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“Now, what do we mean when we say revolutionary Socialist? We mean that the land shall belong to the landless, the tools to the toiler, and the products to the producers.” ― Lucy Parsons
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By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira
The struggles of the U.S. working-class have produced some of the most exemplary militant fighters which will continue inspiring millions of people for generation to come. Among these powerful historic figures is Lucy Gonzalez Parsons.
Although Parsons never made mention about it throughout her life researchers disclosed in recent decades that she was born enslaved at a plantation in Virginia. In 1863, her slaveowner brought 12-year-old Lucy to Texas along with her mother named Charlotte.
In the years following the end of the Civil War in the United States of 1860-1865, in which ended African chattel slavery was ended, Parsons became a journalist, labor organizer, revolutionary feminist, and an anarcho-communist.
She fought vigorously to bring about the eight-hour day, women’s rights, against child-labor and socialism. Despite hardships caused by tragic events in her personal life Lucy Parsons became a true working class shero with a deep disdain for the capitalist system.
Lucy Parsons lived in Texas with her husband Albert Parsons and their two children. They were despised for being an interracial couple. Albert Parson was white and Lucy an obvious woman of color, with African American, Mexican, and Indigenous racial strains.
As Jim Crow laws intensified and due to her outspokenness, the Ku Klux Klan threaten their lives quite often. Eventually, the family was compelled to move to Chicago where they found relative safety from racist terror.
At the first May Day rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, on May 4, 1886, during a labor demonstration for the eight-hour workday that was attended by thousands of people, a bomb was thrown. The explosion and subsequent gunfire killed seven police officers and four civilians.
This tragic event became a perfect excuse for the government to make a punishing example by launching a crackdown on the labor movement. What resulted was a controversial trial with questionable evidence. Following a guilty verdict, on November 11, 1887, four labor leaders were executed by hanging at Chicago’s Cook County jail. Lucy Parson’s husband, Albert Parsons, was among the four men accused and executed, alongside his comrades August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel.
For Lucy Parsons to Lose her beloved to a horrifying government persecution served to further radicalize her. She became more outspoken in condemning the capitalist system. Parsons led a national campaign involving speaking tours to raise funds for legal defense and to expose the injustice committed against the Haymarket martyrs, especially in the New York City tri-state area which became a hub for the labor movement. Parsons’ efforts succeeded in reaching the hearts and minds of millions throughout the country.
As Parsons rose to become a prominent voice, she bonded with another renown female working-class figure, Mary Harris, better known as Mother Jones. Parsons and Jones were the only women to speak at the July 8, 1905, founding convention of the International Workers of the World (IWW) also known as the “Wobblies.” Their quest was to build one big labor union of all trades.
The IWW was one of the most militant workers organizations in U.S. labor history, where Parsons and Jones played leading roles. In many cases, striking Wobbly members would conduct their pickets and other actions by boldly displaying their firearms for self-defense and to convince others of their allegiance to convictions.
As years passed, Lucy Parson’s perspective of the world and class struggle expanded. The 1917 Russian Socialist Revolution had a tremendous impact on her. She was a writer for the Anarchist newspaper The Alarm, where she expressed many controversial views, including support for Vladamir Lenin and the Bolshevik victory that established a revolutionary worker’s state.
Such was the bases for differences she held with Emma Goldman and others in the U.S. feminist movement. Parsons polemicized with those who tended to raise women’s rights isolated from other social issues, the plight of Black people and fighting for a socialist world. She believed that fighting women’s oppression was an integral part of engaging in the class struggle.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Lucy Parson became highly critical of the Communist Party USA for excessively supporting President Franklyn D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policy. Parsons believed that it was a government ploy designed to deceive the working-class and prevent its revolutionary politicization.
However, although Parsons identified primarily as an anarchist for much of her life, and despite her critiques, she officially joined the Communist Party USA in 1939. She came to the conclusion that what was more important than sectarian organizational affiliations is to fully commit to advance the cause for the emancipation of the working-class.
For the remainder of her life Lucy Parsons travelled across the country agitating for the freedom of the Scottsboro Boys, partaking in picket lines of numerous striking workers and speaking to audiences at union halls to promote the ideas of socialism.
Lucy Parsons became known for her defiance. She was not afraid of imprisonment nor death. This heroine would challenge law enforcement officials whenever they attempted to shutdown public meetings. The Chicago Police Department and the Justice Department’s J. Edgar Hoover, perceived Lucy Parsons as an active threat to the established social and economic order. Chicago Police Chief Frederick Ebersold famously characterized Lucy Parsons “more dangerous than a thousand rioters,“ referring to her advocacy for socialist revolution.
Tragically, Lucy Gonzalez Parsons died on March 7, 1942, in an accidental house fire in Chicago. She is buried in the Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois. Parson’s life-long examples of resilience and conviction will be remembered. She has earned a special place of honor for all eternity in the historic archives of the class struggle.
LONG LIVE THE LEGACY OF LUCY PARSONS!
carlitoboricua 