Esther Shemitz

[11][12][13] In May 1920, Algernon Lee, educational director, presided over the graduation of the second-largest class ever at Rand, whose members included: John J. Bardsley, William D. Bavelaar, Annie S. Buller, Louis Cohan, Harry A. Durlauf, Clara Friedman, Rebecca Goldberg, William Greenspoon, Isabella E. Hall, Ammon A. Hennsey (Ammon Hennacy), Hedwig Holmes, Annie Kronhardt, Anna P. Lee, Victoria Levinson, Elsie Lindenberg, Selma Melms (first wife of Ammon Hennacy).

[16][17][18] [19][6][20][21][22][23][24][25] During the early 1920s, Shemitz worked at a chapter of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) under Juliet Stuart Poyntz in return for a stipend to the Leonardo da Vinci Art School.

[20] On the night of April 5, 1922, "Esther T. Schemitz," described as "secretary-treasurer" of the ILGWU's Mount Vernon chapter, was arrested for disorderly conduct when she allegedly called a special police officer a "professional strike breaker."

[20][27] During her time at the magazine, contributors included "social reformers, suffrage leaders, black intellectuals, labor activists, and a range of other progressives.

[28][29][30] In December 1926, on behalf of the World Tomorrow, Shemitz took Rebecca West to see the Passaic Textile Strike at the Botany Worsted Mills.

[6][31][32][33] In the latter 1920s, Shemitz studied at the Art Students League in New York under Boardman Robinson, Jan Matulka and Thomas Hart Benton.

She illustrated books for International Publishers, notably Labor and Silk by Grace Hutchins (1929), with a cover designed by Louis Lozowick.

They included: Sherwood Anderson, Franz Boas, Walt Carmon, Malcolm Cowley, Floyd Dell, Carl Van Doren, John Dos Passos, Max Eastman, Fred Ellis, Kenneth Fearing, Waldo Frank, Harry Freeman, Hugo Gellert, Michael Gold, William Gropper, Jack Hardy, Josephine Herbst, Eitaro Ishigaki, Alfred Kreymborg, Joshua Kunitz, Louis Lozowick, A.B.

Mencken, Scott Nearing, Joseph North, Isidor Schneider, Edwin Seaver, Edith Segal, Upton Sinclair, John Sloan, Raphael Soyer, Genevieve Taggard, Carlo Tresca, Louis Untermeyer, Edmund Wilson, and Art Young.

Thus, unlike most of her circle, who contributed to publications such as the Daily Worker newspaper and New Masses magazine, she did not become one of the New Deal's Federal Art Project artists during the latter part of the Great Depression and into World War II.

In 1938, when Chambers defected from the underground, Grace Hutchins delivered a death threat against him, through her brother, attorney Reuben Shemitz.

My startled brother-in-law, who, like most Americans, was completely unaware of what Communism is really like (we had never discussed the subject), tried to explain that he did not know even the whereabouts of his sister, her husband or their children ... "If he does not show up by (such and such a day)," she said briskly, "he will be killed."

In December 1948, with indictments in the Hiss Case pending, Shemitz struck an elderly female pedestrian with her car; the woman soon died.

Magil (a long-time Daily Worker writer and editor and CPUSA member) told Elinor Ferry (a Hiss supporter) that Chambers' wife and her roommate Grace Lumpkin appeared to be lesbians.

[3][21] When Chambers died of his seventh heart attack on July 9, 1961, Shemitz collapsed and was rushed to the nearest hospital in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.