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

James Tartar's Investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs

On April 1, Hays wrote to the MCCH's secretary, Eunice Carter, telling her to have the Hobbs family attend the next hearing, on April 6, and to "have our investigators find out all they can about [the Hobbs case]." Carter assigned the investigation to James Tartar, one of the staff who had sought witnesses to the causes of the disorder the previous week. The thirty-year-old Black former shipping clerk was an investigator for the Department of Public Welfare who lived on the western boundary of Harlem, at 448 West 151st Street. Born in Tennessee, he had lived in North Carolina at the time of the 1920 census, moving later to Ohio, where he worked as a secretary and married in 1924. The family was living in New York City by 1926, and at 759 St Nicholas Avenue in 1930. As a Black Harlem resident, Tartar reinforced the Black presence on the MCCH and would have received a less hostile reception from residents than the white police detective investigating the shooting. At the same time, his occupation put him among the upper ranks of the Black population, different from most of the witnesses he interviewed.

The records of Tartar's investigation should have been in the files of the MCCH in the Records of Mayor La Guardia, but were retained by Arthur Garfield Hays, for whose subcommittee he investigated the shooting, and E. Franklin Frazier, who led the MCCH's research. Several reports by Tartar from his early investigations are filed in the Hays Papers. A narrative summary of his investigation and the case are in the Frazier Papers. Tartar also testified in the MCCH hearing on April 7 about his investigation up to that point. He mentioned details of the investigation in correspondence with Frazier after the MCCH investigation was completed.

In the week leading up to the MCCH hearing on April 7, Tartar interviewed the Hobbs family "as the first source." He recorded statements by Russell and his mother. Notes from undated conversations appear in another document, describing Lloyd's funeral, their belief that Lloyd would not have committed a burglary, and the information Lawyer Hobbs had received from Howard Mallloy and Arthur Moore about what they had witnessed. The funeral took place on April 2, those conversations took place after that date. Tartar was also assigned to do a "Social and Economical History of the Hobbs Family," submitting a page and a half summarizing the family's origins in Virginia and life in New York City.

Tartar contacted the two eye-witnesses identified to him by Lloyd's father, Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore. He met with the men at 213 West 128th Street, the apartment building in which they both lived, and recorded "their story." That document is dated April 5, but Tartar's signature is dated April 4. Both dates provided sufficient time for the MCCH staff to organize the men's presence at the hearing on April 7.

A second strand of the investigation included Tartar gathering information from a variety of law enforcement sources. His records include notes on a series of interviews conducted on April 2. He spoke with ADA Saul Price, who told him he "that the officer had not been exonerated, due to the fact that he was waiting to hear the story from the Hobbs family, particularly Russell Hobbs." An interview with the police department's ballistic expert produced no information as he had not received the bullet that hit Lloyd. Tartar's visit to Harlem Hospital was more successful, as Dr. Steinholz shared the boy's chart, which the investigator copied. Sometime during the week he also visited the 28th Precinct, and recorded the contents of the police blotter, where officers recorded a summary of an arrest. Lieutenant Greenberg read him that material as at that time there was no definite understanding between the Commission and the Police Department with regards to taking transcripts of confidential police records, he later informed Frazier. That information appears in the records in the Hays Papers; however, there was no record of the interview with Inspector Di Martini that he mentioned in his testimony to the MCCH hearing on April 7. At that time he made a copy of a report by the commander of the 28th Precinct, Captain George Mulholland, "The shooting of prisoner by Patrolman," submitted to Commissioner Valentine on March 30, immediately after the death of Lloyd Hobbs. Tartar's notes did mention the report as being incorporated in his records but it was not in the files in the Hays Papers (a transcription appeared in the transcript of the MCCH hearing on April 20). Tartar was among those who testified at the MCCH's April 6 public hearing, recounting his interview with ADA Price and introducing a copy of the report from the 28th Precinct to Commissioner Valentine so Hays could have details in it contradicted by Russell Hobbs and the three eye-witnesses, Malloy, Moore and Samuel Pitts.

Hays announced plans to continue hearing evidence about the killing of Lloyd Hobbs at his subcommittee's next public hearing, in two weeks. However, those plans were overtaken by grand jury hearing on April 10, which led Hays to focus on having witnesses who appeared before the grand jury testify in a public hearing. The only further investigation Tartar did before the April 20 hearing was to interview the owners of the businesses on the same block as the automobile supply store, and draw a sketch of the storefronts on the block, to obtain information on when their windows were broken and what losses they suffered. Both those documents are dated April 20, the day of the MCCH hearing. The information they contained provided some support for testimony that the automobile supply store's windows were broken before Hobbs arrived, by Malloy and Moore on April 20 (and by another eye-witness, Marshall Pfifer, on May 18).

