Lucy Parsons: Revolutionary

New Crisis, The, Mar/Apr 2000 by Thorarajoo, Elizabeth

There is a long list of women in the pantheon of American history who played critical roles in fighting against oppression and for equality, freedom and human rights. Time has faded the public memory of many of them, but nothing will ever tarnish the luster of their passion and their accomplishments. Lucy Parsons ranks high on the list.

She was by any measure a passionate and committed woman who, from the late 1800s well into the 20th Century, fought fearlessly for the disenfranchised and the oppressed. At any time in history she would be considered a radical and a revolutionary. And she associated with anyone who she thought could advance the cause of justice and human rights. Lucy Parsons was fearless, and by the time she died on March 7, 1942, at the age of 89, she had passionately challenged every convention of the social and corporate establishment, leaving a legacy that few could equal.

Because of her singular fight against social and economic oppression, she led an embattled, controversial life. But in the end, through her work fighting racism, sexism and the economic forces that belittled the humanity of the downtrodden, she helped forge changes in the United States that lesser people did not dare attempt.

Lucy Parsons was apparently born in 1853 in Texas. Her ancestry was African American, Native American and Mexican. That melting-pot mix often enabled her to pass herself off as Mexican. She utilized many aliases, sometimes going by the name Lucy Gonzales. Early on, the oppression she saw and experienced caused her to become a political activist, a course to which she became more committed after marrying Albert Parsons, a white man. They were a perfect match. But in 1872, their controversial political activism forced them to leave Texas, after Albert was shot in the leg for working to register blacks to vote and threatened with lynching.

They settled in Chicago in 1873. Albert found a job as a printer at the Chicago Times. It was an era of hard times. An economic depression was on, millions were out of work, and corporate America was taking every advantage of the unskilled and downtrodden. Even menial jobs were hard to come by

In 1877, however, workers began rising up, most notably by staging one of the greatest labor strikes in the history of the United States. Hundreds of thousands protested the paltry wages and poor treatment of their employers. Rail workers all over the country joined in the strike, bringing it greater attention and making it more effective. Sometimes strikers resorted to violence as they did battle with their oppressive employers. Albert Parsons was fired from his printer's job, and Lucy worked to support them by opening a dress shop in Chicago. But she became more and more involved politically, meeting with members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and writing for radical publications.

Lucy had no sympathy for the bosses who oppressed workers and paid them substandard wages. In 1883 she and Albert helped found two anarchist publications, The Socialist and The Alarm. Lucy herself wrote for them, regularly penning essays of political and social commentary, the most famous being titled "To Tramps," in which she argued that only direct, violent action-or the threat of it-could help win rights for workers. Indeed, authorities considered Lucy more "dangerous" than her husband because she was so vehemently outspoken in supporting the rights of the poor and the working class.

Social and political upheavals continued to plague the country, and by 1886 the pressure cooker was about to explode. Workers across America were rising up in protest against low wages, wretched working conditions and the insufferably long hours they were required to work. On May 1 of that year, the organizing workers launched a formal protest of working conditions and began demanding an eight-hour workday, a goal that would take Congress almost another half century to write into law.

Meanwhile, more than a quarter of a million people walked off their jobs, convincing radicals like Lucy Parsons that a workers' revolution was at hand. A few days later, on May 3, a strike at the McCormick Harvest Works in Chicago turned violent when police fired into a crowd of unarmed workers. Reacting to events, radicals called a meeting at Haymarket Square, but the gathering was overrun by police, and someone threw a bomb that killed one policeman. Police went on the prowl for the perpetrator, and Albert Parsons was one of eight men arrested and charged in the bombing.

Lucy mounted a national campaign arguing Albert's innocence-the trial "evidence" against him was highly suspect-but he was later convicted and executed. Still, Lucy's efforts on her husband's behalf made her something of a lightening rod in the labor movement. Police tracked her everywhere, arresting her at the slightest provocation.

In the 1890s, with different factions in the labor movement jockeying for power and position, Lucy Parsons saw the problem of workers' rights being tied to class consciousness, where the rich lorded over laborers. Following a speaking trip to London in 1888, Parsons returned to America and became active in the free-speech movement, having concluded that such rights in the U.S. were far eclipsed by those in England.