What do you think of when you read the phrase “The Battle of White Plains”?

While I know it’s juvenile and also snarky, I think of a fight that involves a shopping mall, maybe two bargain hunters coming to blows at a Black Friday sale or, perhaps, over the last parking space in the (pre-COVID) holiday rush.

Of course there was another Battle of White Plains, a Revolutionary War battle that was honored on today’s #stampoftheday, which is a 2-cent stamp, issued on October 18, 1926 (my mother’s first birthday). The stamp commemorating the Battle of White Plains, which actually occurred on October 28, 1776. The stamp’s design is titled “Hamilton’s battery” in honor of Alexander Hamilton (yes, that Alexander Hamilton), who commanded an artillery battery at the battle, in which about 14,000 Continental troops commanded by George Washington fought about 20,000 British soldiers commanded by William Howe. The crossed flags in the lower part of the design are a U.S. flag and a White Plains battle flag, which bore a pine tree and the inscription “Liberty or Death.” However, the stamp’s designer (or others at the Post Office) decided to portray the flag as draping in a way that the word “death” does not appear on the stamp.

The battle came after the British had taken Long Island and Brooklyn in August and then invaded Manhattan in September. The British advance, however, was halted Harlem Heights. In October, the British moved to encircle the American forces, landing troops (on October 18) in what is now Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx (where my mother grew up). The British began moving toward White Plains where there was a lightly defended Continental armory. Learning of their advances, Washington withdrew from Harlem and sent most his troops to defend White Plains. The British outflanked the Americans who began to retreat. Via strategic positioning of his cannons, Hamilton was able to hold a Hessian contingent at bay to allow for an orderly retreat.
Although Howe was in a strong position, he did not immediately press his advantage. Heavy rains then forced him to delay his attack and the next day, when the British were ready to attack, they discovered that Washington’s forces had slipped away during the night. The British pursued them across New Jersey (a state full of shopping malls, including some in Paramus that my mother loved going to when I was little). After retreating to the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, the American troops finally secured a much-need, morale-boosting victory via a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries in Trenton on Christmas Eve.
At the time, the defeat at the Battle of White Plains and the subsequent retreat across ew Jersey, seemed to be another dismal episode in the collapse of Washington’s army. But the attack on Trenton and other subsequent victories suggested a different reality. What would prove, in retrospect, to be most important about the Battle of White Plains was not the American defeat, but Washington’s ability to escape from the British forces that surrounded his army and, in doing so, to preserve the army to fight again under better circumstances.

So while the Battle of White Plains mainly makes me think of shopping malls it also reminds me of another, contemporary and very important fight, the longstanding effort to build affordable housing in Westchester County (which includes White Plains). Some of those fights have occurred in the country’s large cities, most notably in Yonkers, where the mid-1980s fights over plans to build scattered-site public housing in working-class neighborhoods were portrayed in David Simon’s HBO series “Find Me a Hero.” There’s another set of fights that involve efforts to build affordable housing in more affluent parts of the county, which includes such affluent communities as Scarsdale, Chappaqua (where the Clintons live), Briarcliff (where Donald Trump owns a golf course), and Mt. Kisco, home to a Trump-owned residence that was recently highlighted in the New York Times’ series on the president’s taxes.

This fight has been going on for decades and continues to this day. In 2006, a local advocacy group sued the county in for failing follow the federal Fair Housing Act’s requirement that localities “affirmatively further fair housing.” (The group also alleged that the county had lied about their efforts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2009, the county settled the suit. But over the next seven years during the Obama administration, HUD rejected ten version of the county’s analyses and plans for implementing that settlement.

In July 2017, six months after Trump took office, HUD reversed its position and approved the county’s analyses and plan. And during this campaign, President Trump has asserted that a Biden administration would revive those old initiatives and, in doing so, seek to “abolish the suburbs.” As evidence of this, in August 2020 he noted: “I’ve been watching this for years in Westchester, coming from New York…They want low-income housing built in a neighborhood.”

If carried out, the plans wouldn’t destroy the suburbs. They would instead help fulfill some of the commitments made in the Fair Housing Act, which passed in the wake of the unrest stirred by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. Like Washington at White Plains, advocates of fair housing in Westchester County (and elsewhere) have had to make strategic retreats. But, like Washington, they have been organizing and are prepared for the important fights that are ahead. When they do, I won’t make juvenile jokes about that “Battle of White Plains” (and nearby communities) because this issue is important and merits our support, even if there Westchester County would still be home to many shopping malls.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.