After the hearing on April 20, Tartar made further attempts to identify eye-witnesses and "to get information concerning the whereabouts of the stolen items." An interview with ADA Price confirmed that McInerney brought the horn and socket set to the DA's office on April 1st, while a visit to the Property Clerk's office at Police headquarters revealed that those items were not delivered there until April 8, 1935. That meant that the patrolman had those items in his possession for nineteen days after the shooting. There are no records of those investigations in Hays' files; Tartar mentioned them in his narrative summary. Hays relied on Tartar's investigation when he questioned Detective O'Brien about where the horn and socket set had been when the officer produced them at the MCCH public hearing on May 18.

Three additional eye-witnesses also testified in the MCCH hearing on May 18. Tartar reported that they had been found as a result of a survey of the neighborhood, implying that he had found them. However, at the hearing, Clarence Wilson testified that he had obtained the addresses of two witnesses from Lawyer Hobbs at the request of a member of the MCCH. One did not respond when called on, but Wilson encountered another man who was an eye-witness, Marshall Pfifer, when looking for John Bennett, the second witness. Bennett was too sick to attend the hearing, so Wilson recounted what he had seen. Warren Wright, the third man, provided no details of how he had been found.

The evidence heard at the May 18 hearing was presented to the grand jury on June 10. Tartar claimed a prominent role in ADA Saul Price's decision to re-examine the case in the narrative of his investigation. After being notified by inspector Di Martini that he was resubmitting the case to the District Attorney, Tartar attended the conference in the District Attorney's office about the case and and by his own account, "after much argument," "convinced the District Attorney that the new witnesses would testify to new facts and that they should be heard." Tartar also accompanied Detective O'Brien to serve subpoenas on the four witnesses whose testimony was heard on May 18, an arrangement set up by Hays. After hearing from Bennett, Hughes, Pfifer and Wright, Price agreed to take the case to the grand jury again. Tartar himself also testified in the grand jury hearing. He told the grand jury that McInerney had not handed in the allegedly stolen items until April 8 and that police records indicated that "no loot had been found on the person of Lloyd Hobbs. Tartar clearly spoke to journalists from the New York Age and the Afro-American about his testimony, as it featured in the stories that those Black newspapers published about the grand jury decision.

Tartar recounted that he urged Inspector Di Martini to hold such an investigation after the grand jury decision. In fact, such a hearing had already been planned, in the aftermath of the decision of the first grand jury. Tartar, with E. Franklin Frazier, attended the hearing when it took place, on June 14. The account in his narrative summary was the only source of information on the hearing, which went unreported in the press.

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Investigations (April 6-April 19) While twenty witnesses had testified at the public hearing on April 6, their testimony did not complete the investigation of the events of March 19 as MCCH members had planned. As a result of Dodge's instructions limiting police testimony, Patrolman McInerney and his partner, Patrolman Watterson, had not testified about the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs. The absence of staff from the Kress store prevented wrapping up testimony about what had happened in the store. In addition, there had been no time to hear testimony on the cases of police brutality about which the MCCH had begun gathering information. With so many of the witnesses asked to attend the April 6 hearing not heard, the next planned hearing that Hays had announced to the MCCH meeting might have been expected to be held the next week, on April 13. However, it did not take place until another week later, on April 20. Dodge’s injunction against police involved in legal proceedings testifying might have been one reason for the delay, which would have allowed the legal process to be completed. Hays may also have not been available to chair the hearing until April 20. He did not attend the MCCH meetings on April 12 and April 19.

Whatever plans Hays had for continuing the investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs, they were disrupted when he read in the press that the district attorney had presented the case to the grand jury on April 10. They decided not to indict Patrolman McInerney. Having listened to the testimony of the eyewitnesses, Hays clearly found that decision surprising. He immediately wrote to the district attorney, asking if those witnesses had testified before the grand jury and who else had given evidence. He told the district attorney he was anxious to have any other witnesses appear in a MCCH hearing to publicly present all the evidence "so that if there was any justification for the shooting, the public may know it." Dodge replied the next day that "the District Attorney's office called every witness who knew anything with reference to this case against McInerney." That list included all those who had testified in the public hearing. Those who had not appeared were Louis Eisenberg, the owner of the store allegedly looted, Detective O’Brien, who had conducted the police investigation of the shooting, and McInerney and Watterson. The MCCH could now hear the testimony of the three police officers, as the grand jury's decision meant that the district attorney’s restriction on officers involved in legal proceedings testifying no longer applied to them.

