LLOYD HOBBS, sixteen, and his brother Russell, both colored, were New York high-school students of excellent standing and character. On the evening of March 19, 1935, these boys came out of a moving picture house and noticed a small crowd standing before a shop near the comer of 128th Street and Seventh Avenue. Eager to see what was happening they joined the crowd, only to behold an amazing spectacle. The windows of the shop had been broken, and colored people inside were passing out to others the contents of the store. Soon afterward a police car drove up to the curb, and one of its two occupants alighted, brandishing a pistol. At once everybody ran. Patrolman John F. McInerny picked out Lloyd Hobbs as his quarry. He swears that he called on Lloyd to halt; other witnesses swear that he did not. Without stopping to fire a shot in the air, this guardian of the peace brought down Lloyd as he was running across 128th Street by a bullet which passed through his body and into his wrist. Lloyd died in the Harlem Hospital a few days later. McInerny has neither been indicted nor tried by the Police Department.
This was in many ways the most tragic and certainly the most unnecessary event of the riots which kept the center of Harlem in turmoil for the entire evening and night of March 19-20. The deaths were few, the injuries and arrests numerous; the damage to plate glass alone ran up to $150,000. It was a passionate but an undirected outbreak. It was not engineered by Communists or anti-Semites, nor was it a racial riot in the sense of white and colored being aligned against each other. The stores that were raided were owned by Jews, white Gentiles, and Negroes. The affair had its origin in a wholly unfounded rumor that a boy caught stealing a pen-knife in Kresge's store on 125th Street had been beaten and murdered by employees in the store basement.
The rumor spread like wildfire. The boy was in fact caught in his theft at 2:30 p.m. and released unharmed. But within an hour crowds began to form and refused to believe statements by store employees and some of the police. By 5:30 it was necessary to close the store. At 6:30 a window of the store was smashed, and the disturbance then grew rapidly. At 7:30 the Young Liberators, a radical colored group bent on protecting the rights of the Negroes, issued a false leaflet that a boy had been maltreated in the Kresge store and was near death, and the Young Communist League also spread the statement in a broadside. Neither organization took the trouble to ascertain the facts. There are still Negroes in Harlem who believe to this day that the boy was killed despite the fact that he was photographed with a colored police lieutenant on the night of the riot and that he has twice appeared at public hearings and sworn that he was the guilty lad.
Never did a serious public disorder arise with less immediate provocation. Why, then, did this outburst take place? The answer has been fully established by Mayor LaGuardia's Commission on Conditions in Harlem, headed by Dr. C. H. Roberts, a leading colored dentist, appointed to look into the entire situation. The rumor was simply the match to touch rank a magazine which had been years preparing. The nerves of a considerable portion of a community of 200,000 people snapped because of five and a half years of depression, with an unemployment average of no less than 70 per cent in certain areas, because of economic and social discrimination and prejudice, because of rank misgovernment greatly accentuated by certain specific grievances. Thus the riot was preceded by a determined movement among the colored residents of Harlem to obtain employment for some of their number in the many stores which owe their very existence to Negro patronage. The Kresge store was one of these; it had only two or three Negroes in its employ when the storm broke.
But this was only one grievance. Other wrongs were persistent: grievous mishandlings by the police in violation of the Bill of Right, seriously inadequate school accommodations, discrimination in the administration of relief to destitute unemployed, inadequate hospitalization and institutional care, bad housing and worse overcrowding in the tenements, indefensibly high rentals, inadequate playgrounds and recreation centers, the closing of one avenue after another to economic advancement--these were some of the conditions which caused the sudden outburst. The wonder is that the emotions of the Negroes did not get out of hand before, and the danger is that there will be other outbreaks if the depression continues and the situation in other respects remains unchanged.
INADEQUATE SCHOOL ACCOMMODATIONS
Take the question of the schools. The keen interest of colored parents in school conditions in Harlem astonished the Mayor's Commission. Not only the various Parents' Associations but every intelligent person in Harlem knows that that section has been gravely discriminated against by the Board of Education, over which the Mayor of New York has only slight control. Actually there have been only nine schools built in Harlem since 1900, and not one elementary school since 1924, yet this period covers the tremendous influx of Negroes from the South AS a result of the World War. Moreover, since many Negro schools have been closed in the South during the depression, parents have recklessly shipped their children to friends or relatives or even speaking acquaintances in the North in the hope that they would be taken in and educated. It has been extremely difficult to fit these children into classes, since most of the Harlem schools are compelled to hold two, and in some cases three, sessions from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., with a strain upon teachers and pupils and the educational plant which needs no belaboring. There are between forty and fifty pupils to a class in fully half of the elementary schools. The problem would be difficult enough if all these children were well nourished and adequately clad, but they are not. Johnny A., whose case lies before me, is unfortunately not exceptional. His teacher discovered that he was half-fainting from hunger and had not had sufficient food for three days. School lunches are furnished, and teachers make every effort to discover such cases and to aid them, but there are only a few visiting teachers to act as liaison officers between school and family.
