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

Hays' "rough draft" of the subcommittee report

The ”rough draft” Hays wrote shaped the testimony in the public hearings into a narrative. Villard would reorganize that material, create a section devoted to “The Conduct of Police,” and add interpretations and judgements of the events that Hays had described.

Hays' narrative focused on events in the Kress store and on 125th Street and the killing of Lloyd Hobbs, making only passing mention of the rest of the disorder. He began with Hurley and the store detective grabbing Lino Rivera, included Patrolman Donahue and Officer Eldridge becoming involved and police called to the store being unable to convince shoppers no harm had come to Rivera, and ended with the arrest of speakers on 125th Street and the distribution of leaflets by groups affiliated with the Communist Party after the disorder had begun. That narrative followed the testimony the MCCH had heard with only a handful of minor discrepancies. Hays omitted how Hurley's intention to charge Rivera with assault for biting him led to Eldridge leaving and Donahue having to make the decision about how to release the boy. Omitted also was the later arrest of the three picketers. Hays' narrative also mistakenly had the window in the Kress store broken after Daniel Miller was arrested, not as causing the arrest.

Hays followed that narrative with an extended discussion of what happened to Lloyd Hobbs that summarized the accounts offered by Russell Hobbs, the eyewitnesses, and Patrolman McInerney and his partner before offering some assessment of each in turn. The report highlighted that the items Hobbs had allegedly stolen were not seen until McInerney brought them to the DA's office on April 1st; it did not mention the additional week before the patrolman turned them into the property clerk. Hays also pointed out that the police testimony was "wholly out of line with the testimony of many other witnesses and with the character and standing of Lloyd Hobbs."

Events beyond 125th Street received only brief and general mention. “The disturbance spread along 125th Street and in nearby avenues. Windows were broken and in many cases stores were looted. There were many arrests. The police were out in great number. Their effort was to keep crowds from gathering. Radio patrol cars sped from place to place. The police arrested about a dozen men who were charged with larceny, burglary and other crimes.” At the end of the report, Hays returned to those events to dismiss the claim that crowds had focused on stores owned by Jewish merchants. Instead, “such looting as there was was indiscriminate and seemed to have been indulged in chiefly by the hoodlum element.” (Hays characterized the hoodlums as "not the kind of people who would be influenced by such leaflets" as those distributed by Communists but who "may have used the rumors and leaflets as an excuse.") Most of the crowd that Hays put at “only a few thousand people” were “orderly.” He also asserted that “There was no element of a race riot involved in any way shape or manner, a fact which is greatly to the credit of both our colored and white citizens.”

In characterizing the events the disorder spread beyond 125th Street in that way, Hays was following police testimony in the hearings. Only Captain Rothengast used the term hoodlums to describe participants. Both he and Inspector Di Martini claimed the number of participants was small, smaller in fact than Hays reported, a few hundred rather than a few thousand. Di Martini mentioned the crowds included the unemployed. Hays did not identify the participants as mostly young, aged in their late teens and early twenties, as both Rothengast and Di Martini did. It was Di Martini and Lieutenant Samuel Battle who described the looting as indiscriminate. Both Battle and Rothengast answered in the negative when asked if the events had been a race riot. Just what damage was done during the disorder was not addressed in the draft, leaving the impression that police largely maintained order. Nor was there any mention of assaults, injuries, or deaths. To the contrary, the assertion that the events were not a race riot implied that there had been no violence between Black and white New Yorkers during the disorder.

Hays enumerated seven topics raised by the narrative, which he called “a rather cursory statement of facts.” The identity of the boy in the store, which he concluded had been established as Rivera; that the Communist leaflets were false; that those leaflets were distributed too late to cause the disturbance; that Gordon had been mistreated by police after his arrest for trying to speak to the crowd; that Donahue was mistaken in his decision to release the boy out the back of the store, but “we do not feel he is to be condemned for this”; that police were concerned to “suppress any excitement” rather than providing information to the crowd; and that the “repressive treatment” of police had antagonized Harlem residents and contributed to causing the disorder. (He also criticized the Assistant District Attorney who appeared at a public hearing for being unwilling to testify.) The first and last of those topics, the boy's identity and the actions of police, had been introduced in the hearings by questions from the audience and their reaction to testimony rather than being on the MCCH's program. Police officers failing to provide crowds with the information they sought was primarily the testimony of Louise Thompson, the only witness quoted in the report, and L. F. Cole, as was the conclusion that the leaflets appeared after the disorder had begun.

The remainder of the report described incidents of police brutality as examples of the behavior that had antagonized the community, covering the cases of Thomas Aikens, Edward Laurie, and Robert Patterson. The "general condition" that Hays concluded was illustrated by police actions during and around the disorder was the view asserted by the audience at the hearings: "The rights of Negroes are not respected by police, nor is the law generally observed in police dealings with Negroes." The final section offered two recommendations, for a committee and that the district attorney should take action against police officers who allegedly broke the law.

 

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