Lucy Parsons

Lucy Parsons
Lucy Parsons, 1886
Born	1853 Texas
Died	(1942-03-07)March 7, 1942
Occupation	Labor organizer

Lucy Parsons (1853-March 7, 1942) was a radical American labor organizer, anarchist (and possibly later also a member of the Communist Party), and is remembered as a powerful orator. She was born in Texas (likely as a slave) to parents of Native American, Black American and Mexican ancestry. She often went by the name of Lucy Gonzales.

In 1871 she married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier, and both were forced to flee from Texas north to Chicago by intolerant reactions to their interracial marriage.

Described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters" in the 1920s, Lucy Parsons and her husband had become highly effective anarchist organizers primarily involved in the labor movement in the late 19th Century, but also participating in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color, the homeless and women. She began writing for The Socialist and The Alarm, the journal of the International Working People's Association (IWPA) which she and Parsons, among others, founded in 1883.

Haymarket Riot and Death of Albert Parsons

In 1886 her husband, Albert, who had been heavily involved in the labor movement for the eight hour day, was arrested, tried and executed on November 11, 1887, by the state of Illinois on charges that he had conspired in the Haymarket Riot — an event which was widely regarded as a political frame-up, and which marked the beginning of May Day labor rallies in protest.

Later Life and Published Works

In 1892 she briefly published Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Monthly, and was often arrested for giving public speeches or distributing anarchist literature. While she continued championing the anarchist cause, she came into ideological conflict with some of her contemporaries, including Emma Goldman, over her focus on class politics over gender and sexual struggles.

In 1905 she participated in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, and began editing the Liberator, an anarchist newspaper that supported the IWW in Chicago. Lucy's focus shifted somewhat to class struggles around poverty and unemployment, and she organized the Chicago Hunger Demonstrations in January 1915, which pushed the American Federation of Labor, the Socialist Party, and Jane Addam's Hull House to participate in a huge demonstration on February 12. Parsons was also quoted as saying, "My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production." (Wobblies! 14) Parsons anticipated the sit-down strikes in the US and, later, workers' factory takeovers in Argentina.

In 1925 she began working with the National Committee of the International Labor Defense in 1927, a communist-led organization that defended labor activists and unjustly accused African Americans such as the Scottsboro Nine and Angelo Herndon. While it is commonly accepted by nearly all biographical accounts (including those of the Lucy Parsons Center, the IWW, and Joe Knowles) that Parsons joined the Communist Party in 1939, there is some dispute, notably in Gale Ahrens' essay "Lucy Parsons: Mystery Revolutionist, More Dangerous Than A Thousand Rioters," which can be found in the anthology Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality, Solidarity. Ahern also points out, in "Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality and Solidarity: Writings and Speeches, 1878 - 1937", that the obituary which the Communist Party had published on her death made no claim that she had been a member.

Death

One of her last major appearances was at the International Harvester in February 1941. She died on March 7, 1942, in a house fire; her lover, George Markstall, died the next day from wounds he received while trying to save her. She was 89 years old. The state still viewed Lucy Parsons as such a threat to the status quo that, after her death, police seized her library of over 1500 books and all of her personal papers.

She is buried near her husband, near the Haymarket Monument, at the Waldheim Cemetery (now Forest Home Cemetery), in Forest Park, Chicago.

History Detectives

On July 16, 2007, a book that purportedly belonged to Lucy Parsons was featured on a segment of the PBS television show, History Detectives. During the segment it was determined that the book, which was a biography of co-defendant August Spies' life and trial, was most likely a copy published and sold by Parsons as a way to raise money to prevent her husband's execution. The segment also provided background on Parsons' life and the Haymarket Riot.

Selected coverage in the New York Times

• New York Times; March 8, 1942; page 36. Chicago, March 7, 1942. Lucy Parsons, 83 years old, noted anarchist whose husband was hanged for his part in the Chicago Haymarket riot in 1886, was burned to death late today when a fire broke out in her frame residence at ...

References

• Buhle, Paul (2005). Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World. New York: Verso. ISBN 9781844675258. OCLC 57506712. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• Lucy Parsons at Find a Grave
• The Lucy Parsons Project
• The Lucy Parsons Center, a radical bookstore in Boston, Massachusetts
• The Principles of Anarchism, a lecture given by Lucy Parsons
• A Fury For Justice: Lucy Parsons And The Revolutionary Anarchist Movement in Chicago, an undergraduate thesis by Jacob McKean