If Johnny A. came from a home which was normal and intact and merely hungry, he was lucky. The principal of one school testified that out of 1,600 families 700 were "broken." In fully 90 percent of these the father was missing, and the mother was trying not only to do all the housework and cooking for her children but to go out to work besides. After school the children are adrift upon the streets or at home alone or in bad company. Often male and female solicitors are in evidence when the girls schools empty their pupils into the streets in the early after noon, so much so that several principals testified that the! had had to demand a police guard. The police themselves seem to be unable to drive away the evil resorts of every kind that infest numerous neighborhoods.
The commission also found that the school plant was "old, shabby, and far from modern," in many instances neither sanitary nor well kept nor free from serious fire hazards. Four of the schools are without auditoriums; one tries to serve luncheons to 1,000 children when there are seats for only 175. There is no special school for over age boys and girls, and there is complete lack of coordination between the home, the school, and public-welfare agencies Worst of all, there is no school or institution to which a delinquent child may be sent. There are such for white Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, but not one for Negroes. There is no nursery school. The teachers are so terrorized by superior authority that many of them would not testify before the commission except with a guaranty of protection and the suppression of their names in the records. The only pleasant aspect of the whole situation is that there was proof of complete and cordial cooperation between white and colored teachers.
DISCRIMINATION IN RELIEF
As for the relief situation, it is not easy to say just how much conscious discrimination exists, but there has certainly been a lot of it. Take the case of Mrs. F. W., who told the principal of a school that her three children were unable to go to school because they were so hungry. This woman was trying to keep herself and her children alive on two cans of milk and two of beef issued every two weeks, the relief bureau being out of other articles listed on her supplementary card. Investigation showed that she had been sent to the Bureau for Mothers' Pensions and to the Home Relief Bureau, but had received nothing because she had got some insurance after the death of her husband, a veteran, for whose funeral expenses the government had made a cash grant. The undertaker had received this money and more besides. What was left had been taken from her by a brother-in-law, but the city authorities insisted that they could not aid her because she had had this money, and they held to this position long after the time during which the $200 or $300 would have sufficed to maintain her and her three children. Similar things have doubtless happened elsewhere in the city, but the colored people are convinced that it happens more often in their case
An especial hardship for the Negroes has been the requirement that all applicants asking for relief give up all insurance policies above $500. Often these small policies represent the entire life savings of the holder. More than that, these sums are counted on to assure a worthy funeral- funerals bulk very large in Negro life and the thought of a pauper's grave is a dreadful one. At the beginning of the relief work in New York City there was a marked was to discriminate against the Negro and to assign every Negro applicant to one of those menial jobs which in the public mind are associated with Negroes, no matter if the applicant had been a white-collar or professional worker all his life. It is also true that at the outset no Negro of standing was given a position of authority in the relief organizations After the riots three were appointed administrators in precinct offices. Today the work has been much more standardized, and there are no longer charges of discrimination in the matter of food issued, but people in charge of public-work projects are in general unable to find opportunities for high-grade Negro workers. Fortunately the new Works Progress Administrator, Victor Ridder, has set his face rigidly against any racial discrimination.
POLICE VIOLENCE
Harlem is never an easy police problem. That under existing conditions it presents a more difficult one than ever must be plain. If that entitles the police of the city of New York to sympathy, it does not put an end to criticism. The hearings before the Mayor's Commission on the riots and what caused them were as exciting and dramatic as anything ever put upon the stage, and the revelations of intense bitterness and antagonism toward the police were a shock to all who heard. Arthur Garfield Hays' who presided admirably as chairman of the subcommittee on the riots, allowed the fullest latitude to witnesses to lawyers, to Communists and even to casual spectators; all the hearings of I the commission served a most useful purpose as safety valves. Most surprising of all was the fact that the colored people were as bitter against colored men in uniform as against white officers The hostility was justified in many cases; the police respect the rights of the individual citizen no more in Harlem than elsewhere. Several police officials, when asked by Mr. Hays to state what their right to arrest was, showed ignorance of the law requiring warrants. They admitted that the police are constantly going into homes and taking out people without due process of law. It appeared also that men are being arrested on the streets at the will of the police without even having given ground for suspicion.
One of the few amusing moments was afforded by the testimony of a reporter for a Communist newspaper who said that he had been arrested and taken to the police station for walking on the street with a colored woman. He was detained for some time, in fact, until he was able to prove that he was a Negro. Such detentions and arrests are frequent and are defended by the police on the ground that they contribute to the breaking up of prostitution in Harlem. But the fact is that there is an enormous amount of prostitution, that hundreds of white men invade this district every night, that investigators for the commission report one tenement house after another as infested with prostitutes and representatives of every form of vice, and that the police make no efficient effort to remedy these conditions. It is of course obvious that even if this procedure of arresting white men for walking with colored women were a remedial police measure, it would still be contrary to law. But annoyances like these are insignificant, aside from the principle involved, in comparison with many cases of brutal violence.
