Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. In June
Speaker 1: of last year, we did an episode on the Haymarket Riot,
Speaker 1: which is also called the Haymarket massacre and the Haymarket incident,
Speaker 1: a lot of names for it. The briefest of all
Speaker 1: recaps this is one sentence. A rally that was held
Speaker 1: to support a strike for an eight hour work day
Speaker 1: ended in violence after police ordered the remaining crowd to
Speaker 1: disperse and somebody threw a bomb into their ranks. In
Speaker 1: that episode, we mentioned Lucy Parsons. Her husband, Albert, was
Speaker 1: one of the speakers at this rally, and he wasn't
Speaker 1: involved in planning the rally. He could not have thrown
Speaker 1: the bomb, but he was convicted on charges of conspiracy
Speaker 1: and he was hanged. So that early there episode was
Speaker 1: not really about Lucy Parsons. We didn't talk about her
Speaker 1: much at all, but as all of this was happening,
Speaker 1: she was an activist in her own right, and her
Speaker 1: work evolved and continued for decades after her husband's execution.
Speaker 1: She became one of the most notorious anarchists in the
Speaker 1: United States in the twentieth century. The Chicago Police Department
Speaker 1: called her more dangerous than a thousand rioters, but her activism,
Speaker 1: in spite of the fact she was so reviled in
Speaker 1: that way, it was consistently focused on improving the lives
Speaker 1: of workers and poor people, and immigrants and people who
Speaker 1: were unemployed or homeless. Her name has come up in
Speaker 1: a bunch of random asidnes and researched for multiple other
Speaker 1: episodes since then, so I have moved her up to
Speaker 1: the top of the list. Some aspects of Lucy Parson's
Speaker 1: life are tricky to pin down. We have a wealth
Speaker 1: of detail about her as an adult, lots of names
Speaker 1: and dates and places she traveled and the work she did,
Speaker 1: and a lot of her writing has also survived, but
Speaker 1: we often don't know her thoughts or motivations on some
Speaker 1: of the choices she made. She died in a fire
Speaker 1: at her home in nine which destroyed some of her
Speaker 1: books and some of her personal papers. Afterward, police and
Speaker 1: the FBI seized what was left. It's not clear what
Speaker 1: happened to those materials, but it's possible that some of
Speaker 1: it could have shed light on some unanswered questions and
Speaker 1: beyond the loss of her personal papers, parsons racial and
Speaker 1: ethnic background was the subject of a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: and rumored during her lifetime. After she and Albert moved
Speaker 1: from Waco, Texas to Chicago, Illinois. Both of them were
Speaker 1: really only consistent about one thing in this regard, and
Speaker 1: that was that she did not have African ancestry. At
Speaker 1: various points she said that her family was Spanish or Mexican,
Speaker 1: or indigenous, or some combination of those, and there were
Speaker 1: also times when she just said that it was nobody's business.
Speaker 1: After her husband's conviction, she went on a speaking and
Speaker 1: fundraising tour to support a clemency campaign. A reporter during
Speaker 1: that tour asked her about her background at her first stop,
Speaker 1: and she said, quote, I am not a candidate for office,
Speaker 1: and the public have no right to my past. I
Speaker 1: am out to nothing to the world and people care
Speaker 1: nothing of me. I am battling for a principle. But
Speaker 1: historian Jacqueline Jones published a biography in seventeen called Goddess
Speaker 1: of Anarchy, The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical,
Speaker 1: and in this biography she documented some details of parsons
Speaker 1: life before moving to Chicago. These details, a lot of them,
Speaker 1: contradict what Parsons said herself, and by all appearances, they
Speaker 1: are things that she intentionally tried to hide. But again,
Speaker 1: while this biography clarified some specifics, we don't have documentation
Speaker 1: of parsons thought process or her motivations after moving to Chicago.
Speaker 1: Lucy Parsons publicly maintained that she had been born in Waco, Texas,
Speaker 1: but Jones traced her birth to Virginia in eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: Parsons mother was an enslaved woman named Charlotte, and her
Speaker 1: father was white, probably Charlotte's enslaver, Thomas J. Tolliver. In
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three, Tolliver moved to McLennan County, Texas, taking
Speaker 1: at least part of his enslaved workforce with him. This
Speaker 1: included Charlotte, her twelve year old daughter, Lucia, and her
Speaker 1: seven year old son, Tanner. Lucia would grow up to
Speaker 1: be known as Lucy Parsons. To be clear, these people
Speaker 1: had been declared free under the Emancipation Proclamation, but it
Speaker 1: would have been even harder for the federal government to
Speaker 1: enforce this in Texas, which may well have been one
Speaker 1: of the reasons Tolliver took them there. About three years
Speaker 1: after arriving in Texas, Tolliver went back east to get married.
