1. Lucy Parsons's early life is shrouded in mystery: she herself said she was of mixed Mexican and Native American ancestry; historians believe she was born to an African-American slave, possibly in Virginia, then married a black freedman in Texas.
63 Facts About Lucy Parsons
1. 2.
Lucy Parsons met Albert Parsons in Waco, Texas, and claimed to have married him although no records have been found.
3.
Lucy Parsons argued for labor organization and class struggle, writing polemical texts and speaking at events.
4.
Lucy Parsons joined the International Workingmen's Association and later the Knights of Labor, and she set up the Chicago Working Women's Union with her friend Lizzie Swank and other women.
5.
Lucy Parsons had two children and worked in Chicago as a seamstress, later opening her own shop.
6.
Lucy Parsons was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World and edited radical newspapers.
7.
Lucy Parsons was helped financially by the Pioneer Aid and Support Association and completed The Life of Albert R Parsons with her young lover Martin Lacher.
8.
Lucy Parsons became a notorious political figure and Chicago police attempted for decades to stop her speaking publicly.
9.
Lucy Parsons clashed with Emma Goldman over their differing attitudes to free love and continued her activism as she grew older, supporting Angelo Herndon, Tom Mooney, and the Scottsboro Boys.
10.
Lucy Parsons was buried in the German Waldheim Cemetery, where the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument stands.
11.
Caroline Ashbaugh states in Lucy Parsons, American revolutionary that she was born the daughter of a slave in 1849 and was possibly called Lucy Gathings; through her life Parsons used the surnames Carter, Diaz, Gonzalez and Hull.
12.
Lucy Parsons's contemporaries remarked upon her beautiful appearance and dark hair.
13.
In Goddess of anarchy: The life and times of Lucy Parsons, American radical, the social historian Jacqueline Jones states that Parsons was born a slave in Virginia and in 1863 at the age of 12 was brought to McLennan County, Texas, by her owner Thomas J Taliaferro along with her mother and brother.
14.
Lucy Parsons, then known as Lucia Carter, began living with a black freedman called Oliver Benton, formerly known as Oliver Gathings because slaves were given the surnames of their owners.
15.
Lucy Parsons was about 16 or 17 years old, and he was around 35 or 36.
16.
Lucy Parsons had fought in the American Civil War on the losing Confederate side then after the war had become a Radical Republican agitating for black civil rights.
17.
The historian Lucie C Price was unable to find any records either of the marriage certificate or of the official whom Parsons said had recorded the marriage.
18.
The couple lived together as husband and wife, Lucy taking the last name Parsons.
19.
Lucy Parsons always opposed racism and it is likely she had witnessed the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in Waco, while Albert was shot in the leg for helping black people to register to vote.
20.
Lucy and Albert Parsons moved to Chicago in about 1873.
21.
Albert Parsons worked as a compositor for newspapers and Lucy Parsons earned money as a seamstress.
22.
Lucy Parsons demonstrated her willingness to stand up for her rights by twice taking white people to court in 1875, over an unpaid bill and a neighbor disturbance, respectively.
23.
Lucy Parsons was then fired from his job at the Chicago Times and blacklisted.
24.
Lucy Parsons was forced to get a job to support her family and started a shop selling suits and dresses.
25.
Lucy Parsons began to lecture after the birth of her son, Albert Parsons Jr.
26.
Lucy Parsons was more militant than her partner, campaigning against voting at a time when she did not have the right to do it herself.
27.
Lucy Parsons developed her social anarchist approach, in which she condoned political violence, urged self-defense against racial violence and called for class struggle against religion.
28.
Lucy Parsons was an insurrectionary anarchist who promoted propaganda of the deed.
29.
Lucy Parsons saw violence as inevitable in class struggle and believed in trade unions as the engine of the revolution.
30.
In Chicago, the Lucy Parsons family led a peaceful demonstration of 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, demanding the eight-hour day.
31.
The Parsons family was at Zepf's Hall nearby and heard the blast; Lucy urged Albert to flee the city and he first went to Geneva, Illinois to stay with Lizzie and William Holmes, then moved to Waukesha, Wisconsin where he worked as a laborer and stayed with Daniel Hoan.
32.
Lucy Parsons reported in the Denver Labor Enquirer: "They have invaded the homes of everyone who has ever been known to have raised a voice or sympathized with those who have had aught to say against the present system of robbery and oppression".
33.
The mainstream media campaign against anarchists was intense, with the Chicago Tribune calling for executions and Texas newspapers revisiting the presumed scandal of Lucy Parsons leaving her marriage with Oliver Benton for Albert.
34.