One policeman who appeared before the commission admitted having killed two Negroes within a year. One was a sixteen-year-old boy charged with burglary whom he hot as the boy was running off. The other was a mildly intoxicated man whom the officer was called by another Negro to arrest. The drunken man having lightly hit the policeman on the shoulder, the latter hauled off and hit the man with such violence that he knocked him down and fractured his skull. The man died just as he was carried into a hospital. In neither case, so far as appears, was the act of the officer investigated by a high official, nor was the man placed on trial to defend the propriety of his acts. Even worse was the case of Thomas Aiken, who six days before the riot was standing at the end of one line of relief seekers in the armory of the colored regiment. Another line was behind him with a space between for people to pass through. some men came in and filled the vacant space; two policemen ordered them away and Aiken also. When he protested, they not only beat him unmercifully but actually gouged out one eye. No allegation was made that Aiken was armed or that he in any way attacked the officers. The incident occurred in broad daylight in a public building and can only be described as an act of sadistic cruelty and complete abuse of official authority. But here again the grand jury refused to indict and the Police Commissioner to punish.
Like many of his predecessors, the present Police Commissioner seems to run the department on the theory that the police are to be upheld at any cost. The commission made the suggestion that a policeman who uses his revolver with fatal results should be put on trial and, if acquitted, commended and the commendation communicated to the entire force. If, on the other hand, the verdict went the other way he should be punished by the loss of his position and by a trial and conviction in a criminal court. The commission's appeal to the Mayor and the Police Commissioner has yet been ineffective. The Commissioner has shown no desire to cooperate with the commission or to remedy conditions, with the result that the commission is now considering mass-meeting at which it might lay the facts and what it is trying to accomplish before the public. To the commission's suggestion that there be formed a joint committee of whites and Negroes to which anyone could go with complaints about police conduct, which committee would promote intelligent cooperation with the Police Department, the Commissioner that he could not consent to that as the Police Department does not recognize any color line!
HOSPITALS AND HEALTH
With respect to hospitals and other public institutions, here are countless reasons for public unrest in West Harlem. The only municipal hospital in this area is the Harlem hospital, for years past a storm center because of shocking overcrowding. With a bed capacity of 325 it is not an unusual occurrence for the hospital to house as many as 450. The average daily attendance for 1934 was 393. Men and men are turned out just as soon as they can be moved home are sent to other institutions in the city only to be turned, in one case no less than three times. The regulations of the College of Surgeons as to the amount of air each patient should have are constantly violated. There are cots in the hallways; even stretchers are used as beds, as are chairs. In the wards the beds are side by side so that there is practically no privacy. There are constant charges of lack of discipline and of inefficiency, but it is of course impossible for any staff of physicians, surgeons, and nurses to do good work under such conditions.
The central fact remains that Harlem has been served by only one public hospital--325 beds for a population of over 200,000. How great is the need appears from the fact that in four Harlem health areas, in which Negroes constituted between 95 and 100 per cent of the population in 1929-33, the infant-mortality rate ranged from 94 to 120 per thousand of live births as contrasted with 55 for the city as a whole in 1931; and the tuberculosis mortality rate ranged from 251 to 319 per 100,000 population, the rate for the United States being 64.6 in 1930. The tuberculosis figures are for the very area in which the Harlem Hospital is situated. These figures are in striking contrast to the health situation in the East Harlem district, where only 10 per cent of the population is Negro. It remains to be added that there is not a single convalescent home to which Negroes can be sent. What makes the situation worse from the Negro point of view is the constant discrimination against colored members of the medical staff of the Harlem Hospital. It took years to get Negro physicians and nurses assigned to this hospital, and they still have to contend against racial prejudice.
Thus far the Mayor's Commission has published three reports, one on the housing situation, one on the police, and one on the schools, with a fourth on hospitals coming. The first, for which a subcommittee headed by Morris L. Ernst was responsible, resulted, thanks largely to Mr. Ernst's energy and the cooperation of the city officials, in bringing about some improvement in the housing laws as affecting Harlem. The police and school reports lay for weeks unpublished in the office of the overworked Mayor, and other scheduled reports are still lagging. This is disappointing, and so is the fact that no one in the city administration has been assigned to the task of starting a long-range reform program. The Mayor has practically no control over the school board, which persistently overlooks the Harlem schools when called upon to set up a large building program. The Mayor is eager to do what is right and is well aware of the need, but where the millions necessary for the reconstruction of Harlem or for furnishing even the necessary institutional care can be found no one knows.
It is a question whether the Mayor's Commission should not be succeeded by a volunteer body to keep after the city until at least a beginning in the job of ameliorating existing conditions has been made. Only one important result of the commission's work is so far in sight: an elaborate report on the Harlem situation is being drafted by Dr. E. Franklin Frazier, a professor in Howard University, who was given a leave of absence for the purpose of conducting this survey, for which federal aid was obtained. One housing project is under way with the aid of money from Washington and with the full approval of Secretary Ickes, but this has its discouraging side in that it is using for housing the best tract available in Harlem for recreation and playground purposes. And it is only a beginning. Unlimited sums are needed to wipe out the slums and to supply the additional recreation grounds and parks and the institutions which must be built if Harlem is to be brought up to the standard of other portions of the city.
