On the third day of coverage of the March, 1935 uprising in Harlem, the Red Scare goes into overdrive as the city government, instead of investigating police and conditions of life, announce an investigation into Communism in the city, opened by raids on Party halls and arrests of leafleters in Harlem. Includes the news of the day, names of those arrested, an article by Cyril V. Briggs on unemployment in Harlem and an editorial on the red-baiting LaGuardia administration.

‘Red Scare Aims to Hide Negro Misery’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 12 No. 71. March 23, 1935.

POLICE RAID HARLEM C.P. HEADQUARTERS; NEW ARRESTS MADE

Police Invade Office of Hospital Workers, Seize Records Seek to Stop “Daily” Sales By Arrests of Red Builders

Seeking to hide the appalling misery and hunger which caused the spontaneous outburst in Harlem on Tuesday night, police authorities yesterday conducted a series of raids in an effort to organize a “red scare.”

The Harlem section office of the Communist Party at 415 Lenox Avenue was invaded by eight policemen and detectives yesterday afternoon. Failing to make arrests, they smashed the furniture and office equipment.

Shortly before, two girl Red Builders who were selling the Daily Worker were arrested at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. The girls, Sophie Anderson, 19, and Lorraine Bohay, 21, were later arraigned in the Washington Heights Magistrate’s Court at 151st Street and Convent Avenue, charged with “disorderly conduct.”

Sign Warns Workers

A bit of grim humor crept into the situation when Negro workers, seeing the detectives in charge of the Communist headquarters in Harlem, placed a sign on the ground floor entrance reading “POLICE THUGS UPSTAIRS.” The detectives waited in vain for workers to come up and be trapped.

Later in the day detectives stormed into the office of the Nurses and Hospital Workers’ League at 799 Broadway and put Dr. David Mitchell, the organizer of League, through a severe grilling, after which they led him to the office of District Attorney Dodge for further questioning. The detectives seized office records, a typewriter and a mimeograph machine.

Police alleged that one of the men indicted is a member of the organization.

Office Supply Co. Raided

Another group of detectives raided the General Supply Company at 1 Union Square and seized typewriters and a supply of mimeograph papers. This firm supplies office equipment to numerous working class organizations. Just what was behind the raid on the place was not clear yesterday.

Young Liberators Ousted

The Young Liberators were dispossessed yesterday afternoon from the headquarters at 262 Lenox Avenue by City Marshall Sidney Solomon who had four moving men move the furniture of the headquarters into the street. The dispossess warrant was signed by Justice William Wilson, and alleged inability to pay rent.

The club’s furniture, consisting of a desk, plano, bass drum and chairs was later removed by the police.

Meanwhile Tammany District Attorney William C. Dodge continued his threats against Communists and working class organizations in an effort to create a “red scare.” Seven indictments against twelve persons have thus far been returned by the Grand Jury at his request, and a war-time measure has been resurrected which may be used to imprison five of the jailed workers for ten years.

I.L.D. Wires Protest

Heavy police mobilization through Harlem continued yesterday, while authorities announced that “should an emergency require it,” the police would order out its rifle regiment of 200 police sharpshooters who have been in training in an armory.

The International Labor Defense, New York district, yesterday sent telegraphic protests to Mayor LaGuardia. and District Attorney Dodge vigorously denouncing the police terror against Negroes in Harlem. The I.L.D. demanded the immediate release of all workers arrested and prosecution of police who shot and wounded scores of Negro workers on Tuesday night.

Jail Sentences

Elizabeth Cay, 28, of 1653 Third Avenue, and Arthur Davis, 32, of 46 West 126th Street yesterday were sentenced to five days each by Magistrate J. Stanley Renaud in the Harlem Magistrate’s Court at 123rd Street and Third Avenue, on a charge of “stealing groceries” during the upsurge of starving Negro workers in Harlem last Tuesday. They were arrested by Detective Philips of the West 123rd Street Police Station.

Herbert Hunter, 18, of 56 West 126th Street, was sentenced to ten days on a similar charge.

James Huges, 24, of 1897 Seventh Avenue, was held by Magistrate Renaud for the grand jury on a charge of felonious assault. He is alleged to have struck Detective Roge of the 104th Street Station with a stone in front of Kress’s store, “inflicting a wound which required two stitches.”