Speaker 1: This Civil War was over at this point, but news
Speaker 1: of the war's end and the abolition of slavery had
Speaker 1: been really slow to reach Texas. That's usually noted as
Speaker 1: happening on June nine, eighteen sixty five, when federal troops
Speaker 1: arrived in Galveston, Texas. Today, that is what's observed as
Speaker 1: the Juneteenth Holiday. Life for black people in Texas was
Speaker 1: still extraordinarily dangerous. The Texas legislature had implemented racist black
Speaker 1: codes that restricted black people's behavior and enacted harsh punishments
Speaker 1: for things like owning weapons or insulting a white person.
Speaker 1: Former enslavers essentially treated their free workers as though they
Speaker 1: were still enslaved, and there were gangs of white vigilantes
Speaker 1: who terrorized the state's black population. It appears that Charlotte
Speaker 1: took Tolliver's absence when he went back to east to
Speaker 1: get married, as an opportunity to flee from rural mcglennan
Speaker 1: County to Waco, which was the county's largest city. Along
Speaker 1: with her children. Waco shared the same dangers as other
Speaker 1: parts of Texas that were home to freed people, but
Speaker 1: it was also home to a growing community of black
Speaker 1: people who were establishing their own churches, schools, and businesses
Speaker 1: and working to protect themselves from violence. There were also
Speaker 1: white people in Waco who were working to try to
Speaker 1: protect the black community and work towards equal rights. One
Speaker 1: of them was Albert Parsons, who had served in the
Speaker 1: Confederate Army during the war but had become a radical
Speaker 1: Republican after it was over. After her family arrived in
Speaker 1: Waco in eighteen sixty six, Lucia found work where she could,
Speaker 1: including working as a seamstress and a cook, and she
Speaker 1: also went to school. She started a romantic relationship with
Speaker 1: a man named Oliver Benton, and he paid for her
Speaker 1: tuition in her books at the school. Some sources give
Speaker 1: Oliver's last name as gay Things, that was the last
Speaker 1: name of his former enslaver. A year or two after
Speaker 1: arriving in Waco, Lucia's mother married a man named Charlie Carter,
Speaker 1: and she gave her children, including Lucia, his last name.
Speaker 1: Sometime between the late summer of eighteen sixty eight and
Speaker 1: July of eighteen sixty nine, Lucia gave birth to a baby,
Speaker 1: who she named Champ. According to Oliver Benton, he and
Speaker 1: Lucia were married and he was the baby's father, although
Speaker 1: there is no record of this marriage. Marriages between enslaved
Speaker 1: people had not been legally recognized, and after slavery was abolished,
Speaker 1: it was common for free people to commit to their
Speaker 1: own marriages without going through legal paperwork, so the details
Speaker 1: aren't clear, but Champ seems to have died in infancy.
Speaker 1: Then on September eighteen seventy two, twenty two year old
Speaker 1: Lucia Carter married twenty eight year old Albert Parsons. Although
Speaker 1: the name she gave the officiant was Ella Hall, the
Speaker 1: many variations of her name that she gave to people
Speaker 1: in subsequent years sometimes included some variation on Ella as
Speaker 1: a middle name and Hall as her maiden name. Albert
Speaker 1: Parsons had been working extensively with the radical faction of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party in Texas. He had stridently advocated for
Speaker 1: black people in Texas to have full and unrestricted access
Speaker 1: to the rights they were guaranteed under the Constitution. He
Speaker 1: had helped black people register to vote, and he had
Speaker 1: been made a lieutenant colonel in the state Militia, where
Speaker 1: he was tasked with protecting the black community in several
Speaker 1: counties where they were being targeted with racist violence. He had, also,
Speaker 1: in addition to all of this, worked for the Office
Speaker 1: of Public Instruction. Although at least some radical Republican leaders
Speaker 1: endorsed interracial relationships, it would have been really unusual for
Speaker 1: a white man in parsons position to marry a black woman,
Speaker 1: and this marriage took place during a very narrow window
Speaker 1: in which interracial marriages were legal in Texas at all. Earlier,
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy two, the state Supreme Court had issued
Speaker 1: a ruling in Honey ver As Clark that affirmed that
Speaker 1: interracial marriage was legal, but just weeks after their marriage,
Speaker 1: the Texas legislature passed a new law that banned it.
