Lucy Parsons

Lucy Parsons appears to have been launched on the path from rank and file labor organizer to history-making firebrand leader by a miscarriage of justice. She was born in a slave household in 1853 to what was then described as a mixed race family. Her husband was executed by hanging in 1886 for allegedly planning the Chicago Haymarket Riot, despite a severe lack of evidence in the case that led to the pardon of some of the guilty. She was so determined and influential that the Chicago Police declared her to be "more dangerous than a thousand rioters."

Parsons' use of harsh language set her apart from the majority of progressive/labor discourse as well as sanity. She actually declared, "Let us slaughter them without mercy, and let it be a war of annihilation without pity" in reference to the wealthy. She was enraged because she believed the New Deal was a half-measure and that only a complete revolution would suffice when Franklin Roosevelt's administration launched it in 1933. The New Deal achieved many of the aims that Parsons had pushed for. Thus, when she perished in a fire in 1942 at the age of 89, many people thought she had committed suicide.

Born: Lucia Carter, 1851, Virginia, US
Died: March 7, 1942 (aged c. 91)Chicago, Illinois, US