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Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary PDF

290 Pages·1976·8.982 MB·English
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LUCY PARSONS American Revolutionary by Carolyn Ashbaugh 1976 Chicago CHARLES H. KERR PUBLISHING COMPANY Published for the Illinois Labor History Society ~478 © Copyright 1976 Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company Printed in the United States of America LC 75-23909 ISBN 0-88286-005-4 paper ISBN 0-88286-014-3 cloth Graphic Design: Pamela Rice and Leo Tanenbaum Acknowledgments The Harold A. Fletcher Award from Grinnell College, the Ralph Korngold Fellowship from the Newberry Library, and a Youthgrant from the National Endowment for the Humanities have supported my research. I owe special thanks to Lawrence W. Towner, Director of The Newberry Library and to Richard Brown and James Wells, the Associate Directors of the Library, and to Mrs. Piri Korngold who furnished the Ralph Korngold Fellowship. My good friend Jane Marcus has encouraged and assisted my work on Lucy Parsons since its beginning, when I was a student and she a teacher at the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and Newberry Library Seminar in the Humanities the fall of 1972. Special thanks to my friends Leslie Orear, President of the Illinois Labor History Society, who first suggested I write a book about Lucy Parsons, and to Professor William Adelman of the University of Illinois Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations and author of Touring Pullman and Haymarket Revisited, who has shared his extensive research and the excite ment of each new discovery about Lucy Parsons with me. Joseph Giganti, Fred Thompson, and Irving Abrams, board members of the Charles H. Kerr Pub. Co. have shared their recollections of Lucy Parsons with me. Joe and Fred have offered valuable suggestions for improving the manuscript. Irwin St. John Tucker recounted the 1915 Hunger Demonstration for me. Stella Nowicki, Eugene Jasinski, Mario Manzardo, Francis Heisler, Henry Rosemont, Clarence Stoecker, Vera Buch W eisbord, Albert W eisbord, Sid Harris, George Winthers, Abe Feinglass, Sam Dolgoff, Lucy Haessler, Arthur Weinberg, and the late James P. Cannon have all shared their knowledge of Lucy Parsons with me and enriched my knowledge of the history of the labor and radical movements. The late Boris Yelensky shared his impressions through lengthy correspondence. A special thanks to Mrs. Lucie C. Price of Austin, Texas, who researched the Texas careers of William and .Albert Parsons 4 at the Archives of the University of Texas and the State Historical Library of Texas. I owe a debt of appreciation to William D. Parsons and to Katharine Parsons Russell for discussing with me the effect of the Haymarket Affair on the Parsons family and to William Parsons for the picture of his great-grandfather, General William Henry Parsons. My friends Sandra Bartky, Laura X, Sara Heslep, Anne Walter, Mrs. Mae Coy Ball, Tom DuBois, Marcus Cohen and many others have inspired and encouraged me. Thanks to the members of the history department at Grinnell College-Don Smith, Alan Jones, Joseph Wall, David Jordan, Philip Kintner and Greg Guroff-who have offered suggestions and stimulated my work and to Florence Chanock Cohen for her critical comments and editorial suggestions on my manuscript. Thanks to Hartmut Keil and Theodore Waldinger for translations from the German. Thanks to Barbara Morgan and Martin Ptacek for photography. Thanks to Jamie Fogle for art work and to Sara Heslep for proofreading. Dione Miles of the Wayne State Labor Archives; Dorothy Swanson of the Tamiment Institute, New York University; Edward Weber of the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan Library; Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Mary Ann Bamberger of the Manuscript Collection, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle; Charles P. LeWarne; Judge William J. Wimbiscus of the State of Illinois Thirteenth Judicial Circuit; Irene Moran and Diane Clardy of the Bancroft Library; Dr. Josephine L. Harper and Miss Katherine S. Thompson of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Archie Motley, Linda Evans, Neal Ney, Larry Viskochil, John Tris, Julia Westerberg and Miriam Blazowski of the Chicago Historical Society; the staff of Newberry Library; and staff members of other libraries too numerous to mention have assisted my research. My thanks to the following for permission to use unpublished material: the Illinois Labor History Society for permission to quote from Lucy Parsons; Kathleen S. Spaulding for permission to quote from George Schilling; University of Illinois at Urbana for permission to quote from the Thomas J. Morgan Papers; Houghton Library, Harvard for permission to quote from letters by Dyer D. Lum, Carl Nold and Robert Steiner in the Joseph Isbill Collection; the Bancroft Library for permission to quote from the Thomas Mooney Papers; the Manuscript Collection, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle for permission to quote from the Ben L. Reitman Papers; the Washington State His torical Society, Tacoma, Washington for permission to quote from Thomas Bogard; Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan Library for permission to quote from Agnes Inglis; and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for permission to quote from the Albert R. Parsons Papers and the Knights of Labor Collection. The cover picture and the picture on page 12 are from the 1903 edition of The Life of Albert R. Parsons, courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society. July, 1976 Carolyn Ashbaugh Preface Lucy Parsons was black, a woman, and working class--three reasons people are often excluded from history. Lucy herself pointed out the class bias of history in 1905 when she criti cized historians who had written about "the course of wars, the outcome of battles, political changes, the rise and fall of dynasties and other similar movements, leaving the lives of those whose labor has built the world. . . in contemptuous silence." The problem of piecing together Lucy Parsons' life (1853-1942) from fragmentary evidence was more difficult than the usual problem of writing about a working class rebel, because the forces of "law and order" seized her personal papers at the time of her death. Even among histories by and about socialists, the work of women has been largely ignored. On the left, the view of Lucy Parsons as the "devoted assistant" of