Image: More Dangerous Than A Thousand Rioters.
By Bart Cooper, Radical Arts Project – https://www.bartcooperart.com/heroes

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This was first published in D.i.Y.Culture #14
PLEASE NOTE – For the best viewing experience, we recommend that you download the PDF of DiY Culture No.14 from DropBox to your PC/laptop/phone.

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“Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination.”

Lucy Parsons was a Chicago anarchist who preached justice for the poor by way of revolution. She was forceful and convincing. The most powerful industrialists in the city – Marshall Field, Philip Armour, George Pullman, etc. – made a concerted effort to silence her. For 50 years, in blatant disregard of her rights, she was arrested wherever she spoke.

Lucy led a Christmas Day demonstration of over 1,000 people to 18th and Prairie Avenue where marchers showered the Field mansion with catcalls and rotten tomatoes. Soon after, Field moved his family to the North Shore – near the new Fort Sheridan which was built to protect the rich from the poor. Neither city officials, police abuse, years of gnawing poverty and hunger nor blindness in her later years reduced Lucy Parsons’ enthusiasm for the cause, for the welfare of the workers.

Lucy was not a feminist. She would have rejected the idea that she stood for women’s causes, just as she denied she stood for black causes. Blacks are oppressed, she believed, because of class, because they are poor. Lucy was not complicated – she was totally dedicated to a new society. She was a strong, penniless warrior for the poor. She lived for 90 years and died without regrets for having fought the Chicago establishment tooth and nail for over 60 years.

When Lucy Parsons died, the police seized and destroyed her letters, writings and library. And so she has virtually disappeared from our memory.