The Waco Day headlined a story "Beast Lucy Parsons: the sneaking snarl from some moral morass in which he hides; miscegenationist, murderer, moral outlaw, for whom the gallows waits".
35.
Lucy Parsons attended every day of the trial and was there when her partner, George Engel, Fielden, Fischer, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab and Spies were sentenced to death.
36.
Lucy Parsons spoke with the socialist Thomas J Morgan at a rally in Sheffield, Indiana, which was just across the state line from Illinois, so that the Chicago police were unable to stop the event.
37.
Lucy Parsons stopped her tailoring shop and the family was forced to move out of their Indiana Street apartment to another on Milwaukee Avenue.
38.
Lucy Parsons was helped by Martin Lacher, a young German who lived with her from 1889 onwards.
39.
Lucy Parsons addressed the Socialist League and clashed with Annie Besant, a leader of the matchgirls' strike, over the issue of violence.
40.
Lucy Parsons then attempted to speak on the street: she was arrested and charged with incitement to riot.
41.
Lucy Parsons edited the newspaper Freedom, a revolutionary anarchist-communist monthly from 1891 onwards.
42.
Lucy Parsons built a house at 999 Hammond Avenue, later North Troy Street in Avondale, with the aid of the Pioneer Aid and Support Association, but some members of the group began to resent her need for funds, alleging that she was still claiming a stipend for her daughter who had died.
43.
The couple were by 1890 seen together publicly until their relationship ended in a court battle, when Lucy Parsons accused him of attacking her household belongings with an axe.
44.
Lucy Parsons alleged that he had written the majority of the Life of Albert R Parsons.
45.
Lucy Parsons used her position as editor of Freedom to attack Lacher, claiming he had stolen money from a local group and was pursuing a vendetta against her.
46.
In 1893, Lucy Parsons negotiated with the mayor that she could speak on the condition that she did not denounce him, then took the stage and immediately said the mayor was no better than a czar.
47.
When Oscar Rotter wrote about free love and the destruction of property relations in the anarchist newspaper Free Society, Lucy Parsons responded angrily in support of monogamy and this led to a long-lasting feud with Goldman, who complained that Lucy Parsons was living off her executed partner's legacy.
48.
Lucy Parsons was visited by anarchist Errico Malatesta in 1900 and the same year made a speech alongside trade unionist Jay Fox at a picnic on Memorial Day.
49.
In 1905, Parsons set up the Industrial Workers of the World with Eugene V Debs, Bill Haywood and Mother Jones.
50.
Lucy Parsons continued to tour the US making speeches and selling pamphlets, while editing the radical newspapers The Liberator and The Alarm.
51.
Lucy Parsons was often prevented from speaking by the police, particularly in Chicago, yet she continued to lecture until the 1920s.
52.
Lucy Parsons became involved with the International Labor Defense and in 1930, she spoke to thousands of people at the May Day event at Ashland Auditorium in Chicago, making a speech that was reprinted in Hearings Before a Special Committee to Investigate Communist Activities in the US.
53.
Lucy Parsons suffered an attack of pleurisy in 1932, recovering enough to visit the Chicago World's Fair the following year.
54.
Lucy Parsons was despondent about the US anarchist movement, discussing its failure with friends such as Nord, yet she continued her activism, supporting Angelo Herndon, Tom Mooney and the Scottsboro Boys.
55.
Lucy Parsons went blind, received a pension and lived in poverty in Avondale at North Troy Street with a library of around 3,000 books which featured the work of Engels, French socialists, Victor Hugo, Jack London, Marx, Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy and Voltaire.
56.
On her last May Day in 1941, Lucy Parsons accompanied the Farm Equipment Workers' Organizing Committee as guest of honor.
57.
Lucy Parsons had spoken to Ben Reitman about her funeral and drawn up a will in 1938, leaving the house to Markstall and upon his death to the Pioneer Aid and Support Association.
58.
Lucy Parsons's will was declared invalid, and the building was sold for $800 in 1943.
59.
Lucy Parsons asked the police where the library had gone and was told the Federal Bureau of Investigation had taken it.
60.
The philosopher Ruth Kinna noted in her 2020 book Great Anarchists that Lucy Parsons has historically been referred to primarily as the wife of Albert Lucy Parsons, yet she was in fact a "talented writer, orator and organizer in her own right".
61.
Until Ashbaugh's 1976 biography, Lucy Parsons was often only mentioned in footnotes: more recently coverage of her career has increased.
62.
Lucy Parsons has been claimed by various left-wing groups as a figurehead and a self-managed social center in Boston was named after her.
63.
Lucy Parsons is one of the historical figures depicted in Annalee Newitz's science fiction novel The Future of Another Timeline, part of which is set in Chicago in the 1890s.