Presumed Criminal

Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York

Carl Suddler

• Editorial: NYU Press
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781479850280
• Categoría: Sciences sociales
• Categoría: Études afro-américaines

A startling examination of the deliberate criminalization of black youths from the 1930s to today

A stark disparity exists between black and white youth experiences in the justice system today. Black youths are perceived to be older and less innocent than their white peers. When it comes to incarceration, race trumps class, and even as black youths articulate their own experiences with carceral authorities, many Americans remain surprised by the inequalities they continue to endure. In this revealing book, Carl Suddler brings to light a much longer history of the policies and strategies that tethered the lives of black youths to the justice system indefinitely.

The criminalization of black youth is inseparable from its racialized origins. In the mid-twentieth century, the United States justice system began to focus on punishment, rather than rehabilitation. By the time the federal government began to address the issue of juvenile delinquency, the juvenile justice system shifted its priorities from saving delinquent youth to purely controlling crime, and black teens bore the brunt of the transition.

In New York City, increased state surveillance of predominantly black communities compounded arrest rates during the post–World War II period, providing justification for tough-on-crime policies. Questionable police practices, like stop-and-frisk, combined with media sensationalism, cemented the belief that black youth were the primary cause for concern. Even before the War on Crime, the stakes were clear: race would continue to be the crucial determinant in American notions of crime and delinquency, and black youths condemned with a stigma of criminality would continue to confront the overwhelming power of the state.

1

“The Child Is Never Basically Bad”

Creating Crime through Prevention

Society, the child’s home life, environmental influences and other factors influencing him may cause him to rebel, but the child is never basically bad.

—Justice Jane Matilda Bolin, New York Amsterdam News, April 9, 1949

As the Depression decade was coming to its end, it seemed like everyone had something to say about crime in Harlem: “But crime in Harlem isn’t the weather.”1 It was not a topic of conversation that existed with no effect. To the contrary, the more people talked about it, the more it seemed to influence the everyday lives of Harlem residents.

This was particularly true for Harlemites after the New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Urban Colored Population met in January 1939. The public hearings were set to reveal the findings of a four-month investigation of the community by the commission’s research staff. Crime in Harlem was injected into this discussion by Charles Hanson, chairman of the Harlem Public Policy Committee. Hanson accused the police department of “protecting New York City from Harlem” and declared that “more police should be taken off their horses on Seventh avenue and stationed in the side streets where they are needed.”2 The call was reinforced during the hearing by New York City Councilman Joseph Baldwin, who professed, “there’s a murder a day in Harlem,” and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who deplored that he “couldn’t stop Harlemites from butchering one another.” And though New York City Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine denied such accusations, the diatribe of a crime wave in Harlem was affirmed.3

But Commissioner Valentine was right. In fact, at least according to New York Police Department (NYPD) figures, violent crime in Harlem decreased across the 1930s. At the January hearing, Captain James C. Pritchard cited homicide statistics in Harlem beginning with 1933, when he said there were 124 such cases in the Sixth Detective District, comprising most of Harlem. By 1938, the year under scrutiny, Captain Pritchard testified that there were 71 homicides in the area. Even an independent investigation by Inspector Joseph J. Donovan, at the request of Mayor La Guardia, put the number at 82 in 1938—both totals well under the “murder-a-day” moniker.4

Still, it was in the interest of city officials to play up violent crime in Harlem if they wanted to increase the police presence in the community. Therefore, skeptics including Assemblyman William T. Andrews, who jointly presided over the hearing, challenged the accuracy of Captain Pritchard’s figures. “It would be impossible for us to fail to report 250 or 300 homicides a year,” Captain Pritchard replied to a question from the presiding assemblyman. “We know of them all and we report them all,” he said. “Disposing of a body is not so easy.” In Pritchard’s defense, Deputy Chief Inspector John J. de Martino, in charge of the Manhattan uniformed police, said that he had “the utmost faith in the people of Harlem, with the exception of a small per cent of 1 per cent of agitators and trouble makers.” Inspector de Martino testified that he saw no need for increasing the police force in Harlem at this time, and with the exception of the small number of agitators, “everyone in Harlem is wholly satisfied.”5

What became evident at the two-day hearings at Washington Heights Court was the conflicting schools of thought vying for authoritative position on crime in Harlem. On one side, there were those who believed crime in Harlem was rampant and that an increased carceral sovereignty was critical to reestablish order. On the other side, there were those who rejected such logic and aspired to advance a neo-Progressive rationale that emphasized the correction of social ills contributing to criminal behaviors—regardless of the numbers.