Speaker 1: The Republican Party also lost control of the Texas government
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy three, and the newly installed legislature started
Speaker 1: repealing the laws that had been passed to try to
Speaker 1: protect the state's black population and their rights. During the
Speaker 1: post war reconstruction, the Parsons Is started facing increasingly over
Speaker 1: racism and threats of violence. Ku Klux Klan activity started
Speaker 1: to increase all through Texas, and this same pattern was
Speaker 1: playing out all over, especially the southern US. In the
Speaker 1: face of all of this, the couple decided to leave,
Speaker 1: and it appears that as they traveled north, Lucia decided
Speaker 1: to put her past behind her, changing her first name
Speaker 1: to Lucy and claiming Texas as her birthplace. At various
Speaker 1: points from here on out, she would say that her
Speaker 1: maiden name had been Gonzalez, Diaz or Hall. You will
Speaker 1: often see her full name written out as Lucy Eldne
Speaker 1: Gonzalez Parsons. We'll talk about what happened when they got
Speaker 1: to Chicago after a quick sponsor break. At the start
Speaker 1: of the show, we mentioned that we don't have documentation
Speaker 1: of Lucy parsons thoughts or feelings or motivations about a
Speaker 1: lot of the decisions that she made in her life,
Speaker 1: but we can draw some pretty likely conclusions about why
Speaker 1: she took on a new identity and tried to leave
Speaker 1: her past behind her when she moved away from Waco
Speaker 1: to Chicago, Illinois. She had already lived through so much
Speaker 1: trauma and she was acutely aware of the limits that
Speaker 1: white society tried to impose on black people's lives. Her
Speaker 1: appearance would have prevented her from passing as white, but
Speaker 1: presenting herself instead at as Mexican and Indigenous rather than black,
Speaker 1: meant that she might have access to spaces that she
Speaker 1: would have been shut out of otherwise. Also, today, Chicago
Speaker 1: has one of the largest populations of Indigenous people of
Speaker 1: any city in the US, but that was not the
Speaker 1: case in the late nineteenth century. The vast majority of
Speaker 1: Indigenous people living in the Great Lakes area had been
Speaker 1: forced out or killed. In the eighteen thirties, there also
Speaker 1: would have been very few Hispanic people in the city,
Speaker 1: and although Chicago's Black population was growing rapidly, it's still
Speaker 1: measured less than one percent of Chicago's total population. And
Speaker 1: this meant that there wasn't a large community of color
Speaker 1: that Lucy could have assimilated with, if that was what
Speaker 1: she had wanted to do. But it also meant that
Speaker 1: she wasn't likely to run into someone who either knew
Speaker 1: her from before or knew enough about the identities she
Speaker 1: was claiming to question those claims. Instead, the community where
Speaker 1: Lucy and Albert Parsons found home was one that was
Speaker 1: made up primarily of immigrants from Central Europe. The proportion
Speaker 1: varies a little bit over the last half of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, but immigrants made up between forty and fifty
Speaker 1: percent of Chicago's population at the time. The easiest place
Speaker 1: for them to find work was in Chicago's factories, and
Speaker 1: at some point during these years, as many as seventy
Speaker 1: percent of Chicago's factory workers had been born outside the US.
Speaker 1: Albert got a job as a printer, and he started
Speaker 1: doing the same kind of activism that he had been
Speaker 1: doing back in Texas, but instead of working through the
Speaker 1: Republican Party to try to improve the lives of black people,
Speaker 1: he was working with socialists to improve the lives of workers,
Speaker 1: particularly immigrants. In addition to all the typical issues that
Speaker 1: were common in rapidly growing industrial cities, unemployment was an
Speaker 1: enormous issue in Chicago. With Lucy and Elbert got there
Speaker 1: in the wake of the Panic of eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: huge numbers of people were out of work. People who
Speaker 1: could find jobs were often working long hours in just
Speaker 1: grueling conditions for very low pay with no job security.
Speaker 1: Albert and Lucy became active in Chicago's Social Democratic Party
Speaker 1: and First International, but both of these organizations were short lived.
Speaker 1: After those organizations were disbanded, Albert joined the Workingman's Party
Speaker 1: of the United States, or the w p USA, and
Speaker 1: started hosting meetings of that organization in the Parsons home.
Speaker 1: Like First International, this had been started by followers of
Speaker 1: Karl Marx. Albert also started running for local office as
Speaker 1: a socialist. He ran for lots of different offices over
Speaker 1: the years. He did not win any of his elections, though.
Speaker 1: A series of railroad strikes took place around the US
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven, collectively known as the Great Railroad Strike.
Speaker 1: The economic depression that had followed the Panic of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three was still ongoing. In the first wave of
Speaker 1: strikes started after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad announced that
Speaker 1: it was cutting its workers pay by ten percent. Albert
Speaker 1: gave a speech during all this that began quote, we
Speaker 1: are assembled here as the Grand Army of Starvation. Some
Speaker 1: of the demonstrations surrounding these railroad strikes became quite violent.
Speaker 1: In some cases, striking workers destroyed bridges and rails and
Speaker 1: railroad cars. It's estimated that more than a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: workers took part in these strikes and then at least
Speaker 1: a hundred people were killed. This was the first time
Speaker 1: that federal troops were deployed to try to put an
Speaker 1: end to a strike. Although the w p USA didn't
Speaker 1: organize the railroad strikes themselves, it did organize demonstrations and
Speaker 1: general strikes in support of the railroad workers, especially in
Speaker 1: Chicago and St. Louis. Although the strikes didn't result in
Speaker 1: many improvements for the workers, membership in the w p
Speaker 1: USA grew in conjunction with the parties increased visibility. Lucy
Speaker 1: Parsons described this as a turning point. It was definitely
Speaker 1: a turning point for the Parsons family as well. Albert
Speaker 1: lost his job because of his work during the strike,
Speaker 1: and other employers refused to hire him. Lucy expanded her
Speaker 1: sewing work into a bigger business to support them. It
Speaker 1: went from being kind of her own sewing that she
Speaker 1: was taking into Parsons and Company, manufacturer of ladies and
Speaker 1: children's clothing. She also started hosting meetings of the International
Speaker 1: Ladies Garment Workers Union with her friend, labor organizer Lizzie Swank.
