Lucy Parsons - An American Revolutionary
Lucy Parson (1853-1942) was an early activist of color, one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, the ‘wobblies’); and the widow of executed “Haymarket 8” figure, Albert Parsons. For more than half a century, she fought for the rights of the poor. Lucy's radical activism challenged the racist and sexist sentiments in a time when Americans believed that a woman's place was in the home. She was once described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters," in the 1920's. She born in Texas, where her parents were probably slaves before the Emancipation Proclamation. She always claimed to be of Mexican and American Indian heritage, disavowing having African parentage. Given the Jim Crow laws in the South after Reconstruction, which ended any hope of blacks having equal rights, it would have been prudent for Lucy to have disavowed being black. Not much is known about her early life before she met and married Albert P...