Biography
Helen Hester was the county organizer of the American Workers Union and a former relief case worker in Kansas City, Kansas. The October 20 report says she was arrested at the Wyandotte County Court House when about one thousand unemployed people assembled against relief cuts. Sheriff Baker and relief official John Woulf testified that she led a mob to the court house. City Court imposed three months in jail and a $100 fine. The protest lasted more than twenty-four hours and secured increased relief appropriations; this does not establish Hester’s complete custody duration. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n253-NAT-oct-21-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
The October 10 Kansas City, Kansas dispatch in the October 11, 1935 Daily Worker identifies Helen Hester as the American Workers Union county organizer arrested that day while speaking to unemployed workers, and reports her held in jail under $500 bond on a disturbing-the-peace charge. The article distinguishes the Monday courthouse occupation, October 7, from her personal arrest explicitly described as today, October 10. This supplies an arrest day for the existing courthouse-relief prosecution; the later report of a three-month sentence and $100 fine remains separate from any measured term actually served. The article also recalls an earlier August protest and a suspended sentence; no second dated case or actual completed term is inferred. No physical jail-admission or release day is supplied.
