In the second day of coverage following the March 19, 1935 rebellion in Harlem where dozens were wounded and arrested, with one person, Edward Laurie, killed by police, a news roundup and report of the formation of a ‘Citizen’s Emergency Committee’ at a meeting hosted by Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.’s Abyssinian Baptist Church; an analysis of the social situation in Harlem by Cyril Briggs, and two editorials from the Worker on the specific oppression of Black Harlem and the against the red-baiting, white chauvinist inflammatory content of the mainstream press.

‘Jim-Crowism, Sheer Hunger, Rife in Harlem’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 12 No. 70. March 22, 1935.

INVESTIGATE HARLEM ‘RELIEF’

Emergency Body Charges Discrimination in Harlem; Grand Jury Indicts Twelve; Committee Sees Job Ban As Basis for Events of Tuesday Night

A thorough and sweeping investigation into the events in Harlem Tuesday night, which resulted in the death of one, injuries to 100 and the jailing of 120, was demanded yesterday by the Citizens’ Emergency Committee.

In the meantime, police pad-locked the offices of the Young Liberators, at 126th Street and Lexington Avenue.

The Citizens’ Emergency Committee, which was formed at a meeting held in the home of Rev. A. Clayton Powell, Jr., assistant pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, consists of prominent Negro and white members of diverse political viewpoints, but all agreed that discrimination against, Negroes on jobs and relief were the mainsprings for the spontaneous outbreak in Harlem on Tuesday.

Plan Mass Meeting

Before the group adjourned it had constituted itself into a Citizens” Emergency Committee and announced plans for a mass meeting to be held soon in Madison Square Garden.

Members of the committee include, beside Rev. Powell, James W. Ford, Negro Communist leader and Harlem section organizer of the Communist Party: Margaret E. Forsyth, associate in religious education at Teachers’ College, Columbia University: Rev. Arthur L. Swift, of Union Theological Seminary: Frank R. Crosswalth of the Socialist Party and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union: H.K. Craft. director of the Harlem Branch of the Y.M.C.A.: James Waterman Wise, who represented the American League Against War and Fascism, and Obie McCullum, editor of the Amsterdam News.

Group Issues Statement

The following is the full text of a statement issued following the Harlem events, by a group of prominent Negro and white individuals who met in the home of Rev. Powell, “We, a committee of Negro and white citizens, concerned about the recent disturbances in Harlem, make the following statement:

“In deploring the situation that has arisen in Harlem in the last days, this Committee recognizes the increasingly friendly relations existing between the white and Negro citizens of New York. We wish to call attention to the fact that beneath the recent disturbances in Harlem lie basic economic mal-adjustments. These are concerned with segregation and discrimination against the Negro people in employment, both private and public, as well as in the administration of relief.

“We call for an open investigation by a committee of white and Negro citizens and we express our determination to see that these conditions are thoroughly investigated and that appropriate action is taken to correct them.

“We deplore the violence which has already occurred and call upon all citizens of Harlem to restrain the relatively small group among them from further lawless action. We further call upon the white citizens of New York to avoid provocative and retaliatory action.

“We commend the fairness of the majority of the press in reporting the situation, and deplore the inflammatory presentation of the event by certain of the yellow journals.

Signed by Eight

“We appeal to the press, the leaders of public opinion and to the public itself to cooperate in preventing any further unfortunate outbreak and to assist in removing the basic causes of the present disturbance.”

Committee that drew up statement: Adam C. Powell, Jr. Margaret Forsythe. American League Against War and Fascism. Dr. Arthur Swift, Union Theological Seminary. Obie McCowlum, editor of the Amsterdam News. Henry Craft. Executive Secretary of 135th Street Y.M.C.A. James W. Ford, for the Communist Party. James Waterman Wise. American League Against War and Fascism. Frank Crosswaithe, for the Socialist Party.

Rev. Powell declared that the start of the outbreak on Tuesday night was “the last straw, and that the attack on the boy was only an incident; any other incident might have resulted in the same outburst on the part of the Negro population of Harlem.” Powell declared that if the Communists were in the leadership, as charged by the authorities, they “certainly would not have injected an angle of race antagonism.”

He also declared that “the basic issue was the two-year fight of the Negroes to obtain jobs in business places which discriminate against them.” He cited the A. & P. stores, the Butler stores, the gas and electric company, which refuse to hire Negroes.

Outburst Against Suffering

“It is significant,” Powell said, “that the riot started at the Kress store, which last year refused to employ Negroes despite constant picketing and despite the fact that other stores which had been picketed finally yielded and hired Negroes.”

