Lucy Parsons

Lucy Parsons was born between 1851 and 1853. There is much discrepancy surrounding her early life, with some sources stating she was born in 1853 about 100 miles outside of Waco, Texas in 1853,[4] with others claiming she was born in Virginia in 1851.[5] Most sources speculate that she was born into slavery, with American Anarchism stating that while historians are not sure, only 0.05% of Black Americans in Texas were free at the time, so she was statistically likely to have been born into slavery.[6] The sources that advocate her Virginia origin state that she was born to an enslaved woman there.[5] Additionally, many historians speculate that her father was white, and likely her enslaver.[5] While historians cite her Black background, she herself did not claim this as part of her identity publicly. She spoke about Black Americans in a sympathetic, ambiguous manner, not acknowledging herself as belonging to that community.[6] She instead acknowledged her Mexican and Native American heritage.[5] Her full name is also uncertain, as historians refer to her first name as Lucia or Lucy, with her middle name being Ella or Eldine, and her last names including Carter, Gonzalez, and Parsons.[7] American Anarchism describes that Parson’s background seems to depend on the context of whatever article or book is being written.[8] Regardless, it is understandable that given the intense discrimination Black Americans faced, Parsons sought to remain ambiguous about her background in an effort to avoid further bias. Despite the scrutiny around where she was born, historians agree that Parsons married the white, Confederate veteran Albert Parsons in Waco, Texas in 1872, just weeks before interracial marriage was made illegal in Texas2. She and Albert fled to North Chicago in 1873 to escape Texas’ miscegenation laws and discrimination. It may have been during that migration that Parsons changed her name[9].

[2] Her mother, Charlotte, was an African-American woman enslaved by a white man named Tolliver, who may have been Lucy's father.[1] In 1863, during the Civil War, Tolliver relocated to Waco, Texas with his slaves,[10] dodging the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation that set January 1, 1863 as the date all enslaved people would be free.[11]

Little is known about her life following the move to Texas. She worked as a seamstress and a cook for white families.[1] Parsons lived with or was married to a former slave, Oliver Gathing, for a time prior to 1870.[12][13] During this relationship, she had an infant which died at birth.[1] In 1871, she married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier. They were forced to flee north from Texas in 1873 due to intolerant reactions to their interracial marriage.[1] During the journey, Parsons altered her first name to Lucy. The couple settled in Chicago, Illinois.[1]

Photograph by Jacob Maul

Photograph by August Brauneck

Photograph by August Brauneck

Photograph by Louis Gogler

In 1886, Lucy Parsons posed for four different photographs, one by Jacob Maul in Chicago, two by August Brauneck in New York, and one by Louis Gogler in New York. In all of these photographs Parson wore almost identical dresses, but only one of them, the one shot by Gogler, published by her in the book where she wrote the life of his deceased husband, Albert R. Parsons. Colleen Thornton comments about this almost identical poses follows as: "(...) Now that we know that she chose to market Gogler’s photo, we can speculate that perhaps she was not satisfied with August Brauneck’s stark impression and therefore commissioned Louis Gogler to produce a warmer interpretation."[14]

Described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters" in the 1920s, 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) that she and Parsons, among others, founded in 1883. Parsons worked closely with her friend and collaborator Lizzie Holmes in the early years of the 1880s, and the two of them led marches of working seamstresses in Chicago.[15] In 1886 her husband, who had been heavily involved in campaigning 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.[16][17]

Following the Haymarket police riots, Lucy Parson’s husband, Albert, was imprisoned and sentenced to death despite not being present at the time of the bombing and having no evidence of any direct ties to it.[18] Lucy became a champion for his and their comrades’ freedom, with three extended speaking tours between October 1886 and January 1887.[19] She traveled across multiple states to fund money for rent as well as the appeal and defense of Albert and the others.[19] Her efforts did advance the Haymarket case to the Illinois Supreme Court.[20] She spoke about the innocence of the accused and preached anarchism, presenting herself as “a fierce widow in waiting”.[21] She even called herself the “Haymarket Widow”.[5] Parsons also withstood much sexism with the articles warning Americans against listening to Parsons just because she was a woman, that America did not want to hear hate and murder preached, even by a woman, and that what is wrong with laws is that women have freedom of speech.[22] National publications stated that Chicago police feared her above all other anarchists and referred to her as “the dusky goddess of anarchy.[22] Despite all of the discrimination she faced, Parsons continued to speak across America. She always began her speeches with ‘I am an anarchist,’ in an attempt to show it was not so radical of an ideology.[23] She also generally downplayed the more extreme parts of anarchism and instead homed in on workers’ rights to achieve a more universal resonance.[23] Eight days prior to her husband’s execution, she sold 5,000 copies of a pamphlet she wrote “Was it a Fair Trial?” in a last-ditch effort to advocate for his innocence.[24]

Parsons was invited to write for the French anarchist journal Les Temps Nouveaux[25] and spoke alongside William Morris and Peter Kropotkin during a visit to Great Britain in 1888.[25]

In 1892 she briefly published a periodical, Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Monthly. She 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.[3]

In 1905 she participated in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 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 Addams' 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."[26] 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".[27] Ahrens points out that the obituary the Communist Party had published on her death made no claim that she had been a member.

