Lucy Parsons

Lucy Parsons gave different accounts of her own origins throughout her life, and historians still argue about which parts were true. She was born around 1851, most likely to an enslaved mother named Charlotte in Virginia, and was taken to Texas as a child. By her twenties she was calling herself Lucy Gonzalez, claiming a Mexican father and a Native American mother, a story that fit no known record but made her marriage, in a state where interracial unions were a felony, look legal on its face. She met Albert Parsons, a white former Confederate soldier turned Republican newspaperman, in Waco around 1872. No marriage certificate for them has ever surfaced. In late 1873 the couple left Texas for Chicago, one step ahead of threats against them.

In Chicago she became a labor writer and organizer in her own right, contributing to the anarchist paper The Alarm and publishing "To Tramps" in 1885, a call to the unemployed that sold more than ten thousand copies. On May 4, 1886, while Albert addressed a rally at Haymarket Square, Lucy was leading a separate meeting nearby; a bomb thrown at the square killed a police officer, gunfire killed several more people, and Albert was hanged in November 1887 with three other men convicted on evidence that never placed them at the scene. Parsons toured the country for weeks raising money for their defense, then spent the next five decades lecturing, editing radical papers, and organizing, co-founding the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 and joining the Communist Party in 1939, at age eighty-eight.

The movement cost her almost everyone she loved. Her daughter, Lulu Eda, died of lymphedema at eight. In 1899, when her son Albert Jr. tried to enlist for a war his mother publicly opposed, she had him committed to a state mental hospital, where he stayed until his death twenty years later. Emma Goldman, the other famous woman anarchist of the era, called her a hypocrite for preaching free love in theory while insisting on monogamy in practice, and needled her for living off a dead husband's martyrdom. The sharper contradiction is racial: a woman apparently born to an enslaved mother spent her public life minimizing her own ancestry and organizing almost entirely around class, not race, and never allied with Ida B. Wells or the Black institutions building anti-lynching and civil rights campaigns around her.

She died on March 7, 1942, when a fire swept through her house in Avondale; her longtime companion George Markstall died of his injuries trying to save her. Police reportedly seized her library of roughly three thousand books and papers before anyone else could inventory it, and none of it was ever recovered. For decades afterward she was remembered mainly as Albert Parsons's widow. That began to change with Carolyn Ashbaugh's 1976 biography and the scholarship that followed it, which restored her standing as an organizer and writer independent of her husband's execution. Chicago named a park for her in 2004, and a digital-rights group in the city still carries her name.

Lucy Parsons's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Alarm (contributor) other
  Chicago anarchist newspaper; main venue for her writing through the 1880s 1884
• "To Tramps, the Unemployed, the Disinherited and Miserable" article
  Reprinted more than 10,000 times in 1885 alone 1885
• Life of Albert R. Parsons book
  Biography of her executed husband, co-published with Martin Lacher 1889
• The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists in Court book
  Edited compilation; sold more than 10,000 copies 1886
• Industrial Workers of the World other
  Co-founded with Eugene Debs, Bill Haywood, and Mother Jones 1905
• Freedom (editor) other
  Anarchist-communist newspaper she edited from Chicago 1891

• c. 1851 aged ~0 Born, most likely to an enslaved mother in Virginia Taken to Texas as a child; her later account of Mexican and Native American parentage is not supported by any known record.
• c. 1872 aged ~21 Meets Albert Parsons in Waco, Texas
• Late 1873 aged ~22 The couple leaves Texas for Chicago Fled amid threats tied to their interracial relationship.
• May 4, 1886 aged ~35 The Haymarket bombing and its aftermath Lucy led a separate meeting nearby while Albert addressed the Haymarket rally; police gunfire and a thrown bomb left several dead.
• November 11, 1887 aged ~36 Albert Parsons is hanged Convicted with three others on evidence never placing them at the bombing.
• 1899 aged ~48 Has her son Albert Jr. committed to a state mental hospital He remained there until his death in 1919.
• June 27, 1905 aged ~54 Co-founds the Industrial Workers of the World in Chicago
• 1939 aged ~88 Joins the Communist Party USA at age 88
• March 7, 1942 aged ~91 Dies in a house fire in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood Her companion George Markstall died the next day of injuries suffered trying to save her.

• Emma Goldman 1869–1940
  Anarchist orator and editor whose free-speech and birth-control agitation led to her 1919 deportation. rival
• Eugene V. Debs 1855–1926
  Socialist Party leader who ran for president five times from prison and championed labor rights. co-founded the IWW with
• Mother Jones 1837–1930
  Organizer whose militant campaigns for miners and against child labor made her an icon of American labor. co-founded the IWW with
• Bill Haywood 1869–1928
  Co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World and led major mining and textile strikes. co-founded the IWW with
• Ida B. Wells 1862–1931
  Journalist and anti-lynching crusader whose investigative reporting exposed racial terror in the South. contemporary, never allied with