Speaker 1: The Socialist Labor Party was established in December of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and Lucy started writing articles and poems for
Speaker 1: its publication, which was known as Socialist. In the summer
Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy eight, she helped found the Chicago Working
Speaker 1: Women's Union to organize women who worked as store clerks, servants,
Speaker 1: and seamstresses. The union was under the umbrella of the
Speaker 1: Council of Trade and Labor Unions, and Lucy attended the
Speaker 1: Council's meetings as well. In addition to all of that,
Speaker 1: she and Albert had a son, who they named Albert Jr.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy nine. They also had a daughter, Lula,
Speaker 1: who was born in eighteen eighty one. In the early
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, Lucy and Albert shifted their focus from socialism
Speaker 1: to anarchy, leaving the Socialist Labor Party for the International
Speaker 1: Working People's Association. They had become frustrated with the socialist movement,
Speaker 1: which they thought was focused on reforming a system that
Speaker 1: really just needed to be totally dismantled. Albert was also
Speaker 1: frustrated that many of the labor rights activists he had
Speaker 1: been working with hadn't really supported him. When he was
Speaker 1: forced out of the printing industry following the Great Railroad Strike.
Speaker 1: This included his leaving the National Typographical Union. Anarchist organizations
Speaker 1: and publications frequently used violent rhetoric and their calls to
Speaker 1: overthrow capitalism and other systems of oppression, and some of
Speaker 1: them also advocated actual violence, including printing instructions for making bombs.
Speaker 1: So anarchists, including Albert and Lucy Parsons, got a lot
Speaker 1: of attention from newspapers and from law enforcement. Police officers,
Speaker 1: Pinkerton agents, detectives and others infiltrated anarchist meetings and plain clothes,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes the organizers of those meetings tried to
Speaker 1: use this to their own advantage. Sometimes they would intentionally
Speaker 1: use more extreme language when they knew that they were
Speaker 1: being watched. The idea here was stoking fear of what
Speaker 1: their movement might do, and then trying to use that
Speaker 1: fear as leverage to reach their goals. Lucy started writing
Speaker 1: for the i w p as publication The Alarm, which
Speaker 1: was one of seven anarchist publications in Chicago, but the
Speaker 1: only one that was printed in English. Her article two Tramps,
Speaker 1: the Unemployed, the disinherited, and Miserable, published in October four
Speaker 1: four became a widely distributed key document within the American
Speaker 1: anarchist movement in the late nineteenth century. It began quote
Speaker 1: a word to the thirty thousand, now tramping the streets
Speaker 1: of this great city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly
Speaker 1: about you at the evidences of wealth and pleasure of
Speaker 1: which you own no part, not sufficient even to purchase
Speaker 1: yourself a bit of food with which to appease the
Speaker 1: pangs of hunger now gnawing at your vitals. It is
Speaker 1: with you and the hundreds of thousands of others similarly
Speaker 1: situated in this great land of plenty, that I wish
Speaker 1: to have a word. Parsons then meditated on the fact
Speaker 1: that so many people had been toiling for decades but
Speaker 1: had nothing to show for it, and she called for
Speaker 1: a total change to the industrial system. This piece ended
Speaker 1: with quote, each of you hungry tramps who read these lines,
Speaker 1: vail yourself of those little methods of warfare which science
Speaker 1: has placed in the hands of the poor man, and
Speaker 1: you will become a power in this or any other land.
Speaker 1: Learn the use of explosives. In six Lucy published one
Speaker 1: of her few pieces that directly referenced the idea of race.
Speaker 1: In January of that year, Afro Indigenous brothers Ed and
Speaker 1: Charlie Brown were delivering molasses and Carrollton, Mississippi, and accidentally
Speaker 1: ran into a white man named Robert Moore. More than
Speaker 1: a month later, More told lawyer James Liddell about it.
Speaker 1: Liddell had an altercation with the Browns that ended in
Speaker 1: a gunfight, and the Browns tried to press charges against him.