Ben Davis. Jr., editor of The Negro Liberator, characterized the events of Tuesday as “an elemental, spontaneous expression of the Negro people against their suffering and against the unprovoked police attacks, as well as continued discrimination against Negroes in the matter of relief.”

State Inquiry Asked

In Albany, Assemblyman James E. Stephens, New York City Democrat, and one of the two Negro members of the Legislature, announced yesterday he would seek investigation into the Harlem situation by a joint legislative committee.

“This committee should be empowered to investigate the whole Negro condition in the State,” Stephens said.

He will ask an appropriation of $25,000 to defray expenses of the committee.

Stephens’ entire purpose is indicated by his declaration that “this is a condition that should have been remedied five years ago. But owing to the fact the Legislature has been Republican-controlled, we felt it would not be accepted.”

He sent the following telegram to Harvey Raymond, executive secretary, Harlem Merchants Association, who had called upon the chief executive to send the National Guard into the area:

“I beg to advise you that I have communicated with the office of the Mayor of the City of New York. I have been assured that the city officials have the matter entirely in hand.”

Daily Worker Seller Held

At 125th Street and Lenox Avenue yesterday afternoon  police arrested Thomas Carter, who was selling copies of the Daily Worker containing reports of the situation in Harlem. He was charged with “using loud and boisterous language and causing a crowd to collect.” Another worker, Edward Donnelly, who stays at the Mills Hotel, 34th 3treet and Fifth Avenue, and who protested Carter’s arrest, was also seized and charged with “interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty.” Both workers were taken for arraignment to the Harlem Magistrate’s Court, 121st Street and Sylvan Place.

A reporter for the Daily Worker heard Inspector D. Martini tell the policeman who made the arrests:

“When you get to court,” Martini told the cop (shield No. 14303). I want you to make sure that you explain to the magistrate that this man (the Daily Worker seller) was shouting about police brutality and about riots in an area which has been affected by disorder and in which there has been thousands of dollars of property damage. And I want you to explain that he caused a crowd to collect in such an affected area.”

The workers were held in $25 bail each and their cases were postponed until Monday.

Two Seized in Flushing

In Flushing Wednesday night, two workers were arrested while they were distributing a Communist Party leaflet on the Harlem situation on Main Street and Northern Boulevard, in a Negro neighborhood.

The workers, Sanford Phillips and Amos Bassain, were first arraigned in the Flushing Magistrate’s Court and later before Magistrate Georgio, who granted a postponement of the case and held the defendants in $500 bail each.

Irving Schwab, attorney for the International Labor Defense, pointed out Section 43 of the Penal Code under which the workers were held is a “dragnet law” aimed to terrorize workers on the vaguest charges. The workers were arrested not “for littering the streets” or “disorderly conduct”–the customary charges, but were held because the leaflet which they were distributing, the authorities alleged, “disturbed and endangered the peace of the public and which outraged public decency.”

Pressure on Bonding Firms Phillips and Bassain are now held in the Long Island City Jail. Attorney Schwab last night declared that the I.L.D. will apply at once to the Supreme Court of Queens for a writ of habeas corpus for the defendants.

Meanwhile, the International Labor Defense charged that pressure was being brought to bear on bonding agencies by the authorities to “persuade them not to furnish bonds to workers jailed in connection with the Harlem situation. The I.L.D. has issued an appeal to those owning property in Manhattan who are willing to help in bailing out workers to get in touch at once with the District I.L.D. Room 514, 22 E. 17th St.

Cops Swarm in Harlem

Wednesday night, on the main thoroughfares of Harlem, on Lenox and Seventh Avenues and 125th Street, small groups of Negroes stood reading LaGuardia’s message “to the people of New York,” posted on the store fronts.

This proclamation informed the Negroes of Harlem how much LaGuardia loved them. To make certain that the message was not misunderstood, a uniformed cop stood on guard near each poster.

At the curb, at regular intervals, was a mounted cop. A few yards away, policeman leaning against his motorcycle. At the corner of Lenox Avenue and 134th Street, seven policemen stood watching the Negroes who passed by.

Riot Cars Cruise

Meanwhile, just in case anyone still doubted the genuineness of LaGuardia’s affection for the people of Harlem, a large riot car, equipped with powerful searchlights, gas and machine guns, and carrying eight armed cops, drove slowly up Seventh Avenue, near the curb, then across to Lenox, down Lenox and then back again to Seventh Avenue.

In front of a theatre on 125th Street an old Negro picked up scraps of paper out of the gutter and stuffed them into a small shopping bag–probably to make a fire in his stove. Here was illustrated the basis of Tuesday night’s events–the misery and hunger of the Negro people of Harlem, not one bit altered by the Mayor’s message, the mounted cop, or the riot car.

