- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964). Irish American labor and free speech leader. Born to an adamant socialist father and feminist mother, she was an expert champion of the Bill of Rights all her life. In her New England childhood, she was irrecoverably shocked by laborers with 12-hour shifts and no safety provisions. She met children and women (some pregnant or nursing) with missing fingers and other permanent injuries. Her career as a spellbinding speaker began at 16, when she was arrested during a pro-labor speech in New York. Her long association with the Socialist and later Communist parties was simply based on her belief that they offered the best break to the working classes of her times. A travelling organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, she was a leader in the New England and New Jersey textile strikes of 1912-13 and the Spokane 1909 Free Speech demonstrations. She was a devoted worker in defense of Sacco and Vanzetti in the '20's. She was jailed many times, lastly as an elderly woman during the infamous sedition trials of the McCarthy Era in 1952. The major work of her youth and prime is beautifully told in her autobiography, The Rebel Girl.
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