Sometimes the working journalist, if she or he is paying close attention, the story they are looking for is right under their nose—or on their external hard drive, as was in the case of the current Classroom profile. Ten years ago, the esteemed historian William Loren Katz sent me a piece on Lucy Gonzales Parson, and since we are now several weeks past the Haymarket Square incident in May of 1886, it’s not too late to permit Katz’s insightful recollection of that event. Here’s an edited version of Katz’s biography of Parsons and the pivotal role she played in a number of significant political activities.
“A hundred years ago this June 29, Lucy Gonzales Parsons, a self-educated former slave, addressed a remarkable assembly of 200 American revolutionaries,” Katz began in the article, written in 2005. “What she proposed was an innovative, nonviolent plan to bring down what radicals called the “wage slavery” of capitalism. The form of protest Parsons unveiled was later effectively employed by Mahatma Gandhi in India and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the 1960s, not to mention anti-war protestors and the sit-down strikers of the 1930s in the United States.
“From her birth in 1853 in Texas to enslaved parents of African, Native American and Hispanic descent, Lucy Gonzales lived an extraordinarily active life. After the Civil War and at 18, she married Albert Parsons, a white war veteran and journalist who fought white supremacy and [Ku Klux] Klan violence to help elect African-Americans to office in Texas.
“In 1873, Klan terror reached new levels of violence, state officials refused to act and the couple left for Chicago. As they settled into a German immigrant neighborhood, they suddenly faced a new fury. The first major U.S. depression closed banks and businesses and made millions jobless across the country. In Chicago, the industrial axis and rail hub of the nation, the desperation of the poor confronted elite rich industrialists and bankers, and the result was seething, brutal class conflict. A police force sworn to protect private property repeatedly attacked and killed striking workers, families demanding relief and radicals who sought to improve labor conditions. Lucy and Albert Parsons were drawn into this struggle to aid not just African-Americans but ‘the wretched of the earth.’ The Parsons and other radicals advocated an eight-hour working day, but their real goal was a socialist state.
“Lucy Parsons became the first important African-American social revolutionary. May 1, 1886, she and Albert and their two children led 80,000 Chicago marchers in the world’s first May Day demonstration. The city’s wealthy elite had their police force keep the Parsons under surveillance. Then, May 4, a bomb exploded at a labor rally at Haymarket Square that killed eight police officers … and the force of law came after Albert Parsons and his fellow radicals. To this day, the bomber is unknown and no evidence connects anyone to the bombing. But Albert Parsons and seven immigrant labor leaders were framed for murder. The state of Illinois hanged Parsons and three other agitators and sentenced the others to prison, and U.S. trade unions suffered a devastating blow. [This early part of the Lucy and Albert Parsons story is brilliantly captured in Martin Duberman’s novel “Haymarket” (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005).]
“The execution of her husband did not keep Lucy from continuing to promote socialist revolution. A dynamic speaker, tall and stunning in her signature black dress, she educated and entranced audiences from New York to California, and in England. Though often harassed, denied meeting halls and arrested by police, Lucy organized and led picket lines, hunger marches and protest meetings.
“At the dawn of the 20th century, most unions in the United States still excluded African-Americans, women, unskilled workers and immigrants from Asia, Europe and Africa. So Lucy Parsons joined other radicals to create ‘the Industrial Workers of the World’ that aimed to recruit all workers for revolution. At its Chicago founding convention in June 1905, Parsons was the only person of color or woman to address the 200 male delegates. Even among seasoned revolutionaries, she proved to be ahead of her time.
“At a moment when women could not vote, she called on the IWW to recruit women as members. And since they were paid less than men, she insisted that women pay less union dues. She also outlined her protest strategy:
“‘We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it, and the only way that we can be represented is to take a man to represent us. You men have made such a mess of it in representing us that we have not much confidence in asking you …
‘We are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Whenever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class use women to reduce them, and if there is anything that you men should do in the future, it is to organize the women …
‘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 … I believe that if every man and every woman who works, or who toils in the mines, mills, the workshops, the fields, the factories and the farms of our broad America should decide in their minds that they shall have that which of right belongs to them … then there is no army that is large enough to overcome you, for you yourselves constitute the army …
‘My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production …
‘Let us sink such differences as nationality, religion, politics, and set our eyes eternally and forever toward the rising star of the industrial republic of labor; remembering that we have left the old behind and have set our faces toward the future. There is no power on earth that can stop men and women who are determined to be free at all hazards. There is no power on earth so great as the power of intellect. It moves the world and it moves the earth …
‘I hope even now to live to see the day when the first dawn of the new era of labor will have arisen, when capitalism will be a thing of the past, and the new industrial republic, the commonwealth of labor, shall be in operation. I thank you.’
“Lucy Parsons never ceased her effort to unite women, people of color and industrial workers to overthrow capitalism. In 1925, she helped found the International Labor Defense to provide legal aid to falsely arrested workers and minorities. In 1931, she and the ILD were able to save the lives of nine African-Americans framed for rape in Scottsboro, Alabama. A few years later, she and the ILD saved the life of Black Communist Angelo Herndon, arrested by Georgia lawmen for leading a jobless march of African-Americans and whites.
“Lucy Gonzales Parsons was a daring visionary and courageous activist. By the time she died in 1942, she had earned a place in the hearts of people committed to peace and justice. However, she is still to be granted her place in our school and college courses.”