From the 1930s to the onset of World War II, this tension about crime existed at national, state, and local levels. In New York City, this debate had racial, political, and social implications that persisted beyond the period. And though everyone talked about crime, it was primarily black youths in the city who bore the brunt of the new policies, laws, and acts established to quell crime waves and to improve the conditions of the impoverished, idle, and unemployed.

A City within the City: A 1930s Sketch of New York’s City of Negroes

By the 1930s, Harlem established itself as “the Negro capital of the world.” There were more blacks in Harlem per square mile than in any other spot on Earth. The renowned Harlem Renaissance writer Alain Locke expounded the all-encompassing community as one that “attracted the African, the West Indian, the Negro American; has brought together the Negro of the North and the Negro of the South; the man from the city and the man from the town and village; the peasant, the student, the business man, the professional man, artist, poet, musician, adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal, exploiter and social outcast.” The upsurge of black migrants, and black immigrants, intricately tied a range of peoples in a central location. For the thousands of blacks who trekked north, Harlem marked the consummation of a journey that spanned more than four decades.6

To some of these migrants, the outlook for Harlem was hopeful. For example, in 1920 James Weldon Johnson predicted a Harlem future with huge potential. “Have you ever stopped to think what the future Harlem will be?” Johnson wrote. “It will be a city within a city. It will be the greatest Negro city in the world within the greatest city in the world.” Johnson’s optimism was contagious; however, the problem was that New York City was never an “open city,” and the rapid expansion of black people into different neighborhoods intensified racial tensions.7

Native black New Yorkers were less optimistic. Prior to the demographic upswing, there were a little more than fifteen thousand self-identified “colored” residents in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, according to the 1920 census. There were black families in the city who traced their ancestry “far back into the Colonial period and who can easily qualify for membership in the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution, as descendants of the men in the two Negro regiments from New York in the Revolutionary Army.” They remembered the 1900 race riot in the Tenderloin district of New York City that “set the tone for the relationships among blacks, whites, and the police in Harlem and the city at large for the remainder of the twentieth century.” Thus, the Depression-decade boom of black migrants and immigrants disrupted an already tumultuous racial climate in New York City.8

For these new Harlem residents, New York City was supposed to provide a more equal livelihood. In housing, for instance, a federal study showed that these new Harlemites sought “the possibility of escape, with improvement in economic status, in the second generation, to more desirable sections of the city.” When compared to the South and the Caribbean islands, to which the new Harlem residents were accustomed, Harlem was different but not perfect. In fact, they quickly realized that the same racial attitude that favored residential segregation elsewhere “was carried on here in New York and has been promoted with unwavering effectiveness.”9

Certainly, residential segregation in New York City was a multifaceted problem with a history that predates the Depression decade; however, it was exacerbated when the stock market crashed. By the end of the 1920s, blacks lived as far south as 110th Street—the northern boundary of Central Park—and most white residents had moved away. Even the Russian-Jewish and Italian sections of Harlem, founded a generation earlier, “were being rapidly depopulated.” This mattered, because it not only shifted Harlem’s demographics but changed dramatically the government aid that Harlem received as its residents fought their way out of the Depression.10

In New York City, one in six residents were out of work in the first year after the market crashed; in Harlem, the figure was one in four. Even the small middle class of Harlem suffered from a wave of layoffs and business failures. Police reports showed that “more than 1,000 Negro families … [were] in want, and hundreds of men other than heads of homes [were] walking the street vainly in search of work and money to buy food.” As federal aid slowed, various local groups organized relief for the jobless and plans for the hungry. Soup kitchens opened across the city. The Harlem branch of the Salvation Army opened an emergency depot, and “within a short time after the initial sign was placed in front of the building 35 hungry men filed into the kitchen and were given huge bowls of hot beef stew.” By the weekend’s end, more than five hundred persons were fed at the Salvation Army on 135th Street.11

In addition to organizational efforts, there were countless instances in which Harlem residents traded goods or provided temporary shelter for each other. There were even individuals who took it upon themselves to supply the entire neighborhood with food and clothing. For example, Sister Minnie Bedell, “a kind-faced woman with a battered baby carriage,” roamed the streets of Harlem serving those who were in need. Popularly known as the “angel of the streets,” Sister Minnie canvassed shops in the city on foot, requested store owners to contribute “anything they were willing to give to the poor,” placed the items in baskets, and distributed them free of charge to needy families. Attributing her urge to serve to her “religious impulses,” the “angel of the streets” saw the days of the Depression as “a new opportunity to mend a broken home, to do a good turn, and give a word of cheer.”12