Speaker 1: White people were outraged at the idea of black people
Speaker 1: pressing charges against a white man. An armed white mob
Speaker 1: stormed the courthouse during an evidentiary hearing, opening fire and
Speaker 1: killing both Ed and Charlie Brown, along with multiple other
Speaker 1: black people who were in the courtroom. This happened on
Speaker 1: March seventeenth, eight six, and it became known as the
Speaker 1: Carroll County Courthouse massacre. A couple of weeks later, Lucy
Speaker 1: published a piece called The Negro Let him leave politics
Speaker 1: to the politician and prayer to the preacher. She published
Speaker 1: that in the Alarm She condemned these killings stridently, but
Speaker 1: also argued that it had not happened because the victims
Speaker 1: were black. She wrote, quote, are there any so stupid
Speaker 1: as to believe these outrages have been, are being and
Speaker 1: will be heaped upon the Negro because he is black,
Speaker 1: not at all. It is because he is poor. It
Speaker 1: is because he is dependent, because he is poorer as
Speaker 1: a class than his white wage slave brother of the north.
Speaker 1: On May one, six a general strike started in Chicago
Speaker 1: in support of an eight hour work day. The Haymarket
Speaker 1: affair took place three days later. We're not going to
Speaker 1: go back over the details of this incidents since we
Speaker 1: covered it in another episode less than a year ago
Speaker 1: in quite a bit of detail. But it was during
Speaker 1: the aftermath that Lucy Parsons became one of the most
Speaker 1: widely known anarchists in the United States, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that after a sponsor break. Prior to the
Speaker 1: Haymarket incident, Albert Parsons had been traveling and speaking extensively.
Speaker 1: Presumably Lucy was keeping everything going at home while also
Speaker 1: writing for the Alarm a lot and working with local
Speaker 1: labor and anarchist groups in Chicago. We really don't have
Speaker 1: the specifics of how this was all working. It's possible
Speaker 1: that she was taking the children with her, and the
Speaker 1: idea that she had her children with her was a
Speaker 1: key part of Albert's defense during his conspiracy trial, the
Speaker 1: whole idea being we never would have brought our children
Speaker 1: with us if we had thought it was going to
Speaker 1: be dangerous. But after the Haymarket incident, Lucy often had
Speaker 1: to leave her children in other people's care. Lizzie Swank
Speaker 1: was often the person who was keeping her up to
Speaker 1: date on how they were doing. Albert Parsons and seven
Speaker 1: other men were tried together after the Haymarket bombing. Lucy
Speaker 1: attended every day of the trial, along with jury selection.
Speaker 1: The proceedings stretched from June twenty one to August even
Speaker 1: all eight men were found guilty and all but one
Speaker 1: of them were sentenced to death. That included Albert Parsons.
Speaker 1: Lucy did a lot of work to raise money for
Speaker 1: a clemency campaign and to raise awareness of what had happened.
Speaker 1: She also edited and published a book called The Famous
Speaker 1: Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists. She went on a
Speaker 1: speaking tour, traveling to seventeen states and making more than
Speaker 1: forty speeches. She earned as much as a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a day through these talks and other activities, and she
Speaker 1: sent the vast majority of it back to Chicago. For
Speaker 1: the men's defense. She walked her audiences through her account
Speaker 1: of what had happened at Haymarket, including, as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: how she would not have taken her own children with
Speaker 1: her if she thought it was going to be dangerous,
Speaker 1: and she talked about all the ways she thought the
Speaker 1: trial had been unfair. We noted at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the show that at the very first stop on this
Speaker 1: tour a reporter asked about parsons background and that she
Speaker 1: refused to answer, But news coverage of her speaking tour
Speaker 1: didn't drop this issue. There was a lot of focus
Speaker 1: on her appearance and a lot of speculation that she
Speaker 1: had some combination of African, indigenous and Mexican ancestry, and
Speaker 1: a lot of reporters just described her appearance as they
Speaker 1: would describe the appearance of a black person, focusing on
Speaker 1: the color of her skin and the color and texture
Speaker 1: of her hair and the structure of her facial bones.
Speaker 1: A lot of reporters seemed to assume that she was black,
Speaker 1: and they wrote about her in a way that drew
Speaker 1: from areeo types of black people. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: Lucy Parsons was defying stereotypes of anarchists, who were usually
Speaker 1: imagined as white and male, with unkempt beards and kind
Speaker 1: of an unhinged rhetoric. Parsons was always very neatly dressed
Speaker 1: in dark colored dresses and elegant but usually simple accessories.
Speaker 1: At all together just projected this sense of respectability, but
Speaker 1: she combined that with radical rhetoric. She often started speeches
Speaker 1: by declaring, quote, I am an anarchist. On December, she
Speaker 1: gave a speech at Kansas City's Clump Hall in which
Speaker 1: she said, quote, I suppose some of you expected to
Speaker 1: see me with a bomb in one hand and a
Speaker 1: flaming torch in the other, but are disappointed in seeing neither.
Speaker 1: If such has been your ideas regarding an anarchist, you
Speaker 1: deserve to be disappointed. Anarchists are peaceable, law abiding people.
Speaker 1: What do anarchists mean when they speak of anarchy? Webster
Speaker 1: gives the term two definitions, chaos and the state of
Speaker 1: being without political rule. We cling to the latter definition,
Speaker 1: our enemies hold that we believe only in the former.
