Lucy Parsons is undoubtedly one of the most controversial people buried in Forest Park. While some might only know her as one of the Haymarket Martyrs’ widows, Parsons was a powerful and influential figure in her own right. The Chicago Police Department once proclaimed she was “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.”
It is nearly impossible to craft a tidy, one-sentence description of Lucy Parsons. Over the course of her life she was an anarchist, a socialist, a syndicalist, and a communist. She was an organizer, writer, speaker and agitator. She referred to herself as being of Mexican and Native American heritage, yet there is strong evidence indicating she was born into slavery to an African-American mother. The year of her birth is listed as 1848, 1851, 1853, and 1859, and it’s not certain if she was born in Texas or Virginia. She used different names over the course of her life. Among the many last names she used were: Carter, Diaz, Del Gather, Gonzalez, Hull, Hall, Waller, and, of course, Parsons.
What is safe to say is that Lucy Parsons unrepentantly dedicated her life to eliminating class struggle and improving the lives of workers, whom she believed were being turned into “wage slaves” by capitalists.
She married Albert Parsons in 1872. It is believed that they married during a very brief period of time when interracial marriages were legal in Texas. Conditions for a mixed-race couple were dangerous in the south, so they moved to Chicago where the fight for workers’ rights and societal change was underway.
After the railroad strike of 1877, Lucy and Albert dedicated themselves to the “Labor Question,” and fought to improve conditions for workers. They became intensely involved in the 8-hour workday movement and on May 1, 1886, they, along with their two children, led a march of thousands of workers in Chicago calling for a general strike to demand a shorter workday.
Albert, along with seven other men, was falsely charged with conspiracy after a bomb was thrown on May 4, 1886 killing several policemen. All eight men were convicted. Albert and three others were hanged, even though the prosecution stated, unequivocally, that none of the men had been the bomb thrower.
Lucy Parsons traveled extensively informing the world about the terrible injustices happening in Chicago. Her speeches were so impactful, that she was often arrested before she even had a chance to take the stage. Her writing was no less influential — “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth,” and “Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife and lay in wait on the steps and palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out.” Her words were chosen to shock and awaken her audiences. It was reported that the Chicago police kept an eye on her like they would “a can of dynamite,” and if there was a disturbance in the city, they would say, “Lucy is at it again.”
Parsons stuck to her radical style, even as the movement for workers’ rights evolved. She so strongly objected to the Spanish-American war in 1899, that when her son, Albert Jr., enlisted, she had him declared insane and committed to an asylum where he later died of tuberculosis. In 1905, Parsons was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) – an organization that continues to this day, seeking to unite all workers into “One Big Union.”
In her later years, Lucy Parsons was a familiar figure in Chicago selling radical literature from a cart she pushed throughout the city. On that cart hung a banner with Albert’s last words, “Let the voice of the people be heard.” She was also a regular at Bughouse Square and the Dill Pickle Club, areas where intellectuals, radicals, artists, and bohemians frequented.
At the end of her life, Parsons fell into poverty and lost her sight. She lived in a flat at 3130 North Troy St., surrounded by an extensive library of over 3,000 books and pamphlets. The building caught fire in 1942 and she was killed along with her companion George Markstall who rushed into the building to try to save her.
Her headstone in Forest Home Cemetery is humble and simple – nothing like the powerful, complicated woman she was in life.
References: Great Falls Tribune, The Inter Ocean, Brooklyn Eagle, The Daily Worker, Daily World, The Inquirer, Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, Haymarket Scrapbook.
Amy Binns-Calvey is a volunteer with the Historical Society of Forest Park and the author of More Dead Than Alive: Stories of Forest Park’s Quietest Neighbors.