’Rebel Girl’ Flynn fought the fight from her teens to her death 

In the early twentieth century, wherever workers struggled for better conditions, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was said to have been there in the thick of the fight. Flynn, a “home-grown” radical, never wavered in her defense of American civil liberties from the time she was a teen until her 70s. 

After her 1964 death while in the Soviet Union, Flynn’s body was returned to Forest Park and “Radical Row” in the Forest Home Cemetery.  

Born in Concord, NH, in 1890, Flynn’s family moved around, eventually settling in the Bronx. She began her electrifying rise to prominence at the age of 15 when she took the platform at the Harlem Socialist Club to deliver her speech, “What Socialism Will Do for Women.” Immediately, her skills as a dynamic, persuasive orator were recognized. (She was even offered a role on Broadway which she summarily turned down.) People started calling her the “Eastside Joan of Arc.” 

Flynn’s first arrest, of many, was with her father in 1907 — they were speaking on a street corner in New York City and charged with blocking traffic. (Both her parents were dedicated to the cause of socialism and the liberation of the Irish people.) The headlines read: “Mere Child Talks Bitterly of Life.” On one occasion, an older man made a point of mentioning how young Flynn was, and she replied, “That will be remedied in time!” 

In 1906, Flynn became a Wobbly, joining the new Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) which had been established in Chicago a year earlier. The IWW is an organization that accepts all workers as members regardless of craft, gender, race, and creed, which was revolutionary in the early twentieth century. Flynn left school to become an IWW organizer, leading important free-speech fights. (Later in life, she said she wished she had completed her schooling.) Flynn helped develop many of the IWW’s tactics among them spreading speakers across a city to overwhelm the police force and separating defendants’ cases to tie up the courts. 

Very much in demand as a public orator, Flynn was uniquely talented at inspiring crowds. One worker who heard her speak said she had “a quality of greatness, of selflessness and modesty, that always reached the most distant person.” 

It was during a tour to protect free speech in Montana that Flynn met her husband, Jack Jones, with whom she had two children (one died shortly after birth). In 1912, while in New York to raise her son, she became involved in the Lawrence Strike. This strike was also known as the Bread and Roses Strike because the workers were asking not only for survival wages, but for the ability to have a better quality of life. The massive walkout was successful, due in great part to Flynn’s ability to organize tens of thousands of immigrant workers. In 1913, she was instrumental in the Paterson Silk Strike where she was arrested after giving a speech encouraging workers to unite across ethnic divisions. 

Flynn’s list of accomplishments is long — in 1920, she co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She founded the Workers Defense Union to help organizers who were arrested and jailed while advocating for workers’ rights. She brought world-wide attention to the cause of Sacco and Vanzetti – two Italian anarchists believed to be unjustly prosecuted for murder because of their status as immigrants and radicals. She spoke out for racial equality. She advocated for women’s rights and birth control. 

 She said, “The IWW has been accused of pushing women to the front. This is not true. Rather, the women have not been kept in back, and so they have naturally moved to the front.” 

She also fought for the release of Joe Hill, the song-writing IWW member (or Wobbly), believed to be framed for murder in Utah as punishment for his labor organizing. 

Joe Hill, whose ashes are scattered in Forest Home, is himself memorialized in the stirring ballad “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” (or “Joe Hill,”) which has been famously performed by Paul Robeson in the 1940s, Joan Baez in the 1960s, and more recently by Bruce Springsteen in 2014. 

In 1926, Flynn struggled with health issues, both physical and mental. She had left her husband after only a couple of years of marriage and had become close with another activist, Carlo Tresca. When she discovered that Tresca and her sister were having an affair, she was devastated. Flynn spent10 years out of the spotlight with Dr. Marie Equi, a radical and advocate for women’s and reproductive rights. After the 10-year break, Flynn returned to the fight, joining the Communist Party as a fierce opponent of fascism. When she turned 50, she said, “…we thought the revolution was ‘just around the corner.’ We found out, of course, that it was a mighty big corner.” Yet, she remained optimistic, saying, “It’s a great struggle, and we’ll make this a good world yet.” 

In 1939, during a time of “red baiting” in the United States – an era when any association with socialism or communism was suspect — Flynn was voted off of the board of the ACLU (an action they rescinded posthumously in 1976.) This was a particularly difficult time for Flynn as not long after, her son died at the age of 29. But again, she recovered and ran for Congress in 1942. 

Flynn was famously imprisoned for two and a half years under the Smith Act in 1951. She represented herself in the trial and insisted on calling herself a “political prisoner” – incarcerated because of her beliefs. She wrote an ahead-of-its-time memoir exposing the injustices of the prison system. 

Unsurprisingly, Flynn emerged from prison still committed to the battle for civil rights. She became the first national chairwoman of the Communist Party of the United States in 1961. A year later, her passport was revoked for being a communist, but she took her case all the way to the Supreme Court. The court sided with Flynn, agreeing that her rights had been violated, and she was given back her passport. 

Flynn became ill while on a visit to the Soviet Union and died there on Sept. 5, 1964. A state funeral was held for her in Red Square where tens of thousands paid their respects. She, like many other greats in the labor movement, requested that her remains be buried in Forest Home Cemetery near Emma Goldman, “Big Bill” Haywood, and the Haymarket Martyrs. 

Flynn’s headstone is simple, in keeping with the others in the “Radical Row” section of Forest Home. It is a plain, flat stone engraved with: 

Elizabeth G. Flynn 

1890-1964 

“The Rebel Girl” 

Fighter for Working Class Emancipation. 

Flynn remains a controversial figure to this day. In 2023, an historical marker was unveiled in Concord to mark the site where she was born. Within two weeks, the marker was taken down, under the orders of then Gov. John Sununu. Apparently, more than 60 years after her death, even the acknowledgement of her existence and advocacy was too provocative for the state of New Hampshire.

Sidebar: Joe Hill’s song about Flynn