Lucy Parsons: Forgotten Radical Heroine

This is my entry to the @teamgirlpowa women's history month contest.

My first introduction to Lucy Parsons came from Utah Phillips. On the disc he did with Ani Difranco, Fellow Workers, you will find the song "Shoot or Stab Them." It's not exactly a totally true story, but the quote is, indeed, more or less, hers. She was an integral part of the radical movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was a brilliant speaker and a prolific writer. So, why have you never heard of her? Well, that has at least something to do with the fact that everything she had ever written was confiscated by the FBI before her body was even cold. For the entirety of her life, she had been a thorn in the side of the establishment. They had more frequently refused to grant permits allowing her to speak than allowed them in Chicago where she spent most of her life. So they didn't waste any time in confiscating her writings once she was dead.

Her early years were somewhat shrouded in mystery. She never seemed to want to talk about them. It is believed she was born roughly in 1853 in Texas. She was likely born a slave, most likely of African, Mexican, and native descent. She married Albert Parsons, and they soon decided that Texas was not a good home for a progressive interracial couple in the 1870's. Albert, a former confederate soldier, had already gotten in trouble for registering black people to vote. So they headed to Chicago and settled among the immigrants flooding into the city at that time. There they started learning about socialism and anarchy. They learned about the horrible plight of Chicago's factory workers and saw the disparity between the lives of the working class and those of the capital class.

They began organizing, first with the socialists in an effort to begin to organize the workers. They were involved with and supportive of early railroad strikes to the point that Albert was fired from his job. Lucy opened a dress shop to support them. Those early railroad strikes were shut down brutally by the capital class, and the media was quick to take the side of the industrialists, smearing anyone who may have been involved with that movement. A charming quote from the Chicago Tribune shortly after the 1877 strike:

“The world owes these classes [of people] rather extermination than a livelihood.”

It soon became clear that many of the socialists of the time were more interested in political reform and seemingly rather quick to jump on the Democratic Party bandwagon (gee, sound familiar?). Reform minded socialists, the violent response of the industrialists to the railroad strike of 1877, the barriers to voting for the average wage worker, and the total inability of the two parties to accomplish anything led Lucy and Albert away from their socialist ties in particular and voting in general. Lucy had this to say about the ballot box:

Of all the modern delusions, the ballot has certainly been the greatest. Let us see, for example, how our law factories are operated. A corruptionist works a majority as follows: He hires a tool called an attorney or lobbyist to hang around the capitol and buttonhole the members of the legislature … In this way, together with some graft, he usually gets the votes of the majority of the members.

With thousands of laws being enacted and hundreds of corruptionists playing their tricks, what becomes of the voter’s victory at the polls? What becomes of his reforming all things by the use of the ballot?

The fact is money and not votes is what rules the people. And the capitalists no longer care to buy the voters, they simply buy the “servants” after they have been elected to “serve.” The idea that the poor man’s vote amounts to anything is the veriest delusion. The ballot is only the paper veil that hides the tricks.”

source

Frustrated with the socialists but still in alignment with some of the values and much of the writings of Marx, they sort of shifted to anarchy. They often used the words interchangeably, though. They were involved with many strikes and with organizing a lot of workers, but the pivotal strike came on May 1 of 1886. The movement for the 8 hour day had reached a fever pitch, and nationwide more than 250,000 workers participated in a general strike. In Chicago alone, more than 80,000 workers marched through the streets. And the city conceded to move to an 8 hour day for city workers. Two days later several strikers fighting for the 8 hour day at a private factory were killed by police, and a meeting was held to talk about the problem with the police and how to get private companies to move to an 8 hour day. As the meeting drew to a close, a mass of police descended on the meeting forcing everyone to disperse. Of course words were exchanged, and at some point a bomb was thrown. Policemen - and several workers - were killed. During the next few days, police raided the homes of nearly every person involved with labor movements or the radical left. Lucy was arrested 3 times in 1 day. In the end 8 men were charged, though none of those 8 were even still at the meeting when the bomb went off. Technically they were charged with inciting the bomber to violence with their words. When people ask me why I so vociferously defend free speech, this is it. Albert Parsons was one of the 8. Four were eventually sentenced to hang, and Albert Parsons was one of the four.

After Albert's arrest, Lucy toured the country to raise money for his defense, and the defense of their comrades. She spoke about the injustice, workers movements, and anarchy. Periodically she was prevented from speaking by police, but she spread the word as quickly and loudly as she could. After his execution she continued to travel, speak, and organize. Everywhere she encouraged workers to unite to destroy capitalism. She spoke out against racism and sexism, though she was of the belief that the economic issue was the central issue. She spoke up for the rights of sex workers. Eventually breaking with anarchists over several disagreements about the focus of the movement, she was one of the founders of the IWW along with Mother Jones, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Eugene V. Debs, and Big Bill Haywood.

Because of her belief that economic oppression was the central oppression, many felt she did not speak out enough about issues of race and sexism. To be sure, she said some contradictory things about racism, periodically going so far as to say that blacks were oppressed in the south because they were poor and not because they were black. She also believed that the end of wage slavery would mean the end of women marrying men they hated just to be financially provided for. She battled with Emma Goldman over issues of sexism, though there were certainly other issues at play in the clashes between the two of them, namely that Parsons felt that Goldman, as a middle class woman, didn't sufficiently understand or fight for the rights of the workers. Parsons, while certainly not conservative about her own sexuality, saw Goldman as to obsessed over the sexual freedom issue. To be certain, the labor movement (at least outside of the IWW) was rife with both racism and sexism, so it is certainly possible that Parsons believed she could do more to further her cause by keeping quiet on issues of race and sex. However, she was rarely one to be quiet about her beliefs, so it seems doubtful to me. Sure would be nice to have all her personal writings that were confiscated by the FBI.

When things fizzled with the IWW, she then became enchanted with what communists seemed to be accomplishing with the workers' overthrow of the bourgeoise in Russia. While it was not until near the end of her life that she became a card carrying member of the US communist party, she was quite impressed with their organizational skills and ability to get things done. Through close association with them, she was able to accomplish a lot, including helping to free the Scottsboro Boys.

There are those who have issue with the way she jumped from one radical political philosophy to the next, but if you read through her writings, it is clear that her goal was always to fight for workers, for the oppressed, for the downtrodden. Her devotion and loyalty was to them, not to any word or ideology. She fought tirelessly for nearly all of her 89 years. She lost her husband, and both of her children died, but she never stopped. As a woman of color in a time where no one gave two shits what women or people of color thought, people stopped to listen to Lucy Parsons. She was powerful, eloquent, and loud, and she never backed down from the intensity of her beliefs. She never caved to the idea of reform. She never backed down from fighting against capitalism and fighting for workers to have the fruits of their labor. She never let anyone tell her to quiet down or compromise. She was a hero of workers and all oppressed people, and I hope you will join me in celebrating her as women's history month comes to a close.

"We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it … but we have our labor. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Wherever wages are to be reduced the capitalist class use women to reduce them, and if there is anything that you men should do in the future it is to organize the women."

~Lucy Parsons

I apologize for my poor citing skills. It's been a long time since I had to cite something.

1. "Lucy Parsons: Woman of Will" https://www.iww.org/history/biography/LucyParsons/1
2. "Lucy Parsons: 'More Dangerous than a Thousand Rioters" http://joanofmark.blogspot.com/2011/09/lucy-parsons-more-dangerous-than.html
3. "Lucy Parsons, 'I am an Anarchist'" http://www.blackpast.org/1886-lucy-parsons-i-am-anarchist