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In the lead-up to International Working Women’s Day, the Working People’s Press intends to feature the stories of two significant women from the early history of the American labor movement. The following is a brief introduction to the life and work of Lucy Parsons and is far from extensive.

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Lucy Parsons was a pioneer in the early American labor movement and at the center of some of its most significant events, such as the Haymarket affair and the founding of the International Workers of the World (IWW). Due to her anti-reformist and revolutionary politics, along with her speaking ability, she was deemed by the Chicago Police Department as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” She was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the International Labor Defense, as well as a founding member of the International Working People’s Association and the IWW.

Little is known about the early years of Lucy Parsons’ life. In 1873, she and her husband, fellow activist Albert Parsons, fled Texas where they had been targeted by members of the Ku Klux Klan due to their radical politics. They settled in Chicago. In 1878, following the Chicago railroad strike of 1877, Parsons began writing articles about working women, the unemployed, and Civil War veterans for The Socialist, the newspaper of the Socialist Labor Party. Together with fellow Chicago labor activist Lizzie Holmes, she hosted meetings for the Chicago Working Women’s Union. In 1883, she helped found the International Working People’s Association (IWPA), an anarchist-inspired revolutionary labor organization.

In 1886, Parsons, with the IWPA and other organizations, worked to organize a general strike in support of the 8-hour workday, which would begin on the first day of May. 350,000 workers across the nation walked off their jobs to participate in the mass general strike. Tens of thousands struck in Chicago. For several days, strikers faced repeated police repression, which included police opening fire on unarmed strikers. On May 4th, a bomb was thrown after police attacked the strikers once again. Police blamed the IWPA and, over the following days, arrested any radicals they could find. Parsons’s husband was one of eight charged, accused of the bombing despite not being present that day. Lucy Parsons was the leader of the campaign in their defense, traveling the country speaking on behalf of their innocence and raising funds for their appeals. For this, she was met with and prevailed through police repression and constant surveillance. In November of 1887, despite her work, her husband and three others were executed by the state.

Parsons persisted in her activism following the martyrdom of her husband. In 1891, she, alongside Lizzie Holmes, began editing Freedom, a monthly Anarcho-Communist newspaper. Throughout the decade, she continued to speak across the country, often with police attempting to stop her. She wrote profusely about the strikes of the 1890s, seeing them as paving the way for a coming revolution. During this period, many in the radical labor movement began to support the idea of reforming the system through the electoral process. Parsons was critical of this, writing, “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.”

In 1905, Lucy Parsons was a founding member of the International Workers of the World, speaking at its inaugural convention. She began editing The Liberator, a newspaper published by the IWW. Along with covering events in the labor movement, she wrote about the history of the working class. While a member of the IWW, she also frequently spoke and wrote about women’s oppression. At the founding of the IWW, in a room of mainly male labor activists, she said, 

“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 uses women and if there is anything that you men should do in the future it is to organize the women.” 

Despite being a founding member, Parsons soon began to develop doubts in the strategy of the IWW. In 1912, she, alongside future CPUSA leaders William Z. Foster and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, formed the short-lived Syndicalist League of America. Following the Russian revolution, Parsons received criticism from Emma Goldman and other anarchists for her support of the Soviet Union.

For decades, Parsons was one of the leading Anarchists in the country; however, she had begun to grow dissatisfied with the state of the Anarchist movement in the US and doubted if it could build a viable organization to challenge capitalism. In 1925, she began working with the newly formed Communist Party USA. She joined and would soon become a leader in the International Labor Defense, an organization created by the party to defend labor activists and workers. She aided in the defense of Angelo Herndon and the Scottsboro Eight. Parsons became an official member of the CPUSA in 1939. She also wrote occasionally for the Daily Worker, a newspaper published by the party.

On March 7, 1942, at the age of 91, Parsons passed away in a fire at home. Her funeral was attended by hundreds of people. Throughout her life, Parsons prevailed through constant state repression, helping to found several organizations and mobilizing hundreds of thousands of workers and unemployed people. As a writer and speaker, she stood firm against reformist politics and attempts to subordinate the labor movement to the Democratic Party. Along with her work as a labor organizer, she also wrote about the oppression of black people and women in the United States. When the history of the labor movement comes up in ruling-class media, Parsons is almost never discussed. However, through her nearly seventy years of work in the labor movement, she left a legacy that will never be forgotten.