Lucy E. Parsons ( – March 7, 1942) was an American social anarchist and later anarcho-communist, well known throughout her long life for her fiery speeches and writings. She was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World. There are different versions of Parsons' early life: she herself said she was of mixed Mexican and Native American ancestry; historians believe she was born to an African-American slave, possibly in Virginia, then perhaps married a black freedman in Texas. She met the activist Albert Parsons in Waco, Texas, and claimed to have married him although no records have been found. They moved to Chicago together in late 1873 and her ideology was shaped by the harsh repression of workers in the Chicago railroad strike of 1877. She argued for labor organization and class struggle, writing polemical texts and speaking at events. She joined the Workingmen's Party of the United States and later the Knights of Labor, and she set up the Chicago Working Women's Union with her friend Lizzie Swank and other women.
Parsons had two children and worked in Chicago as a seamstress, later opening her own shop. After her husband was executed in 1887 following his conviction for being a ringleader in the Haymarket affair, she became internationally famous as an anarchist speaker, touring frequently across the United States and visiting England. She wrote articles and edited radical newspapers. She was helped financially by the Pioneer Aid and Support Association and wrote the biography The Life of Albert R. Parsons with her young lover Martin Lacher. In the decades following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Parsons moved towards communism. The Chicago police regarded her as a dangerous political figure and attempted many times to stop her from speaking publicly. She continued her activism as she grew older, clashing with the anarchist Emma Goldman over their differing attitudes to free love and supporting challenges to miscarriages of justice in the cases of Angelo Herndon, Tom Mooney, and the Scottsboro Boys. She died in a house fire on March 7, 1942. Her partner George Markstall returned to find the building on fire and was unable to rescue her; he died the following day. She was buried in the German Waldheim Cemetery, where the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument stands. After her death, Parsons was primarily referenced as the wife of Albert Parsons, until recent scholarship and two book-length biographies have commemorated her own achievements. The Chicago Park District named a park on Belmont Avenue after her in 2004.
Early life Little is known for certain about Parsons' early life. The historian Caroline Ashbaugh states in her biography of Parsons that she was born the daughter of a slave in 1849 and was possibly called Lucy Gathings; through her life Parsons also used the surnames Carter, Diaz, Gonzalez and Hull. There is confusion over Parsons' middle name; while historians such as Philip S. Foner give it as Eldine, both the birth certificate of her daughter and her own death certificate supply the name Ella. Parsons herself told different versions of her life history. She denied being of African heritage and said that she had Mexican and Native American parents, alternating between which one was which. When later events made her famous, national newspapers tried to investigate her Texas heritage but were unable to do so. One story she told was that she was born in Texas to Marie del Gather (who was of Spanish-Mexican ancestry) and John Waller who was Muscogee. Her entry in the American National Biography suggests she may have been daughter to Pedro Diáz González and his wife Marie. Contemporary reporters speculated about her background.
In her biography of Parsons, the social historian Jacqueline Jones states that she was born a slave in Virginia and in 1863 at the age of 12 was brought to McLennan County, Texas, by her owner Thomas J. Taliaferro along with her mother and brother. On this account she was called Lucia; she then moved to Waco, Texas, where people were reinventing their identities as they moved on from their past lives as slaves or Confederate soldiers. She began living with (and possibly married) a black freedman called Oliver Benton, formerly known as Oliver Gathings because slaves were given the surnames of their owners. He was around 35 or 36 and she was about 16 or 17 years old. Benton paid $1.50 per month for her education at a local black school and they may have had a child together who died at a young age. Ashbaugh suggests that Parsons was (like Benton) a former slave of the Gathings brothers, since Philip Gathings had a daughter named Lucy in 1849 and Parsons may have been named after her. While slave records do not preserve names, the Gathings brothers did each own two slave girls in 1860 who would have been around Parsons' age.
Whilst in Waco, Lucy met Albert Parsons. He was a white man who had fought in the American Civil War on the losing Confederate side then after the war had become a Radical Republican agitating for black civil rights; he was shot in the leg for helping black people to register to vote. It is doubtful they were ever married since no records have been found and there were at the time anti-miscegenation laws. They both claimed that they married in Austin in 1872 and she told the Dictionary of American Biography for Albert's entry that they were married on June 10, 1871. The historian Lucie C. Price was unable to find any records either of the marriage certificate or of the official whom Parsons said had recorded the marriage. Ashbaugh asserts they would have found it difficult to form an interracial marriage, yet the couple lived together as husband and wife, with Lucy taking the last name Parsons.