Parsons circa 1930

Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons represented different generations of anarchism. This resulted in ideological and personal conflict. Biographer Carolyn Ashbaugh has explained their disagreements in depth:

Lucy Parsons' feminism, which analyzed women's oppression as a function of capitalism, was founded on working class values. Emma Goldman’s feminism took on an abstract character of freedom for women in all things, in all times, and in all places; her feminism became separate from its working class origins. Goldman represented the feminism being advocated in the anarchist movement of the 1890s [and after]. The intellectual anarchists questioned Lucy Parsons about her attitudes on the women's question.[28]

In 1908, after Captain Mahoney (of the New York City Police Department) crashed one of Goldman's lectures in Chicago, newspaper headlines read that every popular anarchist had been present for the spectacle, "with the single exception of Lucy Parsons, with whom Emma Goldman is not on the best of terms."[29] Goldman reciprocated Parsons's absence by endorsing Frank Harris' book The Bomb, which was a largely fictional account of the Haymarket Affair and its martyrs' road to death.[30] (Parsons had published The Famous Speeches of the Haymarket Martyrs, a non-fictional, first-hand recounting of the Haymarket martyrs' final speeches in court.)

Parsons was solely dedicated to working class liberation, condemning Goldman for "addressing large middle-class audiences"; Goldman accused Parsons of riding upon the cape of her husband's martyrdom.[30] "[N]o doubt," Candace Falk wrote (Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman), "there was an undercurrent of competitiveness between the two women. Emma generally preferred center stage." Goldman planned on preserving her place in the spotlight as an American anarchist laureate by shoving risqué sexual and kinship discourse into "the center of a perennial debate among anarchists about the relative importance of such personal issues".

In The Firebrand, Parsons wrote, "Mr. Oscar Rotter attempts to dig up the hideous 'Variety' grub and bind it to the beautiful unfolding blossom of labor's emancipation from wage-slavery and call them one and the same. Variety in sex relations and economic freedom have nothing in common."[31] Goldman responded:

The success of the meeting was unfortunately weakened by Lucy Parsons who, instead of condemning the unjustified Comstock attacks and arrest of anarchists… took a stand against the editor of the Firebrand, [Henry] Addis, because he tolerated articles about free love… Apart from the fact that anarchism not only teaches freedom from the economic and political areas, but also in social and sexual life, L. Parsons has the least cause to object to treatises on free love… I spoke after Parsons and had a hard time changing the unpleasant mood that her remarks elicited, and I also succeeded in gaining the sympathy and the material support of the people present…[32]

Parsons responded: "The line will be drawn sharply at personalities as we know these enlighten no one and do infinitely more harm than good."[33]

Goldman, in her autobiography, Living My Life, briefly mentioned the presence of "Mrs. Lucy Parsons, widow of our martyred Albert Parsons", at a Chicago labor convention, noting that she "took an active part in the proceedings". Goldman later would acknowledge Albert Parsons for becoming a socialist and anarchist, proceeding to praise him for having "married a young mulatto"; there was no further mention of Lucy Parsons.[34]

Lucy Parsons’ writings centered around the themes of freedom, equality, and solidarity.[35] In the late 1800s, Lucy became a regular writer within radical publications and was covered by local papers.[36] In 1878, The Socialist published a series of Lucy Parson’s letters to the editor, advocating for workers’ control over their own work output and responding to articles in other popular publications.[37] The Chicago Tribune quoted a speech she gave at socialists’ weekly Ulrich Hall meeting, in which she discussed eliminating private property.[38] She believed that property should be limited to what one person can actually use themselves personally.[39] Parsons published a poem in The Socialist called “A Parody,” constructed similarly to Lord Byron’s “Darkness,” pointing out flaws of electoral politics and the suffering of the poor through an apocalyptic setting.[40] The Denver paper The Labor Enquirer published Lucy’s criticism of corrupt employers and the two-party system.[41] Amidst writing, Lucy also worked as a seamstress, expanding her sewing shop into a women’s and children’s clothing business in 1877.[36]