“Read the Daily Worker!”

But at the corner, a young girl–a Red Builder–sang out, “Read the Daily Worker only three cents!”

A cop, hands clasped behind his back, stared at her. “Police brutality started the trouble!” she shouted.

A young Negro stepped up, bought a paper and walked off.

“The only paper that tells the truth about last night’s shooting!”

***

Jim-Crowism, Sheer Hunger, Rife in Harlem by Cyril Briggs

Negroes Discriminated Against by Bosses in Many Ways

The roots of Tuesday’s stormy events in Harlem can be traced directly to the intolerable starvation conditions and residential overcrowding inflicted upon the Negro masses by the city administration, relief agencies, private employers and piratical landlords.

In Harlem, two out of every three Negro workers are unemployed. Job discrimination by the big utilities–the I.R.T. and B.M.T. subways, the New York Telephone Company, the Metropolitan Insurance Company, etc., and even by local white firms doing business in the community, is another one of the underlying causes of Tuesday’s events. The deliberate capitalist policy which decrees that Negroes cannot be employed in other capacities than as porters, scrub women, etc., is practiced even by the white firms doing business in Harlem, firms which are dependent upon Negro patrons for support.

Discrimination in Relief

Job discrimination is supplemented by callous discrimination in relief by the city authorities. The “liberal” LaGuardia administration follows the example of the lynch rulers of the South and gives starving Negroes 26 per cent less in relief than workers in other sections of the city. In Harlem, the average relief per family is only $28, compared to average monthly city relief of $41 per family. In February, the Harlem relief supervisor, Victor Suarez, spent, on his own admission, only $214,000 to feed, house and clothe more than 7,500 Negro and Latin-American families on relief. Only $12,000 was spent on clothing, or at $1.60 per family!

In addition, hundreds of Negro and Latin-American families are denied any relief whatever, and are threatened with arrest and deportation when they apply for relief. Of the 12,000 families dropped from relief last month, a number far out of proportion to the average for the city as a whole live in Harlem

LaGuardia’s Red Herring

No demagogic attacks by Mayor LaGuardia on the Communist Party and militant Negro and white workers, no red-baiting by the vile pro-fascist Hearst press can conceal this terrific indictment of the jim-crow capitalist system. Tuesday’s events were an undisciplined expression of the pent-up anger of the Negro population against jim-crowism in jobs, relief, against exorbitant rents and unhealthy housing conditions, against police brutality and the savage persecution and oppression of the Negro population at the hands of the white ruling class, its courts and other agencies of oppression.

Behind its vicious red-baiting, even the capitalist press is forced to speak of the economic causes of Tuesday’s events. Thus, the New York Times yesterday carried a story of rent-gouging by unscrupulous landlords, Negro and white, under the heading “Harlem Ills Laid to Rent Gouging.” The article quotes statements by the leaders of several tenants’ organizations to the effect that landlords are squeezing “the last penny” from their tenants, are carrying out wholesale evictions in Harlem, and blacklisting tenants who organize to fight against their exactions, including even tenants who “gave shelter to an evicted tenant.” Charges were made that Negro tenants are forced to pay $60 and $70 rent for an apartment that, would be let to white tenants for $36.” The landlords, organized into an association, attempt to suppress all resistance by the tenants: In this they are ably aided by the courts and police.

Exorbitant Rents

These exorbitant rents result in the doubling up of families and fearful overcrowding, with an appalling increase in sickness, the death rate and prostitution. One leader of a tenant organization stated: “They are desperate. It is not that they don’t want to pay. They just can’t. The white people can always move, if the rents are raised, but the Negro is just like being in a box. He can’t go and live somewhere else in the city and so he is forced to pay.

“…and so they have rent parties. They sell whiskey or refreshments and they dance and play the numbers game. One vice leads to another. They invite young girls in for the party. Prostitution? It is common knowledge at rent parties.”

It is to these appalling conditions that Tuesday’s events can be directly traced. And it is on the LaGuardia administration, and the whole capitalist set-up in the city that the responsibility for these conditions rests. Certainly not on the Communist Party which has vigorously fought against these conditions, uniting the Negro and white masses in their day to day struggles against starvation and, as on Tuesday, defeating the attempts of the bosses and their press to incite race riots and set unemployed white and Negro workers fighting each other.