Community organizing in Harlem to relieve the desolation of the Depression spoke directly to the gravity of unemployment in the city. Unskilled workers experienced the sharpest cuts in employment and wages—“first fired, last hired.” Because of this, most civic leaders agreed that it would take a paradigmatic shift in both wages earned and hiring practices to alleviate the economic crisis. Samuel Allen, the industrial secretary of the New York Urban League, spoke to the way the severity of unemployment impacted black families in Harlem, while offering potential solutions. “The home is determined by the wage received,” Allen explained. “Health and housing are determined by the economic status of a people.” At a meeting sponsored by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters at the Abyssinian Community Forum in Harlem, Allen called for a “two-job man” as one way to abolish the unemployment problem that blacks faced. The problem, though, as Allen acknowledged, was that black men were “always employed in addition to, but never in place of, the white man.” This was why Allen advised black Harlemites to prepare themselves for more than one job: “this second job will serve as a ‘spare tire’ in an industrial crisis.”13

The call for a second job seemed far-fetched for Harlem residents, especially since most found themselves without one at all. And even for those who did, they earned well under a living wage. This was cause for concern for various community leaders in the city. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell voiced his worry that “no man can be moral in Harlem on $15 a week.” Further, Powell was concerned that the “tragic and pathetic” rates of unemployment would increase crime rates in the city. “The conditions of vice,” Powell indicated, “which exist in Harlem may all be traced to the low economic status of the people.” Powell was not wrong. Because such wages did not adequately meet living standards in Harlem, there was a rise in crimes, mostly nonviolent crimes such as bootlegging, the sale of “hot” goods, and numbers running; the latter “seized Harlem like a form of madness.”14

In the first half of the 1930s, over half of all black arrests in Harlem were for possession of policy slips. An arrest for possession of a policy slip was “hardly a major crime, [yet] nearly all of the people brought into court were Negroes arrested in connection with the daily lottery called policy, or the numbers game.” For many Harlemites, the risk was worth the reward; the chance to win your way out of poverty, even for a short while, was enticing to men and women who pursued economic survival amid the economic turmoil. Harlem’s youths coveted the same, although, aside from placing the occasional bet for their parents, Harlem youths were not firmly tied to the elaborate illegal gambling world. Still, they were impacted by the war against the policy game as it increased police presence throughout the city.15

The heightened police presence upset community relations in Harlem. As residents fought to stay afloat in the sea of poverty, their encounters with law enforcement escalated. Police vigorously pursued policy slips, and consequently, reports of brutality and illegal searches emerged. Testimonies of homes being subjected to illegal searches for policy slips surfaced, and follow-up reports with similar experiences were printed in local newspapers. For example, in a letter to Mayor La Guardia printed in the New York Amsterdam News, a Harlem resident reported that three men “in civilian clothes” entered his home “to search without showing shields or search warrant” and with no explanation. The intrusive nature of the search detailed in the letter caused the Harlem couple “quite a little worry, especially as there is no assurance that it will not happen again.” Such insecurities about police aggression became a common cause for hostility toward carceral authorities, among all age groups.16

The Depression Decade and The Negro Children of New York

For Harlem’s youth, the Depression decade was ripe for a spike in delinquent behaviors. It is important to note, however, that when analyzing crime and delinquency in Harlem, one must keep in mind the social and economic setting in which the behaviors occur; otherwise the insight will be valueless either as a means of understanding the factors involved or as a guide in establishing potential solutions. Owen Lovejoy, the secretary of the Children’s Aid Society in New York, disclosed the effects of the Great Depression on black youths in the five boroughs in his study. Lovejoy asserted in The Negro Children of New York that the chief needs of this particular population were education, economic security, health, and recreation. More specifically, the study of black youth in New York City articulated that the lack of sufficient educational opportunities, inadequate recreational spaces, the instability of economic security, and substandard living conditions impacted youth behaviors, decisions, and perceptions of the authoritative figures in their lives.17

Inevitably, the Great Depression disrupted family life in the city, and as the decade proceeded, the strains on nuclear families worsened. As many adults immediately felt the impact of the Depression in their work lives, Harlem youths felt it in their school lives. Education problems were worsened by the low incomes and high living costs of New York City. “It’s a vicious circle in a city of such color segregation,” the assistant housing director at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) told a New York Herald Tribune reporter. High rents were difficult to sustain without two working incomes; as a result, many mothers had to go out to work, and “the children [would] come to school with the keys of their house around their necks.” Harlem kids encountered overcrowded...