Tartar also continued to gather information about the killing of Lloyd Hobbs, as well as three other cases about which the MCCH still had to hear testimony. He interviewed the storekeepers on the block where Lloyd Hobbs was shot, gathered records from the 23rd Precinct about the cases of Thomas Aiken and Edward Laurie, and interviewed Aiken and the aunt of James Thompson, the other Black man known to have been killed by police during the disorder.

Adding to the backlog of witnesses, the MCCH learned of additional incidents of police brutality. By the time the MCCH met on April 19, the subcommittee had decided “there were far too many” cases for all of them to be investigated in public hearings, Villard reported. “Some other investigations” would be made of the other cases. (They later approached the Harlem Lawyers Association to take on that task.) For the public hearings, the focus remained the cases that the MCCH had begun investigating the previous week.
Investigations (May 4-May 17) With neither Jackson Smith, the manager of the Kress store, nor Louis Eisenberg, the owner of store allegedly looted by Lloyd Hobbs appearing at the May 4 hearing, the Subcommittee’s investigation of the events of the disorder extended until the next hearing, scheduled for May 18. The appearance of both men was secured in the interim.

MCCH members meeting on May 7 did agree to take further action to have Smith testify. A. Phillip Randolph proposed they write to Mayor La Guardia requesting he write to the company "asking them to cooperate by having the manager of their 125th Street store present at the next meeting." No such letter is in the files. It may have been unnecessary. Hays was not at that meeting, so the outcome of his discussions with the Kress company attorneys was likely not known to the other MCCH members.

Louis Eisenberg took up Hays’ offer to avoid the public hearing. He would later tell an MCCH investigator surveying his business that he opposed the hearings because they “permitted any Tom, Dick and Harry to cross examine people.” The private hearing that heard brief testimony on May 18 was recorded by a stenographer, but otherwise did not appear in records of the MCCH’s work. To the contrary, compilations of the Subcommittee’s activities by MCCH staff recorded that it held no private hearings.

Securing the store owner’s testimony was not the only investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs notwithstanding the grand jury’s decision not to charge Patrolman McInerney. James Tartar continued to pursue information on the whereabouts of the items that the police officer claimed the boy had stolen and that he had recovered next to him after he was shot. His interview with ADA Price confirmed that McInerney brought the horn and socket set to the DA's office on April 1st, while a visit to the Property Clerk's office at Police headquarters revealed that those items were not delivered there until April 8, 1935. For Tartar and Hays, the interval of almost two weeks before anyone saw those items supported the testimony of eyewitnesses that Hobbs had nothing in his hands when shot, calling into question a justification for his shooting. Getting answers about those items became part of the program for the May 18 hearing.

Three additional witnesses to McInerney shooting Hobbs were also located. Just how is not clear. Tartar claimed credit, somewhat obliquely, although there are no documents relating to them in the MCCH files. "Your investigator,” he wrote in a narrative report of his investigation, “feeling that the case was of such great importance as an example to show how the citizens of Harlem are murdered by police officers and then charged with having committed a crime in order to justify the officer's act, sought to gather more witnesses if there were any." He found four. However, a man called Clarence Wilson would testify that he had been sent by a MCCH member to Lawyer Hobbs, the boy’s father, for the addresses of three witnesses, and had found another when he went to bring those men to the hearing. Those witnesses likely had either approached Hobbs, as the three other eyewitnesses had, or been found by him. The boy’s death clearly continued to loom large in the Harlem community’s view of the disorder.

Gathering that information about the events of the disorder took place alongside continued investigation of police brutality and mistreatment. The appearance of Robert Patterson in the MCCH offices on May 11 to complain about police forcing their way into his home and arresting him on the basis of an anonymous complaint on May 5. Charles Romney, who had played a prominent role questioning witnesses, approached the MCCH asking to testify about being a victim of brutality. So did James Middleton.The MCCH did not appear to still be cooperating with Communists groups in investigating cases. Two men and a woman affiliated with Communist groups, Cyril Briggs, “Mr Campbell” and Ethel Lewis, would testify about police breaking up mixed race groups, but came from the audience to do so rather than being on the program.

Surprisingly given the earlier reports that the MCCH had been overwhelmed by complaints of brutality, Hays told the MCCH meeting on May 14 that the upcoming hearing on police brutality would be the last "for some time as he did not have any more material." While he left the door open for hearings at a later date if he had accumulated sufficient cases, by May 28, he told the other MCCH members that "he did not see the necessity" for the Subcommittee on crime to hold any further hearings. That the investigations of the events of the disorder and of police brutality had not only become intertwined but also ended at the same time likely contributed to Hays' decision to include them both in a single report, notwithstanding his original vision of them as separate topics.

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