Speaker 1: Lucy Parsons faced arrest at various points on this tour,
Speaker 1: and in Columbus, Ohio, she was jailed and told she
Speaker 1: would have to return to stand trial for what was
Speaker 1: deemed obscene language. She did not go back for that
Speaker 1: court date, but the arrests continued after she got back home.
Speaker 1: Two of Albert's co defendants asked for mercy and their
Speaker 1: sentences were reduced to life in prison, but Parsons and
Speaker 1: the rest refused to do the same, and by the
Speaker 1: fall of seven it was clear that they were going
Speaker 1: to be hanged. The days leading up to his execution
Speaker 1: seemed to have been really tumultuous for Lucy. First, she
Speaker 1: released a statement that she would never enter the jail
Speaker 1: again until she could do so without being humiliated and degraded.
Speaker 1: But a few days later she went to see her
Speaker 1: husband and she fainted while she was there. A final
Speaker 1: visit was arranged for the men's wives, but Lucy was
Speaker 1: not there. Instead, she arrived at the jail with their
Speaker 1: children the morning of the execution, insisting that they'd be
Speaker 1: allowed to see their father one last time. Instead of that,
Speaker 1: Lucy was arrested, and, according to a statement by Lizzie Swink,
Speaker 1: she was stroop searched and all of them were detained
Speaker 1: until the execution was over. Aside from this period, just
Speaker 1: before the execution. Lucy Parsons had been described as just
Speaker 1: relentlessly defiant through all of this, but afterward, at least
Speaker 1: at first, she was described as distraught. She and her
Speaker 1: children were living mostly on assistance from the Pioneer Aid
Speaker 1: and Support Association, which had been set up to support
Speaker 1: the surviving families of the Haymarket eight, but soon she
Speaker 1: was back at work, and about six months after Albert's execution,
Speaker 1: she all So became romantically involved with a married man.
Speaker 1: This was the first of a series of relationships for
Speaker 1: her that played out over the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: In October of eight eight, less than a year after
Speaker 1: Albert's execution, their daughter Lula died at the age of eight.
Speaker 1: She had contracted scarlet fever during Lucy's speaking tour, and
Speaker 1: the cause of her death was listed as lymphedema, possibly
Speaker 1: connected to that earlier illness. Shortly after that, her son,
Speaker 1: Albert Junior vanished. It turned out that he was with friends,
Speaker 1: but this was not the only time that he disappeared.
Speaker 1: In April of eighteen ninety one, he disappeared for about
Speaker 1: six weeks. This seems to have been the start of
Speaker 1: a growing estrangement between Albert Jr. And his mother, brought
Speaker 1: on by the deaths of his father and sister, Lucy
Speaker 1: moving on with other men, and her pressing her son
Speaker 1: to be a part of her activism work. He does
Speaker 1: not seem to have wanted to hand out pamphlets and
Speaker 1: go to rallies with her. Lucy Parsons became increasingly radical
Speaker 1: after her husband's death during the Homestead Steel Strike. She
Speaker 1: wrote that she admired anarchist Alexander Berkman, who had tried
Speaker 1: to assassinate the factories manager Henry clay Frick. Her increasing
Speaker 1: calls for violence led some of the organizations that she
Speaker 1: had been involved in to stop asking her to speak.
Speaker 1: She was frequently arrested or police would try to stop
Speaker 1: her from entering the places where she was supposed to speak.
Speaker 1: All of this just made her more and more defiant.
Speaker 1: In June of Albert Jr. Unveiled a Haymarket memorial statue
Speaker 1: at Chicago's Waltime Cemetery, and the next day, the three
Speaker 1: convicted men who were still living were all pardoned. All
Speaker 1: three of those men cut ties with Lucy Parsons. Other
Speaker 1: riffs emerged in the eighteen nineties, as well as what
Speaker 1: example Parsons butted heads with anarchist Emma Goldman, largely over
Speaker 1: the idea of free love. A lot of anarchists in
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century criticized the institution of marriage, since
Speaker 1: it was essentially managed by the state. That wasn't the
Speaker 1: only reason, but that was a big part of it.
Speaker 1: People who advocated free love argued that existing social conventions
Speaker 1: around love and marriage and sex were violating people's autonomy,
Speaker 1: especially women's autonomy. So Emma Goldman argued for freedom and
Speaker 1: all things, including love and sex. But Lucy Parsons argued
Speaker 1: that the power imbalances that came from patriarchy extended to
Speaker 1: women's sexuality as well, and that if women practiced free love,
Speaker 1: it would reinforce the idea that women owed men's sex.
Speaker 1: She also just generally advocated kind of a Victorian esque
Speaker 1: idea of respectability, even though in her own life she
Speaker 1: pursued relationships with men under her own terms, outside of
Speaker 1: the framework of marriage, which was what a lot of
Speaker 1: the free love advocates were advocating in the first place.
