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Lucy Parsons used her experience as a poor black woman to influence not one but three different causes. She fought for civil rights and labor rights throughout her lifetime, stopping only when she died. She wrote and spoke on behalf of these causes, raising awareness and attention for them and inspiring others to act. She put herself in great danger both by being an outspoken anarchist and by being a black woman who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. In a time where protesting anarchists were beaten and shot in the streets, Lucy Parsons not only continued to fight but devoted her life to promoting anarchism and the rights of the working class. She advocated for a woman’s place in democracy, pushing for women’s suffrage in her work. She created her own magazine, Freedom, to fight for justice. She was one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization that influenced politics by organizing strikes and bringing workers across industries together to fight for workers’ rights. Lucy Parsons was bold in a time where poor people, black people and women were supposed to be silent, and opened doors for others to continue the fight.

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There is no power on earth that can stop men and women who are determined to be free at all hazards. There is no power on earth so great as the power of intellect.
- Lucy Parsons

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Lucy Parsons’ Speech to the IWW in 1905 on the subjects of feminism, socialism and the rights of laborers

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Lucy Parsons’ Speech to the IWW in 1905 on the subjects of feminism, socialism and the rights of laborers

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We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it, and the only way that we can be represented is to take a man to represent us. You men have made such a mess of it in representing us that we have not much confidence in asking you ...

We [women] are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Whenever wages are to be reduced the capitalist class use women to reduce them, and if there is anything that you men should do in the future it is to organize the women...

Now, what do we mean when we say revolutionary Socialist?

We mean that the land shall belong to the landless, the tools to the toiler, and the products to the producers... I believe that if every man and every woman who works, or who toils in the mines, mills, the workshops, the fields, the factories and the farms of our broad America should decide in their minds that they shall have that which of right belongs to them, and that no idler shall live upon their toil ... then there is no army that is large enough to overcome you, for you yourselves constitute the army ...

My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out an starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production...

... Let us sink such differences as nationality, religion, politics, and set our eyes eternally and forever toward the rising star of the industrial republic of labor; remembering that we have left the old behind and have set our faces toward the future. There is no power on earth that can stop men and women who are determined to be free at all hazards. There is no power on earth so great as the power of intellect. It moves the world and it moves the earth...

I hope even now to live to see the day when the first dawn of the new era of labor will have arisen, when capitalism will be a thing of the past, and the new industrial republic, the commonwealth of labor, shall be in operation.

I thank you.

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We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it, and the only way that we can be represented is to take a man to represent us. You men have made such a mess of it in representing us that we have not much confidence in asking you ...

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Lucy (Gonzalez) Parsons (1853-1942) was most likely born a slave. She moved to Chicago from Texas with her white husband Albert Parsons. They quickly became involved with socialism. Parsons's writing and lecturing career began with her work with the Workingmen's Party of the United States and the Working Women's Party. She left these organizations and began working for the International Working People's Association, which was a proponent of anarchism and using violence to overthrow capitalism and end racism. She advocated on behalf of anarchists after her husband was executed after the Haymarket riots. She founded the newspaper Freedom in 1892 and was one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies). She died in a house fire in 1942.