Lucy Gonzales Parsons, Labor Organizer and Orator 

Profile of Lucy Gonzales Parsons (1853-1942).

By William Loren Katz 
Zinn Education Project

http://zinnedproject.org/posts/16855

On March 7, 1942, fire engulfed the simple home of 89-year-
old Lucy Gonzales Parsons on Chicago’s North Troy Street, and
ended a life dedicated to liberating working women and men of
the world from capitalism and racial oppression. A dynamic,
militant, self-educated public speaker and writer, she became
the first American woman of color to carry her crusade for
socialism across the country and overseas. 

Lucy Gonzales started life in Texas. She was of Mexican
American, African American, and Native American descent and
born into slavery. The path she chose after emancipation led
to conflict with the Ku Klux Klan, hard work, painful
personal losses, and many nights in jail. In Albert Parsons,
a white man whose Waco Spectator fought the Klan and demanded
social and political equality for African Americans, she
found a handsome, committed soul mate. The white supremacy
forces in Texas considered the couple dangerous and their
marriage illegal, and soon drove them from the state.

Lucy and Albert reached Chicago, where they began a family
and threw themselves into two new militant movements, one to
build strong industrial unions and the other to agitate for
socialism. Lucy concentrated on organizing working women and
Albert became a famous radical organizer and speaker, one of
the few important union leaders in Chicago who was not an
immigrant.

In 1886, the couple and their two children stepped onto
Michigan Avenue to lead 80,000 working people in the world’s
first May Day parade and a demand for the eight-hour day. A
new international holiday was born as more than 100,000 also
marched in other U.S. cities. By then, Chicago’s wealthy
industrial and banking elite had targeted Albert and other
radical figures for elimination - to decapitate the growing
union movement. 

A protest rally called by Albert a few days after May Day
became known as the Haymarket Riot when seven Chicago
policemen died in a bomb blast. No evidence has ever been
found pointing to those who made or detonated the bomb, but
Parsons and seven immigrant union leaders were arrested. As
the corporate media whipped up patriotic and law-and-order
fervor, a rigged legal system rushed the eight to convictions
and death sentences.

When Lucy led the campaign to win a new trial, one Chicago
official called her "more dangerous than a thousand rioters."
When Albert and three other comrades were executed, and four
others were sentenced to prison, the movement for industrial
unions and the eight-hour day was beheaded. Lucy, far from
discouraged, accelerated her actions. Though she had lost
Albert - and two years later lost her young daughter to
illness - Lucy continued her crusade against capitalism and
war, and to exonerate "the Haymarket Martyrs." She led poor
women into rich neighborhoods "to confront the rich on their
doorsteps," challenged politicians at public meetings,
marched on picket lines, and continued to address and write
political tracts for workers’ groups far beyond Chicago.

Though Lucy had justified direct action against those who
used violence against workers, in 1905 she suggested a very
different strategy. She was one of only two women delegates
(the other was Mother Jones) among the 200 men at the
founding convention of the militant Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW) and the only woman to speak. First she advocated
a measure close to her heart when she called women "the
slaves of slaves" and urged IWW delegates to fight for
equality and assess underpaid women lower union fees.

In a longer speech, she called for the use of nonviolence
that would have broad meaning for the world’s protest
movements. She told delegates workers shouldn’t "strike and
go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take
possession of the necessary property of production." A year
later Mahatma Gandhi, speaking to fellow Indians at the
Johannesburg Empire Theater, advocated nonviolence to fight
colonialism, but he was still 25 years away from leading
fellow Indians in nonviolent marches against India’s British
rulers. Eventually Lucy Parsons’ principle traveled to the
U.S. sit-down strikers of the 1930s, Dr. King and the Civil
Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the antiwar movements
that followed, and finally to today’s Arab Spring and the
Occupy movements.

Lucy was an unrelenting agitator, leading picket lines and
speaking to workers’ audiences in the United States, and then
before trade union meetings in England. In February 1941,
poor and living on a pension for the blind, the Farm
Equipment Workers Union asked Lucy Parsons to give an
inspirational speech to its workers, and a few months later
she rode as the guest of honor on its May Day parade float.

Federal and local lawmen arrived at the gutted Parsons home
to make sure her legacy died with her. They poked through the
wreckage, confiscated her vast library and personal writings,
and never returned them. Lucy Parsons’ determined effort to
elevate and inspire the oppressed to take command remained
alive among those who knew, heard, and loved her. But few
today are aware of her insights, courage, and tenacity.

Despite her fertile mind, writing and oratorical skills, and
striking beauty, Lucy Parsons has not found a place in school
texts, social studies curricula, or Hollywood movies. Yet she
has earned a prominent place in the long fight for a better
life for working people, for women, for people of color, for
her country, and for her world.

[William Loren Katz adapted this essay from his updated and
expanded edition of Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage
[Atheneum, 2012]. Website: williamlkatz.com.]

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