Charles Saunders, 28, of 1965 Seventh Avenue, was held for the grand jury on a charge of “burglary.” He is alleged to have smashed a shoe store window at 1985 Seventh Avenue, and to have stolen several pairs of shoes.”

Harry Gordon, white worker, was released on $1,000 ball, on a charge of felonious assault. Gordon was beaten by the police immediately after his arrest Tuesday evening, and was beaten again in the police station that night, and in the police line-up the next day.

Two More for Grand Jury Annie Taylor, 21, of 1800 Seventh Avenue, was bound over to the grand jury in $1,000 bail on a charge of “burglary.” Arthur Merritt, 43, of 133 West 121st Street, was held without bail for the grand jury on a similar charge.

Dorothy Paris, 34, of 256 West 130th Street, who was arrested yesterday morning and charged with throwing an ash cover through the plate-glass window of a store at 527 Lenox Avenue, was held in $500 bail on a charge of malicious mischief by Magistrate Ford in the Washington Heights Court, 166th St. and Broadway.

Hashi Mahomed, 22, of 4 West 128th Street, was sentenced to 30 days in the same court on a charge of “burglary.”

A sentence of five days was imposed on Arthur Haywood, 33, of 253 West 133rd Street, who was charged with kicking in a show window. He was tried on a charge of “malicious mischief.”

Citizens Group Acts

While more than 100 Negroes were in hospital and homes nursing wounds inflicted by police gunfire and clubs, Commissioner Valentine gave a clear bill of health to his force.

Meanwhile the Citizens’ Emergency Committee, composed of 400 prominent Negro and white individuals, proceeded with plans for an investigation of jim-crow conditions and relief discrimination in Harlem. The Committee was formed Wednesday at the home of Rev. A. Clayton Powell, Jr. of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and includes men of such diverse political viewpoints as Obie McCullum, editor of the Amsterdam News, James W. Ford. Negro Communist leader and Harlem section organizer of the Communist Party and Frank Crosswaith of the Socialist Party and the International Ladies Garment. Workers Union.

Ernst Morris member of the mayor’s committee to investigate events in Harlem, speaking to reporters after a conference with LaGuardia, said the Committee has created a temporary organization with Mrs. Eunice Carter as temporary secretary of the body. Election of a chairman has been delayed until Arthur Garfield Hays returns from Chicago.

The next meeting of the LaGuardia committee will take place at 4 p.m. Monday at the Seventh District.

From reliable sources it was learned yesterday that an order issued Monday in the 26th and 28th Relief Bureau precincts, giving investigators a quota of cases to “close” was quietly ignored on Wednesday, following the stormy outbreak against hunger and discrimination on Tuesday night. Word was quietly passed around yesterday, without official order, rescinding the relief closing order with the phrase, “don’t turn anybody down.”

It is further revealed that employment agencies are unusually active in placing Negroes on jobs in stores and other establishments which formerly discriminated against them.

Brutality to Prisoners

Negro workers released from city jails yesterday shed new light on the police orgy of anti-Negro brutality which marked Tuesday night’s spontaneous outbreak against discrimination, segregation and oppression of Harlem’s Negro population.

One man lay in a cell in the West 123rd Street Station from late Tuesday night until late Wednesday afternoon with an unattended bullet wound in his shoulder. Other wounded prisoners were also completely neglected. The West 123rd Stret Police Station, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, was turned into a veritable slaughter pen in the most hateful tradition of the Nazi Brown Houses.

Queens Rally Protests

The Queens Committee for Equal Opportunities, the united front organization which has led the successful fight for appointment of Negro doctors to the new Queens General Hospital, held a mass meeting Thursday night in Corona to celebrate their victory and to protest police brutality in Harlem. The meeting was held at the Corona Congregational Church, at 102nd Street.

Important Notice!

The following statement was issued last night by James W. Ford. organizer of the Harlem Section of the Communist Party and A.W. Berry, Acting Secretary of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights:

Solomon Harper has been issuing statements on the situation in Harlem in the name of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. These statements have not been authorized by the L.S.N.R. and are to be disregarded, and all other statements issued by Harper either in the name of the L.S.N.R., or the Communist Party.

