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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

The MCCH's final report

Just over four months after E. Franklin Frazier began work as director of the MCCH's survey of Harlem, he told the commission members that the survey was far enough along that he could begin writing a report. He expected to be finished by the end of the year, a little less than three months later. While there was some discussion among the members about taking a role themselves in writing the report, they ultimately left it to Frazier with some expectation that he would incorporate the preliminary reports. He missed his self-imposed deadline by a couple of months. The first two chapters, including one on the events of the disorder, were circulated to MCCH members on January 2, 1936. Arthur Garfield Hays and Oscar Villard corresponded with each other and Eunice Carter about their objections to the draft, and Judge Toney shared it with the NAACP's Walter White who responded with his own objections. However, the MCCH did not meet to discuss the chapters until February 14. By that time, Charles Roberts was pushing to get the completed report signed and submitted by the anniversary of the disorder on March 19. MCCH members agreed to changes to the chapter and charged Hays and Villard with going over the document as a whole. Three more undocumented MCCH meetings about the report took place, the last two of which focused on the recommendations. Eunice Carter then sent the MCCH members the final version of the recommendations, after which staff members sought their signatures. Three did not sign. Morris Ernst wanted changes to the recommendations, John Grimley just refused, and Father McCann did not respond at all.

Frazier gave his chapter a different form and tone than the subcommittee's report based on his interpretation of the testimony and other material gathered in the investigation, likely including newspaper stories. He combined fragmentary police testimony with press reports to describe the fluid patterns of events beyond 125th Street and to include a wider range of Harlem residents than hoodlums among those who participated in the disorder. Frazier chose not to include details of those killed and arrested and the property damage. Instead, his assessment that the disorder was "an attack upon property and not upon persons" directed attention away from the violence of the disorder. At the same time, he adopted the Communist Party claim that its members had prevented interracial violence. Although the audiences at the hearings made an impression on Frazier — to the extent that he devoted a chapter of the report to defending their role in the hearings — his criticism of police diminished somewhat the intense antagonism described by the subcommittee. Despite those changes, MCCH members objections were limited to Frazier's praise for the role of Communists in preventing violence. However, while they did remove praise for the contribution of Communists in the public hearings and some Marxist language from other chapters, they ultimately retained that section.

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