In 1884 the IWPA decided to begin publishing a newspaper, The Alarm, in which Albert Parsons was the editor and Lucy was a key contributor in its onset.[42] In The Alarm’s first publication, Lucy’s “To Tramps” was printed on the front page and would also be redistributed by the IWPA as a pamphlet.[42] Lucy was influenced by Johann Most’s idea of “propaganda by the deed,” or acts of individual violence.[43] “To Tramps” revolved around this idea, urging the poor to defend their interests through force.[42] It became a central piece of anarchist propaganda, passed out at indignation meetings.[44] It addressed the unemployed, complaining at the luxuries allowed to factory owners while workers struggled to get by.[44] She discusses workers’ shackling to an “iron horse,” urging workers to ignore criticism, lash out against the ruling class, and “Learn the use of explosives!”.[45] Her encouragement of utilizing explosives did draw attention from the police.[46] Parsons at this time believed in syndicalist theory, of workers’ control and ownership of distribution and production through labor unions that could agree to regulations.[47] She rejected the need for political institutions and instead believed trade unions could operate as economic authorities in a “free society”.[47]

In 1885, Lucy also penned “Dynamite! The Only Voice the Oppressors of the People Can Understand” for The Labor Enquirer, where she describes terror as “an educator and agitator”.[43] She frequently advocated for the use of dynamite in her writings, encouraging violence to fight against the wrongs committed against the working class.[47] In her “Dynamite!” piece, Parsons rejects the criticism of anarchists as being “’thirsty blood-drinkers,’” and instead discussed the aim to establish a “free society” based on the “good judgement of the people”.[48] She stated that the “’more oppressors dead, and the fewer alive, the freer will be the world’”.[48] In an Alarm article, “Our Civilization: Is It Worth Saving?,” published in 1885, Parsons calls for workers to get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.[49] Her piece “The Factory Child” focuses on the effect capitalism has on children who suffer through child factory labor, calling them “victim[s] of capitalism”.[50] She believed that a 2–4-hour work day would be more productive than the current system of long hours and exploitation.[39] “A Christmas Story” states that the government is “simply organized fraud and oppression” and that if people are content as capitalists claim, “then what do they need to be governed for?”.[51] The 1886 publication of “Communistic Monopoly” criticizes state socialism which allows for institutions and instead advocates for “an individualistic state of society,” giving the people more flexibility.[52]

Parsons went on to found and operate The Liberator for two years, a publication not officially sponsored by but under the IWW that focused on anarchist propaganda.[53] It focused on “strikes and industrial conflict, oriented to the class struggle”.[54] Parsons controlled each issue as the editor, and also composed many of the articles herself.[53] Some of these writings included “Everyday Reflections,” “Labor’s Long Struggle with Capitalism,” which began with Greek and Roman slavery and continued through feudalism, the beginning of industry, and the present day, highlighting the contributions of trade unions throughout history.[53] The Liberator was difficult to upkeep, but followed unrest in Russia, farmers’ rights, and that technological innovation wore away at unskilled jobs.[55] The Liberator ignored the plight of Black Americans, not acknowledging the challenges Chicago’s Black Americans faced in the work force.[56] The Liberator would not survive long-term, with Parsons additionally losing faith in the lack of action from the IWW.[57] She continued to write for other publications, including Firebrand, Agitator, Rebel, and Demonstrator.[58] Parsons had multiple books published, including Life of Albert R. Parsons, Anarchism, Altgeld’s Pardon of the Anarchists, and Famous Speeches, which included speeches from the Haymarket martyrs.[53] She sold thousands of copies of Life of Albert R. Parsons and Famous Speeches. Parsons’ articles were distributed as far as England, stating that peaceful attempts would not work, and that anarchism and revolution will be more impactful.[59] She believed that laws were not the answer, and instead people needed to be educated on how to act justly.[60]

Tombstone, Forest Home (formerly Waldheim) Cemetery, Forest Park, IL - Photographed May 1, 2015

Parsons continued to give fiery speeches in Chicago's Bughouse Square into her 80s, where she inspired Studs Terkel.[61] One of her last major appearances was a speech to striking workers at International Harvester (the successor to the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, whose striking workers played a role in the Haymarket Affair) in February 1941.[62]

Parsons died on March 7, 1942, in a house fire in the Avondale Community Area of Chicago.[63] Her lover, George Markstall,[64] died the next day from injuries he received while trying to save her. She was approximately 91 years old.[2] After her death, police seized her library of over 1,500 books.[65] She is buried near her husband at Waldheim Cemetery (now Forest Home Cemetery), near the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument in Forest Park, Illinois.

In terms of her legacy, Parsons was a household name, known as a writer, speaker, and champion of the working classes. She demonstrated interest in “imaginative renderings of political ideas,…gender relations, and in violent rhetoric”.[66] Her writing is described as “descriptive and colorful,” directly connecting with readers.[66] Despite not acknowledging her African American background, the only Black American who could have spoken to more Americans than her at the time is Frederick Douglass.[5] Thus, she helped “expand[ed] the possibilities of what it meant to be black,” through a life of advocating for workers’ and women’s rights.[5]