Aided by Same Negroes

In their attacks on the Communist Party and the Negro masses, the bosses are not without agents in, the ranks of the Negro people themselves. James H. Hubert of the National Urban League is reported by the capitalist press as “blaming” Tuesday’s events on “agitators.” Yet it was Mr. Hubert’s own organization which in a report on unemployment among Negroes, admitted that “the number of unemployed had grown, and that they were suffering to a greater degree than other workers…The inequalities in the Negro’s occupations are glaring. They are forcing the race into poverty, immorality and despondency.”

The National Urban League reported further that “at no time in the history of the Negro since slavery has his economic and social outlook seemed so discouraging. The present period of unemployment is sapping the foundations of Negro family life…” In Harlem, it reported an increase of 330 per cent in relief cases in the period of one year.

The report was issued in March, 1931. Since then conditions have grown incomparably worse.

What Kind of Investigation

Despite existence of this and other studies of Harlem conditions. Mayor LaGuardia now makes the empty gesture of appointing a committee to “investigate” social and economic conditions in West Harlem. But will the Mayor’s committee investigate the city’s discrimination in relief against Negroes? Will it investigate the pestilential conditions in the Harlem Hospital, generally known in Harlem as the Butcher Shop-conditions of discrimination against Negro physicians and internes, neglect and ill-treatment of patients, against which Harlem workers have repeatedly protested? It must be remembered that it was to this butcher shop that Negro workers shot down by the police last Tuesday were bundled off. One of the wounded Negro workers died in this hospital Wednesday morning. Several others are reported near death.

Meanwhile, Mayor LaGuardia has launched another investigation–a drive against the Communist Party and the militant Negro workers of Harleman “investigation” designed to whitewash the city’s responsibility for the conditions which led up to Tuesday’s events, an investigation aimed at outlawing the Communist Party and jailing the militant Negro and white workers who defended themselves against police attacks, and whose activities defeated the attempts of the police and the boss press to incite to race riots.

The Negro people of Harlem, supported by the workers and intellectuals throughout the city, must defeat the efforts of the city administration to cover up its crimes against the Negro people. Demand an open investigation of relief and job discrimination, of jim-crow oppression of the Negro people. Demand the release of Negro and white workers arrested in the police terror drive against the people of Harlem! Demand the withdrawal of the army of police thugs and spies from Harlem!

***

For Organised Struggle Against Oppression Of Negro People

AN EDITORIAL

WITH its smoking police revolvers barely put away, the city administration is beginning an investigation of the recent Harlem events. What this investigation will be like has already been indicated by Mayor LaGuardia and District Attorney William C. Dodge.

Both of these gentlemen have already come out in an attack upon the Communists-Dodge in an open, brazen fashion; LaGuardia in a more careful, veiled manner.

In the meantime, the police courts, following the lynch lead of the Hearst press, are beginning to grind out frame-ups. High bail has been set in a number of cases of those arrested.

District Attorney Dodge is suddenly galvanized into action upon the demand of the Mayor. Where was Mr. Dodge in the vice probe? Where was he when it was necessary to uncover the foul trial of the vice, policy slip and dope rackets in this city? Was it because the uncovering of these things would have led directly to Tammany Hall and to a number of Tammany clubhouses in the city that he was stricken blind, deaf and paralytic? Why did he wait for racketeers to come to him instead of going out and getting their evidence?

Clearly the actions of the Tammany District Attorney–with the support of fusion Mayor LaGuardia in the present situation shows beyond a doubt that both are far more interested in an anti-Red drive than in a drive against racketeering in this city–with which both major political parties are inextricably intertwined.

The Communist Party was the first to raise the demand for an investigation of the situation in Harlem. But any investigation, unless it sets out to whitewash the city administration, must get the opinion of the Negro people of Harlem, of the workers and the unemployed.

No investigation can sidetrack the basic issues in Harlem the appalling misery, the unemployment, the segregation and discrimination against the Negro people of Harlem.

It is not the Communist Party that has to be investigated: the activity of the Communist Party is an open book, which all may follow through the pages of the Daily Worker.

Let the committee find out why 55 to 60 per cent of Negro Harlem is unemployed!

Let the committee find out why 300 apartments rent for 300 to Harlem families!

Let the committee find out why there is so much congestion in Harlem!

Let the committee find out why so many Harlem houses haven’t decent health conveniences!

Let the committee find out who owns the major blocks of Harlem real estate and profits out of the miserable living conditions of the Negro people!

Let the committee find out why relief is about one-third lower In Harlem than elsewhere!

Let the committee investigate police brutality in Harlem and the attacks on the unemployed that have taken place before various Home Relief bureaus!

LET THE COMMITTEE FIND OUT WHY THE TUBERCULOSIS HATE IS HIGHER IN HARLEM THAN IN ANY OTHER SECTION OF NEW YORK CITY:

When the Mayor’s committee finds all these things out, it will then discover what was really behind the events of last Tuesday night.