her martyred husband Albert Richard Parsons is prevalent. Feminists who have for gotten the radical working class roots of the feminist move ment have also overlooked Lucy Parsons. Editors of the Rad cliffe Notable American Women three volume work consigned Lucy Parsons to their discard file on the grounds that she was "largely propelled by husband's fate" and was "a pathetic figure, living in the past and crying injustice" after the Hay market Police Riot. However, Lucy Parsons, a black woman, was a recognized leader of the predominately white male working class move ment in Chicago long before the 1886 police riot. Even Labor's Untold Story, which offers a sympathetic although sentimental account of Lucy, states that she became involved in the radical movement only after her husband was sentenced to death and then primarily to save his life. Lucy Parsons was not interested in saving Albert Parsons' life. She was interested in emancipat ing the working class from wage slavery. Lucy and Albert were prepared-even eager-to sacrifice his life, believing his death as a martyr would advance the cause. Lucy was eager to offer her 7 own life as well in the struggle for economic emancipation. Only Howard Fast in The American, his fictionalized bio graphy of John Peter Altgeld, has thus far captured the strength, character and determination of Lucy Parsons. The impression that Lucy Parsons devoted her life to clearing her husband's name of the charge of murder is erroneous, generated by the fact that when reporters heard her lecture they stressed her connection to Albert Parsons and emphasized the comparisons she made between the contemporary situation in the labor movement and the events of 1886-1887. H Lucy spoke for an hour and a half on the Sacco and Vanzetti case or the Tom Mooney case, then alluded to the Haymarket case for 15 minutes, the newspapers reported that she had denounced the police for murdering her husband in 1887. However, Lucy Parsons was one of many labor radicals, liberals, and reformers who connected each frame-up case with the legal precedent for political conspiracy trials, the trial of the Haymarket "anarch ists" in 1886. On May 1, 1886, the city of Chicago had been shut down in a general strike for the eight hour working day-the first May Day. On May 4, the police broke up a meeting in Hay market Square that had been called to protest police brutality. Someone threw a bomb, and the police began shooting wildly, fatally wounding at least seven demonstrators. Most of the police casualties resulted from their own guns. Eight radical leaders, including Albert Parsons, were brought to trial for the bombing. All the prosecution had to prove was that the men on trial were the same men who had been making speeches on the lakefront and publishing the radical workers' papers the Alarm and Arbeiter-Zeitung. The court ruled that although the defend ants neither threw the bomb nor knew who threw the bomb, their speeches and writings prior to the bombing might have inspired some unknown person to throw it and held them "ac cessories before the fact" in the murder of policeman Mathias Degan. All eight were convicted, and on November 11, 1887, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel were hanged. Lucy Parsons remained active in the radical labor movement for another 5 5 years. She published newspapers, pamphlets, and books, traveled and lectured extensively, and led many demon- 8 strations. She concentrated her work with the poorest, most downtrodden people, the unemployed and the foreign born. She was a member of the Social Democracy in 1897, a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, and was elected to the National Committee of the International Labor Defense in 1927. Lucy Parsons was a colorful figure whose style was to capture headlines. She had a commanding appearance-tall, dark, and beautiful, a beauty which turned to a mellow, peaceful expres sion as she aged-and a tremendous speaking voice which captivated audiences with its low musical resonance. Lucy was a firebrand who spoke with terrifying intensity when the occasion demanded it. Lucy's struggle with the Chicago police for free speech lasted for decades. Police broke up meetings only because the speaker was Lucy Parsons; they dealt with her in an aggressive and unlawful manner, systematically violating her right to free speech and assembly. Although Lucy was hated by the police, Chicago liberals often came to her assistance. In about 1898 Graham Taylor of the Chicago Commons Settlement House arranged for her to speak at the settlement's Free Floor Forum without police harrassment. When Lucy was arrested while leading a Hunger Demonstration in 1915 Jane Addams of Hull House arranged her bail. Deputy Police Chief Schuettler de nounced Addams and linked the two women: "If Miss Addams thinks it is all right for an avowed and dangerous anarchist like Lucy Parsons to parade with a black flag and a band of bad characters, I suggest that she go ahead and preach the doctrine outright.'' By portraying Lucy Parsons as a criminal, the police and newspapers tried to direct public attention away from the real issues which Lucy was trying to raise: unemployment and hunger. Irwin St. John Tucker, the young Episcopalian minister and socialist who was arrested with Lucy in 1915, recently re called, "Lucy Parsons wasn't a hell-raiser; she was only trying to raise the obvious issues about human life. She was not a riot-inciter, though she was accused of it. She was of a religious nature." "Friar Tuck" found Lucy a likeable and compelling person. Lucy Parsons' life energy was directed toward freeing the 9 working class from capitalism. She attributed the inferior posi tion of women and minority racial groups in American society to class inequalities and argued, as Eugene Debs later did, that blacks were oppressed because they were poor, not because they were black. Lucy favored the availability of birth control in formation and contraceptive devices. She believed that under socialism women would have the right to divorce and remarry without economic, political and religious constraints; that women would have the right to limit the number of children they would have; and that women would have the right to prevent "legal ized" rape in marriage. Lucy Parsons' life expressed the anger of the unemployed, workers, women and minorities against oppression and is ex emplary of radicals' efforts to organize the working class for social change.

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.