JAMES W. FORD, Organizer, Harlem Section, Communist Party. A. W. BERRY, Acting Secretary, League of Struggle for Negro Rights.

***

80% of Harlem Are Jobless, Survey Shows by Cyril Briggs

Tuberculosis Rate Is 5 Times Higher Than Among Whites

Mayor LaGuardia’s administration, which is frantically attempting to hide its responsibility for Tuesday’s events in Harlem behind a savage attack on the Communist Party and militant Harlem workers, Negro and white, is likely to discover that “facts are stubborn things.”

“…White and Negro organizations agreed that poverty, unemployment and unhealthful living conditions were to blame and must be remedied to guarantee the peace of Harlem.” Thus the New York Post admits in a news-story on March 21 the criminal responsibility of the LaGuardia administration, whose anti-Negro policies the same paper attempts to whitewash in an editorial on the same day, for the appalling misery and jim-crow discrimination which were directly responsible for the outburst of indignation by the people of Harlem last Tuesday night.

Similar admissions of the economic causes behind Tuesday’s stormy events in Harlem are now being made by all the capitalist papers, which only a few days ago were attempting to isolate those events from the background of frightful suffering and mass misery imposed on the Negro people by jim-crow discrimination in relief and jobs, high rents and pestilential housing conditions,

Urban League Retreats

The New York Urban League, whose reactionary head, James H. Hubert, joined the police and the lynch press howls that “Communists are responsible” for the Harlem unrest, admits, according to the New York Post, that “nearly 80 per cent of the Negroes in Harlem are unemployed,” and that the death rate in Harlem is now twice the city rate.

A measure of the effects of unemployment on the living conditions and health of the Harlem Negro people, as well as of the extent of jim-crow practices in relief and even outright denial of relief, is given in the Post’s admission: “As many as five large families are jammed together in some of the apartments of the district, forced to combine their resources in order to pay the rent on quarters which frequently are firetraps and disease breeders,

“Resentment born of these conditions and festering through years of suffering, welfare authorities contend, is to blame for the riots…”

M. Hubert, who so eagerly joined the police provocation against the Communist Party and the suffering Negro workers, is himself forced, in the following statements, to admit general discrimination against Negroes in the administration of relief and on work projects:

“There is no question that the Negro has been discriminated against, not only in the city at large, but right here in Harlem. Negroes have been given very few Jobs on projects in Harlem, and all Harlem knows that.”

Urge Prostitution

Even in this, the sixth winter of the crisis and breakdown of capitalist industry, large numbers of Negro families are being denied relief. Negro women applicants are often met with the insinuation that they can earn a living on the streets by prostituting their bodies. Relief payments, where relief is given is from one-fourth to one-third lower than in other sections of the city. Poverty Diseases Grow

In a report on health conditions among Harlem school children. Dr. Jessamy, prominent Negro physician of Harlem, pointed to an alarming growth of “poverty diseases,” due to malnutrition and overcrowding in homes and schools.

Other reports issued by official agencies show a rapid increase in the adult death rate and in infant mortality in Harlem. From 1923 to 1927 the Harlem death rate was already 42 per cent higher than the average for the entire city. During the past six years, health conditions have grown worse under the ravages of the crisis. The reports of the Department of Health, as now given out for each section, show an increase in tuberculosis and infant mortality in Harlem and other Negro communities in New York City. The Brooklyn Charities reported deaths among Negroes from tuberculosis as five times higher than among whites. The Greenwich House Health Conference found health conditions in Harlem worse than in any other part of the city, with conditions rapidly growing worse.

Housing Worst

Housing conditions in Harlem are generally admitted to be the worst in the entire city. The New York Journal admits that the high-rent tenements in Harlem are “slums more miserable than the East Side ever knew.” The Hoover Housing Commission reported terrific over-crowding, and dilapidated and unsanitary conditions, together with exorbitantly high rents. Negro tenants are forced to pay rents ranging from 12 to 50 per cent, and in many cases, even 100 per cent. higher than rents paid by whites in other sections of the city, or in Harlem itself.

These are some of the conditions to which Tuesday’s events in Harlem can be directly traced.

Even the pro-fascist, anti-Negro Hearst press, whose vicious attempts to turn Tuesday’s events into a race riot were defeated by the vigorous actions of Harlem Communist workers. Negro and white, is now forced to admit the economic causes behind those events.