Chicago Lucy and Albert Parsons moved to Chicago at the end of 1873. The industrial city was growing rapidly. The couple lived in poor working-class slum tenements around Larrabee Street and North Avenue on the North Side. Albert Parsons worked as a compositor for newspapers and Lucy Parsons earned money as a seamstress. The couple became involved in the Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America, later the Workingmen's Party of the United States. Parsons also demonstrated her willingness to stand up for her rights by twice taking white people to court in 1875, over an unpaid bill and a neighbor disturbance, respectively.
When the Chicago railroad strike of 1877 occurred as part of the Great Upheaval, Albert Parsons and fellow socialists Philip Van Patten and George Schilling spoke to a crowd of 25,000 people. He was then fired from his job at the Chicago Times and blacklisted; he had a gun put to his head by two unknown men when he went to the Chicago Tribune to ask for work. Lucy Parsons was forced to get a job to support her family and started a shop selling suits and dresses. She expanded the business into Parsons & Co., Manufacturers of Ladies' and Children's Clothing, opening a workspace at 306 Mohawk Street and employing her now blacklisted partner.
Parsons' first writings to be published were letters to the editor of The Socialist concerning the hunger and poverty of the working class. She began to lecture after the birth of her son, Albert Parsons Jr., in September 1879 (on the birth certificate she wrote her maiden name as Carter and Virginia as her place of birth). Parsons' political perspective was evolving, and she determined that her personal problems were insignificant since only social movements could achieve change. She was more militant than her partner, campaigning against voting at a time when she did not have the right to do it herself. Her observations of the 1877 strike had taught her that workers were powerful when united. She developed her social anarchist approach, in which she condoned political violence, urged self-defense against racial violence and called for class struggle against religion. Alongside women such as Elizabeth Chambers Morgan, Elizabeth Flynn Rodgers, Alzina Stevens and Lizzie Swank she helped to set up the Chicago Working Women's Union (WWU) and attended meetings while pregnant, at a time when child-bearing women were expected to stay at home. Swank became a good friend of Parsons and as soon as the Knights of Labor decided to admit women, they both joined up. The WWU encouraged women to unionize and promoted the eight-hour day.
On April 20, 1881, Parsons gave birth to her second child, Lulu Eda, who was to die of lymphedema at the age of eight. In 1883, the insurrectionary anarchist Johann Most visited Chicago and met the Parsons family. In November, Albert Parsons founded the American Group of Chicago as the local wing of the International Working People's Association (IWPA). Lucy attended meetings, sometimes in her own home, developing her left-wing politics. When the IWPA published the radical newspaper The Alarm in 1884, she was one of the main contributors, theorising that violence was inevitable in class struggle and that trade unions were the engine of the revolution. She wrote texts which included "Our civilization. Is it worth saving?", "The factory child. Their wrongs portrayed and their rescue demanded" and "The negro. Let him leave politics to the politician and prayers to the preacher". Her article "To tramps, the unemployed, the disinherited and miserable" was reprinted from The Alarm and sold more than 10,000 copies between May and November 1885. The same year, Parsons published "Dynamite! The only voice the oppressors of the people can understand" in the Denver Labor Enquirer, inspired by Most's promotion of propaganda of the deed. On April 28, 1885, Parsons and Lizzie Holmes () led an IWPA march to protest outside a banquet at the Board of Trade Building, which was newly constructed at a cost of $2 million. During this time period, Parsons and her partner would often address crowds of 1,000 to 5,000 people on Sundays at the shore of Lake Michigan. Labor organizer Mother Jones attended and thought the speeches advocated too much violence.
Haymarket affair
On Saturday May 1, 1886, 300,000 workers went on strike across the US. In Chicago, the Parsons family led a peaceful demonstration of 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, demanding the eight-hour day. Two days later, Chicago Police and private security guards known as Pinkertons attacked striking workers at the McCormick Reaper factory, shooting at least one person dead. On May 4, Lucy Parsons organized a meeting to support striking sewing women and asked Albert Parsons to join her; on the same night, at the nearby Haymarket Square 176 police officers had ordered a demonstration to disperse when a bomb was thrown from the crowd. In what became known later as the Haymarket affair, the police opened fire, shooting at least seven workers dead, while one police officer died and six others succumbed to their injuries later; it is likely that in the chaos the officers were killed by police bullets. The Parsons family was at Zepf's Hall nearby and heard the blast; Albert fled the city, first staying with Lizzie and William Holmes in Geneva, Illinois, then moving to Waukesha, Wisconsin where he worked as a laborer and resided with Daniel Hoan.