- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942), American free speech and labor leader. A Black with Hispanic and Native American heritage, she was a dramatic speaker, noted equally for Page 165 →her powers of analysis and of voice. She was a central figure in Chicago and the working-class movement nationally, especially after her husband and colleague, Albert, was hanged following the infamous Haymarket “riots” maneuvered by the Chicago police in 1886. She was a founding member of Industrial Workers of the World and one of the original woman members of the Knights of Labor. Variously described as an anarchist and socialist revolutionary, she was mostly remembered as a life, long champion of the hungry, jobless, and foreign born. She spent her life organizing, travelling, writing, and leafletting, giving all she had to her causes for 70 years. When she died in poverty at 89, her large literary and political library was confiscated by the F.B.I. and never released.
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