Then this committee will realise the truth of the statement of James W. Ford, Negro Communist leader, when he declared 24 hours after the events that,

“The reported beating-up of a 1-year-old Negro boy yesterday in Harlem was but the incident for the letting loose the bitterness and resentment of the Negro people of Harlem as a result of their starvation conditions and terrible suffering.”

Any attempt to drag a red herring across the trail of a genuine investigation of the underlying conditions that led up to the events of Tuesday must meet the stern resistance of the whole organised labor movement of New York. Every white worker, every trade unionist, every supporter of the fight against Negro discrimination must fight against the red-baiting efforts of Mayor LaGuardia and District Attorney Dodge.

Organized labor of New York must stand solid with the Negro people of Harlem against the strike-breaking LaGuardia. The interests of the Negro people are the interests of the whole labor movement!

Negro and white workers: unite in warm solidarity! Stand firm against race riot provocations and red-baiting slanders! For an organized, disciplined struggle against the oppression of the Negro people! Demand the release of all those arrested in connection with the events of Tuesday!

Against Jim Crowiam! Stand united against the attempts of the boss class to whip up anti-Negro feeling! Fight for equal relief for the Negro unemployed!

***

The Boss Press Raises The Lynch Howl

AN EDITORIAL

IT is when the bitter misery of the masses is suddenly revealed in events such as took place in Harlem that the workers have an extraordinary opportunity to test the newspapers that they read.

One thing stands out in the way the capitalist press handled the situation–their eager servility to join in the Hearst-LaGuardia plot against the Communist Party.

The Hearst press, of course, with its shameless lying, its contempt for the Negro masses as expressed in its inciting headlines about “Negroes Roaring for Blood,” gave the lead to the rest.

And the first to take up this lynch howl was none other than the Socialist Jewish Forward, which in its hatred of the Communist Party, and its disgusting chauvinism went even beyond Hearst.

“Communists Incite Negroes to Riot Against Whites”–this is the damnable headline that this organ of the Socialist “Old Guard” dared to run across its pages. If this is not a cold-blooded provocation of lynch feeling not only against the Communists but against the Negro people, then language has lost its meaning.

In this unrestrained incitement against the Communist Party and the oppressed Negro masses, the Socialist Forward and the dirty sheets of Hearst were identical in tone and content.

It is a fitting commentary on this rank chauvinism of a Jewish Socialist paper, supposed to be fighting for the rights of an oppressed minority and for internationalism, to quote the statement endorsed by Frank R. Crosswaith, Negro Socialist member of the Citizens Emergency Committee, which bitterly denounced the Hearst press for its “Inflammatory” stories. The brand of Hearst falls with equal force on the Socialist Forward of the “Old Guard.”

A conservative paper like the New York Sun, which of course supports all of LaGuardia’s capitalist policies, pointed to the utter absurdity of this hastily manufactured LaGuardia “Communist plot.” “Seeing red is an official privilege, diversion and avocation at the moment,” it writes. “It is not necessary and it is confusing to seek a deep political motive in the lamentable excesses…” Seeing the stupidity of the LaGuardia propaganda, the Sun, nevertheless would like to see the whole matter viewed as a superficial “excess.”

Thel liberal New York Post, with a hypocritical posturing, acted in its usual form when the real interests of the capitalists are involved–it rushed into the arms of Hearst, and took up his cry against the Communists, echoing every one of Hearst’s les about the “inflammatory” pamphlets.

The Heart Journal, with the inconsistency of stupid reaction, is now running a series on conditions in Harlem, in which it probes to the misery and unemployment that stalk Harlem, calling these the “real causes of the outbreaks, at the same time that it howls about the “Communist propaganda” as the “cause,” knowing full well that the Communists alone have been fighting the misery in Harlem and the race hatred poison of the Hearst press.

In all this, the Dally Worker, organ of the Communist Party, has stood out as a beacon light of truth and honesty, fighting steadily for the interests and welfare of the oppressed Negre masses, fighting uncompromisingly against chauvinism, raising the cry of solidarity of Negro and white against the common capitalist oppressors.

The masses of Harlem recognised the Daily Worker as their staunchest ally and defender. Yesterday, they bought it in thousands, buying every available copy, hailing with enthusiasm the only true story of the “riots” available in the city!

The Daily Worker is the weapon of the workers of Harlem, of the city and the country. To support the capitalist, Hearst press is to support the enemy which starves and oppresses the working class! Support the Daily Worker! Boycott the lying capitalist press!

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n070-NAT-mar-22-1935-DW-Q.pdf