Guardia's position was shared by Harlem's Black leadership.