A united front of all forces ready to fight against the starvation conditions in Harlem, for adequate relief without jim-crow discrimination, for rights of the Negro people, must now be built up to defeat the attempts of the city administration, District Attorney Dodge and the courts to railroad to long prison sentences the Negro and white workers arrested last Tuesday, and in subsequent police raids throughout police-occupied Harlem. Defend the Negro People! Defend the Communist Party, the best fighter for the interests of all sections of the toiling population!

***

LaGuardia Fights Communist Party to Hide Misery in Harlem.

AN EDITORIAL

The corrupt Tammany machine, working through District Attorney Dodge, and the police force; operating under the supervision of the “liberal” Mayor LaGuardia, are launching a campaign against the Communist Party and all working class activity in their desperate attempt to hide their guilt in the Harlem outbreak.

District Attorney Dodge has just conferred with Chief of Police Valentine and high public officials and has announced that he will launch an immediate Grand Jury “investigation of Communist activity.”

This “inquiry” is already being preceded by police raids, arrests and general terrorism against the whole population in Harlem.

Dodge could not be budged on the vice, graft and racketeering which infest the city and plunder its people of hundreds of millions. The Tammany Dodge and the Fusion LaGuardia have too close connections with this rottenness to act against it. Yesterday, this energetic “red-baiter” dropped, on his own personal initiative, the remaining charges against the capitalist crooks who plundered the thousands of small depositors in the, Bank of the United States, Marcus Singer, and the rest.

But for a terrorist attack against the city’s workers and their revolutionary party, leading the struggle for better conditions, for more relief, for an end to the Jim Crow oppression of the Harlem masses, this LaGuardia lackey has suddenly discovered remarkable energy!

LaGuardia is playing his usual, cunning, “liberal” role. In the same breath, he echoes the vile incitements of a Hearst against the Communist Party and calls with hypocritical suavity for “suspended judgment” while his allegedly “impartial” commission investigates. He has already placed on this commission people like Herbert Delaney, who are only too eager to foster the Hearst-LaGuardia plot against the Communist Party. Meanwhile, police clubs and revolvers are much in evidence in Harlem.

The LaGuardia-Hearst plot is a menace to the entire population and the labor movement. Police terrorism against the Communist Party, the best defender of the rights and interests of the masses, will rapidly turn into a wholesale series of attacks against all strikers, pickets, and demonstrations before the relief offices.

It is the Communist Party which has been leading the fight against injunctions, calling for the broadest mass united front, which has been giving the most determined assistance to the heroic workers in the Ohrbach, N.B.C., elevator men and other strikes against the employers.

It is the Communist Party which has been fighting day in and day out for the organization of the Negro and white workers in a common fight for adequate relief against the hunger program of LaGuardia.

It is the Communist Party which has consistently fought against the hideous Jim Crow discrimination of the LaGuardia administration, which dooms the Negro people of Harlem to even greater poverty and degradation than the white toilers.

The LaGuardia-Hearst campaign against the Communist Party is only the attempt of these brutal, Jim Crow reactionaries to smash all resistance to their anti-labor Wall Street program, which is taking its bitter toll from the white and Negro workers of New York in starvation, suffering and disease. A blow against the Communist Party is aimed at the whole labor movement, to perpetuate the misery of the New Deal, which has reached unbearable limits among the Negro people.

They want to hide their terrible guilt. They want to protect the ruling class Wall Street parasites, whose plunder rests on the backs of the Harlem and city-wide masses.

And so they turn in their rage against the Party that is leading the masses, Negro and white, in the struggle against them, for better conditions, for food, cash relief and unemployment insurance.

The city population, the oppressed Negro masses, the trade unions, and all defenders of political rights must unite to defeat this Hearst-LaGuardia plot!

All workers organizations and unions should pass resolutions against police raids and terror in the Harlem. Send your protests to Mayor LaGuardia.

Defend the arrested workers against the frame-up charges against them! Fight the Jim Crow incitements of the capitalist press! Build the unity of Negro and white workers against the common oppressor! For adequate relief! Defend the rights of the workers and their revolutionary Party, the Communist Party!

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-n071-NAT-mar-23-1935-DW-Q.pdf