Hemsley Winfield in 1933. This Yonkers native and African American dancer, choreographer and director founded the groundbreaking Negro Art Theater Dance Group.
By Mary Hoar, City of Yonkers Historian, President Emerita Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the 2004 Key to History, Member of the Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board, and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
Monday, November 6th
November 6, 1941: The Herald Statesman announced “new sources of information” revealed Westchester County defense work contracts had risen to $46 million, with Yonkers leading with almost $17 million. A few of the Yonkers companies with defense contracts were Habirshaw Cable and Wire, Otis Elevator, Campbell Hat, NY Engineering, US Industrial Chemical, NY Guild for the Blind, and Cameo Curtains. Other local plants were subcontractors for the larger companies: Graphite Metallizing manufactured gun emplacement brushes and self-lubricating bearings; Jerome Knitting Mills produced gloves; Saunders Plumbing created machine tools; and Joseph Love Inc. (children’s dresses) made cloth products.
Tuesday, November 7th
November 7, 1925: Father John Flynn, Rector of St. John the Baptist, notified Hemsley Winfield, Creator and Director of the Little Theatre, the group would have to vacate the former church. Father Flynn, who had rented the building to the African American performing group a week earlier, told Winfield the community was incensed over the project and threatened to mob the playhouse and riot.
Winfield, Father of African American Modern Dance, had planned to inaugurate the site by presenting a series of four productions featuring several well-known artists and celebrities, including New York Globe theater critic Kenneth McGowan, Provincetown Playhouse’s Louis Barrington, and African American star Florence Mills; other prominent celebrities promised to lecture. In the short time he was there, the company generated more than 100 subscriptions to his debut series. This life-long Yonkers resident also planned to teach play writing, stage design and diction.
Wednesday, November 8th:
November 8, 1955: The Board of Elections noted a potentially confusing situation on the Sixth Ward election ballot. Councilman Michael J. Kehoe was listed under that name on the Democratic line… but listed as Michael J. Kehoe, Jr., on the Liberal line. If he didn’t win reelection on the Democratic line alone, he would have to go to court to prove the Liberal votes were his. He won without going to court!
November 8, 1955: Assistant Attorney General Howard Danihy of Grassy Sprain Road, Tenth Ward Republican leader, reported possible tampering of voting machines in the Tenth Ward! The irregularity was discovered when machines were inspected just before voting started. Danihy found more than 100 votes were already on the machines!
Thursday, November 9th:
November 9, 1921. Our city learned Yonkers High and Cornell football star Fred Schlichter of Radford Street was serving his first year as Athletic Director of Rollins College! Under his leadership, Rollins defeated its archrival Stetson for the first time in years by a score of 13-0! Following the big win, Rollins defeated several more of its opponents soundly. Schlichter captained the 1911 Westchester County Champion Yonkers High School team and played left halfback on Cornell’s 1915 Intercollegiate Champion Team. During World War I, he was commissioned as a Naval pilot.
Friday, November 10th:
November 10, 1915: The members of the Yonkers Women Suffrage Association unanimously approved this resolution: “Resolved, That to men of Yonkers the thanks of the Yonkers Woman Suffrage Association are given for the splendid vote by which our city—a leader in progress and population in the Empire State—has declared itself for the first and greatest principle of democracy—government for the people, by all the people.”
Unfortunately, the Westchester Elections Bureau reported the day after Election Da that Yonkers men turned it down and suffrage had lost. Henrietta Livermore, hearing that report, sailed right up to the county seat and checked the figures. The Bureau issued a corrected report showing the suffrage cause won in Yonkers with a vote of 5,129 to 4,962 votes.
November 10, 1925: Friendship Gloucester, former night watchman at the Yonkers Hospital for Communicable Diseases, sent a letter of complaint to Mayor Wiesendanger about conditions at the hospital. The letter outlined several tasks “thrust upon him,” normally performed by orderlies. Gloucester had quit on the spot two weeks earlier when ordered to perform undertaker tasks to prepare a body for burial. Gloucester previously worked in the City Clerk’s office on a special assignment.
Saturday, November 11th:
November 11, 1776: The British Seventy-first Regiment stopped at Colonel Philipse’s Yonkers’ home, now Philipse Manor Hall.
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November 11, 1924: Former Park Hill resident Hope Hampton and her attorney Max Steuer watched the opening of Madame Pompadour with great interest. Cast in the title role, Hampton was let go at the end of the road try-out and replaced with Wilda Bennett. The pair did not plan to stop the production but planned to sue for Miss Hampton’s weekly salary of $1000 per week as partial compensation for the damage suffered to her reputation as an actress. Hampton had lived at 85 Rockland Avenue.
Sunday, November 12th:
November 12, 1920: Luke Chess returned to Yonkers from his assignment in Italy. An electrician who lived at 240 Palisade Avenue, Chess became nationally known because of his quick rise from Seaman to Lieutenant in less than two years.
The first American of Chinese ancestry to join the fight in any branch of the military, Luke enlisted in our local Naval Militia at the outbreak of the war in 1917. Before that, he was a member of the Spanish War Veterans’ “Yonkers Regiment,” never missing a drill. His diligent study and hard work led him to advance from apprentice seaman to chief electrician, serving on the USS Charleston, and as an inspector at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In 1918, he returned to Yonkers to speak at Liberty Loan Drives, urging all to buy bonds for his country, because, as he said, he was “an American, too.”
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