Speaker 1: Parsons continued to speak at Chicago's annual Haymarket commemorations in
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties, and she established a journal called Freedom,
Speaker 1: a Revolutionary anarchist communist monthly with Lizzie Swink, but later
Speaker 1: Lizzie married a man named William Holmes and they moved away.
Speaker 1: Lizzie had been one of Lucy's longest and most steadfast
Speaker 1: friends and colleagues. Lucy Parsons was somewhat less active as
Speaker 1: an activist and a radical in the eighteen nineties, and
Speaker 1: she started supporting herself as a peddler. In February of
Speaker 1: eve she was injured in a fall, and then she
Speaker 1: had an altercation with the husband of the woman who
Speaker 1: she hired to help her while she was injured. This
Speaker 1: man said that Parsons was filling his wife's head with
Speaker 1: quote socialistic teachings. In the summer of eighteen, her home
Speaker 1: was badly damaged in a fire that destroyed a lot
Speaker 1: of her mementos of her late husband. In eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Albert Parsons Jr. Tried to join the army, something that
Speaker 1: Lucy vehemently objected to, and in response, she had him
Speaker 1: involuntarily committed. He was held in the Illinois Northern Hospital
Speaker 1: for the Insane until his death from tuberculosis in nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: He was reportedly bullied and harassed by the other patients
Speaker 1: because of his mother's reputation and her activities as an anarchist.
Speaker 1: We have absolutely nothing to document how Lucy felt about
Speaker 1: this or justified it to herself, or whether she felt
Speaker 1: like it was something that needed justification at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Jones and her biography just describes this as cruel
Speaker 1: and and kind of unimaginably and inexplicably cruel. Mainstream US
Speaker 1: culture had always viewed anarchists as deeply suspicious at best,
Speaker 1: and that became even more of the case in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. In nine hundred, anarchist guy Tinobreski assassinated
Speaker 1: King Umberto, the First of Italy, and in nineteen o one,
Speaker 1: anarchist Leon Chol ghost shot President William McKinley, who then
Speaker 1: died as a result of his injuries eight days later.
Speaker 1: These and other events sparked a backlash against anarchists that
Speaker 1: would eventually grow into the First Red Scare towards the
Speaker 1: end of World War One. There were other factors involved
Speaker 1: in that too. We've covered this on a show before,
Speaker 1: but the United States also saw a new wave of
Speaker 1: anarchism during these years, but this time it was largely
Speaker 1: focused on Italian immigrants to the Eastern US. Parsons wasn't
Speaker 1: as directly connected to this evolution in the anarchist movement,
Speaker 1: but she was one of the founders of the Industrial
Speaker 1: Workers of the World a k. The Wobblys in nineteen
Speaker 1: o five. This was envisioned as a general union that
Speaker 1: could bring together workers across industries, and it became known
Speaker 1: for its radical and sometimes violent tactics. It was the
Speaker 1: probably most reviled and distrusted union of this era, and
Speaker 1: Parsons attended its founding convention. She was an unaffiliated delegate there.
Speaker 1: She was the only woman to speak at the convention.
Speaker 1: She advocated for women and racial and ethnic minorities, and
Speaker 1: migrant workers from Central America and unemployed people to be
Speaker 1: accepted as full members of the IWW. While she wasn't
Speaker 1: heavily involved in many of the IWW's activities after this,
Speaker 1: she did edit its publication, The Liberator in nineteen o
Speaker 1: five and nineteen o six. This publication was named after
Speaker 1: William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper that ran from the eighteen
Speaker 1: thirties to the eighteen sixties. In the nineteen teens, Parsons
Speaker 1: focused on trying to organize and advocate for people who
Speaker 1: were hungry, unemployed, and homeless. She again faced arrests repeatedly,
Speaker 1: including in Los Angeles for selling literature without a license.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fourteen, she was charged with inciting a riot
Speaker 1: when she was arrested while speaking and the crowd followed
Speaker 1: her to the jail, although those charges were dropped. Parsons
Speaker 1: demonstrations during these years included one that started at Jane
Speaker 1: adams Hull House. It's involved hundreds of people marching against
Speaker 1: hunger and unemployment, and hundreds of people were arrested. Jane
Speaker 1: Adams paid Parsons bail and criticized these arrests, noting that
Speaker 1: the only thing anybody was guilty of doing was parading
Speaker 1: without a permit. She also praised parsons advocacy for the unemployed.
Speaker 1: And this is such an interesting moment to me because
Speaker 1: these two women were opposite in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: By this point, Chicago's black population was significantly larger than
Speaker 1: it had been when Parsons first arrived, up from less
Speaker 1: than one percent of the population to about four percent,
Speaker 1: and that community had also become more visible in terms
Speaker 1: of the struggle for equal rights. For example, Pullman porters
Speaker 1: had been trying to unionize since nineteen o nine. That's
Speaker 1: something we covered on the show back in fourteen, but
Speaker 1: parsons activism still did not really involve or address the
Speaker 1: black community. During those years. She was more focused on
Speaker 1: immigrants from Mexico who had fled the Mexican Revolution between
Speaker 1: nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, and on raising money for
Speaker 1: Americans and Mexican immigrants who tried to cross the border
Speaker 1: to fight in the revolution that violated neutrality laws. By
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, Parsons had become involved with the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: although she didn't formally join the party until nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: She also started working with the Party's International Labor Defense,
Speaker 1: which was formed in response to the trials of anarchist
Speaker 1: Nicolas Aacko and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. In ninety seven, Parsons was
Speaker 1: elect did to serve on the International Defense Funds National Committee.
