Lucy Parsons is thought to be born a slave or to slaves in the state of Texas, and in addition to being black she was also Mexican-Indian. She married Albert Parsons, a white activist for the rights of freedpeople, and they fled to Chicago for fear of Jim Crow laws, especially the miscegenation ones. Albert became a leader of the Chicago working class, which was mostly composed of unskilled immigrant workers organizing for the eight hour workday. Lucy was his partner personally and professionally, and worked side by side with Albert in his labor organizing, frequently contributing to the journal he edited, Alarm. On May 1st 1886, the movement for the 8 hour day leaped forward with mass demonstrations and strikes. In Chicago the number of workers estimated in participation was forty thousand. The parade of striking workers in Chicago stayed peaceful due to the diligence and restraint of the workers who ignored the provocations of the press and police. However, the police, feeling cheated without a fight, massacred locked-out workers at McCormick Harvester Works. Lucy, Albert, and their two children joined a rally called in response in Haymarket Square where a great crowd had gathered. 180 patrolmen confronted it, and a bomb was thrown (most likely from the hands of a police provocateur). Violence followed, and four workers and seven police officers would be killed. For police departments around the nation, this was the signal for a campaign of terror against the working class. Immigrant working class neighborhoods were besieged, workers were rounded up and incarcerated indiscriminately, beatings and torture were liberally applied, and labor leaders were arrested, including four officers of the Pittsburgh Knights of Labor. In Chicago, seven unionists were arrested and sentenced to death by hanging, and Albert was the most famous of them along with his best friend the German August Spies. Lucy only avoided this fate because of her gender; the ruling class knew they couldnt include a female defendant without provoking an uproar. In the time between Alberts arrest and his execution, Lucy launched a tireless campaign for the lives of seven innocent men, one of whom I love dearer than life itself. The woman more dangerous than a thousand rioters (Chicago PD) toured the country for almost a year, speaking to two hundred thousand people in sixteen states, nurturing her children all the while. To put that number in context, only one hundred ninety thousand workers went on strike nationally on that fateful May first. She was constantly harassed, especially by the authorities, who sometimes even threw her in jail. A movement that started as one woman, herself, became in less than twelve months perhaps the largest solidarity campaign the world had yet seen, involving millions of people internationally- in Italy, France, Spain, Russia, Holland, and England, workers met and protested. Famous Americans like John Brown, the son and namesake of the famous abolitionist and revolutionary joined the appeal. By Lucys tireless spirit and Herculean labor, the fate of the Haymarket Seven became a global symbol for the rights of working people. But a line had been drawn in the sand, and the capitalists knew that to cross it would be to concede ground to their most bitter enemy, the labor movement. They refused to budge. Spies appealed for clemency, and then realized some might see it as a sign of weakness, and withdrew it. Albert wrote a letter to the Governor: If I am guilty and must be hanged because of my presence at the Haymarket meeting, then I hope a reprieve will be granted in my case until my wife and children, who were also at the meeting, can be convicted and hanged with me. The Governor declined Alberts request, but hanged him anyways, along with Spies and two other defendants. (One committed suicide beforehand, and two had their sentences commuted.) On the day of the execution, Lucy was locked in a cell with her children for attempting to push through to see her beloved one last time. But Albert left her parting words in a final letter. My poor, dear wife... You, I bequeath to the people, a woman of the people. I have on request to make of you: Commit no rash act when I am gone, but take up the great cause of Socialism, where I am compelled to lay it down. International Workers Day, or May Day, is celebrated around the world every year with massive workers rallies and labor militancy to commemorate the martyrdom of Albert, Spies, Fischer, and Engel. Lucy Parsons, above any other person, deserves the credit for bringing that day to the sacred place it is today and immortalizing the memory of her husband and his comrades in the struggle of labor everywhere. She did not stop there. Beginning on eight dollars a week from a solidarity fund, she took up that same cause she had carried all her life as a revolutionary, communist, anarchist, and union activist with an even greater energy. Never softening, she fought against the decision of unions to try to bend to reformism and support the Democratic Party, and broadcasted the cry for revolution with her editorship of labor newspapers. She went on to develop the idea of occupying factories, fight a bitter feud with Emma Goldman for what she saw as deviating the fight for womens liberation from a working class basis, travel back to the South to join legal battles against courtroom lynchings like those of the Scottsboro boys, organize against hunger and unemployment, and join the IWW and the Communist Party. Her name is a permanent blessing on the history of this nation and its working class, and it is with her indomitable spirit and deathless militancy that we fight the same fight she fought, the one against capitalism.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 03:47:29 +0000
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