Parsons entered the radical movement following her marriage to newspaper editor Albert Parsons and moved with him from Texas to Chicago, where she contributed to the newspaper he famously edited, The Alarm.
39 Facts About Lucy Parsons
2.
Lucy Parsons spoke about Black Americans in a sympathetic, ambiguous manner, not acknowledging herself as belonging to that community.
3.
Lucy Parsons instead acknowledged her Mexican and Native American heritage.
4.
Regardless, it is understandable that given the intense discrimination Black Americans faced, Lucy Parsons sought to remain ambiguous about her background in an effort to avoid further bias.
5.
Lucy Parsons worked as a seamstress and a cook for white families.
6.
Lucy Parsons lived with or was married to a former slave, Oliver Gathing, for a time prior to 1870.
7.
Lucy Parsons began writing for The Socialist and The Alarm, the journal of the International Working People's Association that she and Parsons, among others, founded in 1883.
8.
Lucy Parsons worked closely with her friend and collaborator Lizzie Holmes in the early years of the 1880s, and the two of them led marches of working seamstresses in Chicago.
9.
Lucy Parsons became a champion for his and their comrades' freedom, with three extended speaking tours between October 1886 and January 1887.
10.
Lucy Parsons traveled across multiple states to fund money for rent as well as the appeal and defense of Albert and the others.
11.
Lucy Parsons's efforts did advance the Haymarket case to the Illinois Supreme Court.
12.
Lucy Parsons always began her speeches with 'I am an anarchist,' in an attempt to show it was not so radical of an ideology.
13.
Lucy Parsons generally downplayed the more extreme parts of anarchism and instead homed in on workers' rights to achieve a more universal resonance.
14.
Lucy Parsons was invited to write for the French anarchist journal Les Temps Nouveaux and spoke alongside William Morris and Peter Kropotkin during a visit to Great Britain in 1888.
15.
Lucy Parsons was often arrested for giving public speeches or distributing anarchist literature.
16.
Lucy Parsons's focus shifted somewhat to class struggles around poverty and unemployment, and she organized the Chicago Hunger Demonstrations in January 1915, which pushed the American Federation of Labor, the Socialist Party, and Jane Addams' Hull House to participate in a huge demonstration on February 12.
17.
Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons represented different generations of anarchism.
18.
Lucy Parsons was solely dedicated to working class liberation, condemning Goldman for "addressing large middle-class audiences"; Goldman accused Lucy Parsons of riding upon the cape of her husband's martyrdom.
19.
Lucy Parsons' writings centered around the themes of freedom, equality, and solidarity.
20.
Lucy Parsons believed that property should be limited to what one person can actually use themselves personally.
21.
Amidst writing, Lucy Parsons worked as a seamstress, expanding her sewing shop into a women's and children's clothing business in 1877.
22.
In 1884 the IWPA decided to begin publishing a newspaper, The Alarm, in which Albert Parsons was the editor and Lucy was a key contributor in its onset.
23.
Lucy Parsons frequently advocated for the use of dynamite in her writings, encouraging violence to fight against the wrongs committed against the working class.
24.
Lucy Parsons went on to found and operate The Liberator for two years, a publication not officially sponsored by but under the IWW that focused on anarchist propaganda.
25.
Lucy Parsons controlled each issue as the editor, and composed many of the articles herself.
26.
The Liberator would not survive long-term, with Lucy Parsons additionally losing faith in the lack of action from the IWW.
27.
Lucy Parsons continued to write for other publications, including Firebrand, Agitator, Rebel, and Demonstrator.
28.
Lucy Parsons sold thousands of copies of Life of Albert R Parsons and Famous Speeches.
29.
Lucy Parsons' articles were distributed as far as England, stating that peaceful attempts would not work, and that anarchism and revolution will be more impactful.
30.
Lucy Parsons believed that laws were not the answer, and instead people needed to be educated on how to act justly.
31.
Lucy Parsons continued to give fiery speeches in Chicago's Bughouse Square into her 80s, where she inspired Studs Terkel.
32.
Lucy Parsons died on March 7,1942, in a house fire in the Avondale Community Area of Chicago.
33.
Lucy Parsons is buried near her husband at Waldheim Cemetery, near the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument in Forest Park, Illinois.
34.
In terms of her legacy, Lucy Parsons was a household name, known as a writer, speaker, and champion of the working classes.
35.
Lucy Parsons refused to speak about her private life or origins.
36.
Lucy Parsons specifically denied that she was a child of a former slave of African descent, claiming that she was born in Texas and her parents were Mexican and Native American.
37.
The Lucy Parsons Center was founded in 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts.
38.
On July 16,2007, a book that purportedly belonged to Lucy Parsons was featured on a segment of the PBS television series, History Detectives.
39.
The organization Lucy Parsons Labs is a Chicago-based organization focused on digital rights and on-the-streets activism.