Speaker 1: Later on, this defense fund helps defend nine black teenagers
Speaker 1: who were falsely accused of raping two white women in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one. They had become known as the Scottsboro Boys,
Speaker 1: and they were convicted. This is a much bigger story.
Speaker 1: It's been on my list for an episode of the
Speaker 1: podcast for a long time, but it's a lot, which
Speaker 1: is why we haven't done it yet. In the last
Speaker 1: few years of Lucy Parson's life, she supported herself by
Speaker 1: running a boarding house, and she continued to speak at
Speaker 1: Haymarket commemorations and labor rights events. She lived with her
Speaker 1: long term companion, George mark Stall. Some sources actually say
Speaker 1: they were married. She eventually lost most of her sight
Speaker 1: and was granted a pension from a fund to support
Speaker 1: blind people. On March seventh, two, a fire started in
Speaker 1: her home. She was killed in this fire, and George
Speaker 1: marks All died of injuries that he incurred while he
Speaker 1: was trying to save her. About three hundred people attended
Speaker 1: a joint memorial that was held for the two of them.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned at the top of the show, authorities
Speaker 1: rated what was left of her home afterwards, seizing any papers,
Speaker 1: writing books, and other materials that survived. Although Parsons had
Speaker 1: not received a lot of formal education, she had been
Speaker 1: a voracious reader and autodidact, and her personal library had
Speaker 1: contained about three thousand volumes before the fire. Although Lucy
Speaker 1: Parsons had been just notorious during her lifetime, after her death,
Speaker 1: that notoriety faded, but interest in her life increased in
Speaker 1: the middle of the twentieth century in tandem with the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights movement, the Chicano movement, and just a growing
Speaker 1: interest in black, Hispanic and Latino and indigenous history and people.
Speaker 1: Historians and otherwise have really been all over the place
Speaker 1: in terms of how they have characterized Lucy Parson's identity
Speaker 1: and her ancestry based on her own contradictory descriptions of herself.
Speaker 1: What's really undeniable, though, is that she was a woman
Speaker 1: of color who carved a place for herself in a
Speaker 1: movement that was just overwhelmingly white and male. Do you
Speaker 1: have a listener mail? I have listener mail that comes
Speaker 1: from Dylan, who wrote after our recent Saturday Classic on
Speaker 1: the Right of Spring Riots, and Dylan says, Hello, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy. This is Dylan, and I've been a fan
Speaker 1: of the pod for a few years. I had never
Speaker 1: listened to the episode about the Right of Spring until
Speaker 1: you reposted it as a Saturday Classic. I found it
Speaker 1: very interesting. I thought you might find it interesting to
Speaker 1: hear about the piece. From a professional bassoonist perspective, the
Speaker 1: opening solo of the right has become so standard that
Speaker 1: I have never seen a principal bassoon audition list of
Speaker 1: excerpts that didn't include it. I can't imagine what I
Speaker 1: would have thought if I was the bassoonist playing the
Speaker 1: premier year and walked into the first rehearsal and saw that.
Speaker 1: He's rumored to have called it impossible to play, and
Speaker 1: at the time it probably was nearly impossible. There have
Speaker 1: been significant improvements to the high range of the bassoon
Speaker 1: since then, so that our standard orchestral range actually goes
Speaker 1: even higher. Now, it is still terribly difficult to play,
Speaker 1: requiring special reads and vocals the part that you blow
Speaker 1: into to make them possible to play consistently. Some bassoonist
Speaker 1: Stephen wean themselves off of caffeine in the weeks leading
Speaker 1: up to a performance because caffeine is a diuretic and
Speaker 1: makes it slightly more difficult to breathe. Most people don't
Speaker 1: even notice this effect, but when you're playing something that
Speaker 1: challenging in such a high pressure situation, every little bit
Speaker 1: makes a difference. Thank you for such a wonderful podcast.
Speaker 1: Stay well, regards Dylan. Thank you so much Dylan for this,
Speaker 1: since I am of the generation who has been listening
Speaker 1: to the Right of Spring since watching Disney's Fantasia as
Speaker 1: a child. Uh, that bassoon solo doesn't sound weird to me,
Speaker 1: like it has just been a part of my existence
Speaker 1: since childhood. So I did not really realize how difficult
Speaker 1: it is to play as a bassoonists, So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for giving us some insight into that. If
Speaker 1: you would like to send us a note about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcast or history podcast at I heart
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