Goddess of Anarchy
Page 43
Throughout this project, many friends and colleagues took an interest in it and provided both support and resources relevant to the project. I thank Michael Parrish of Baylor University and my UT colleagues Emilio Zamora and George Forgie. I would also like to single out Mark Jacob, the Chicago Tribune’s metro editor, who possesses an unparalleled level of knowledge about Chicago and its geography, neighborhoods, and history. Mark not only provided me with a detailed critique of an early draft but also shared documents and other materials that he had found as a result of his own research on Lucy and Albert Parsons. This book is much better for Mark’s interest in it and help with it.
Steve Hahn, Jim Sidbury, and Michael Willrich gave me extensive comments and prompted me to reconsider how I rendered both the details and the larger meanings of Parsons’s story. For their deep knowledge of Texas history, I am grateful to Carl Moneyhon and Randolph “Mike” Campbell. Don E. Carleton and Joe William Trotter read the manuscript and gave me positive feedback. Kali Gross urged me to consider the various traumas that Lucy Parsons must have suffered as a young enslaved woman and to factor those traumas into a discussion of her subsequent way of being in the world. Vicki Ruiz helped me to think about why and how Parsons decided to present herself as a woman of indigenous and Hispanic descent.
The History Department at the University of Texas at Austin is a particularly supportive and collegial place to work. I would like to acknowledge my faculty colleagues, who make going into the office each day a pleasure. The History Department staff has contributed to this book in direct and indirect ways; together, these women and men make the job of chairing such a large, busy, and productive department an enjoyable one. Special thanks, for their professionalism, patience, and good humor, to Laura Flack, Art Flores, Courtney Meador, Jackie Llado, Martha Gonzalez, Jerry Larson, Nichole Powell, Marilyn Lehman, Judy Hogan, Kelli Weaver, Nancy Sutherland, Tom Griffith, and Jason Gentry.
My good friends Ellen Fitzpatrick, Karin Lifter, Robin Feuer Miller, Nina Tumarkin, and Sandy Baum have sustained me through this project as through others in years past. I appreciated Sandy’s hospitality in Chicago, not far from where Lucy Parsons used to declaim from a soapbox in Bughouse Square.
My agent Geri Thoma read a complete early draft of the manuscript and offered excellent comments, to the benefit of all those who read subsequent versions. At Basic Books, editorial assistant Alia Massoud and project editor Stephanie Summerhays cheerfully and expertly kept me on track throughout the production process. Brian Distelberg proved a skillful commentator on Parsons’s story, and I am grateful for his timely interventions in the manuscript. Katherine Streckfus did an outstanding job of copy-editing, and I appreciate all of her hard work and meticulous attention to detail. My editor Lara Heimert, publisher at Basic Books, reacted enthusiastically to my first mention of Lucy Parsons as the subject of a potential biography—a leap of faith perhaps, considering that many people today have never heard of the so-called goddess of anarchy, or know of her only as Albert Parsons’s widow.
I would like to thank the extended Jones and Abramson families for providing me with a warm community of unconditional love. I regret that Albert and Sylvia Jones and Albert and Rose Abramson are no longer with us to share the many life-cycle celebrations that give us all so much pleasure. Sarah Jones Abramson and Steven John Halloran and Anna Jones Abramson and Erica Doudna have followed my progress on this biography with great interest, and Amelia Esther Abramson Halloran and Henry Albert Abramson Halloran have offered delightful distraction throughout the process. My husband of thirty-seven years, Jeffrey Abramson, has listened patiently to my too-frequent ruminations on the idea of race and the parameters of anarchy; in more ways than he knows, he helped me see this book through to the end. Together we spent memorable days in Chicago, the city that Lucy Parsons knew so well, following in her footsteps from place to place.
Finally, it gives me great pleasure to dedicate this book to Steve and Henry Halloran, father and son, two wonderful guys.
Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History and the Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin. A MacArthur Fellow (1999–2004), winner of the Bancroft Prize for Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, and Pulitzer Prize finalist for that book and also A Dreadful Deceit, Jones lives in Austin, Texas.
Also by Jacqueline Jones
Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865–1873
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present
The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present
American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor
A Social History of the Laboring Classes: From Colonial Times to the Present
Creek Walking: Growing Up in Delaware in the 1950s
Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War
A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America
More Praise for
GODDESS OF ANARCHY
“This dramatic and impressive book vividly brings the tumultuous and tragic life of ex-slave and American revolutionary Lucy Parsons to what should be a large audience. Even those of us who cherish a more heroic view of Parsons’s life in struggle will learn enormously from this meticulously researched and learned biography.”
—David Roediger, author of Class, Race, and Marxism
“No scholar has done more to illuminate the tangled politics of race and class in American history than Jacqueline Jones. In this deeply researched and powerfully written book, Jones narrates the thrilling life of Lucy Parsons—the infamous labor radical and anarchist who scandalized American audiences with her incendiary critiques of industrial capitalism and government oppression, all the while concealing her own past in slavery. A richly revealing story, brilliantly told. Parsons will get under your skin.”
—Michael Willrich, author of Pox and City of Courts
Abbreviations in Notes
Aberdeen WN Aberdeen (SD) Weekly News
Abilene TCN Abilene (TX) Taylor County News
AG Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock
AHR American Historical Review
ALH American Literary History
ALPLM Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois
Alton ET Alton (IL) Evening Telegraph
AQ American Quarterly
ARP Albert Richard Parsons
ARP Papers Albert R. Parsons Papers, 1876–1893 (MSS 15A, Microfilm 523), Library Archives Division, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison
Atchison DG Atchison (KS) Daily Globe
Austin WS Austin Weekly Statesman
AZ Arbeiter Zeitung
Bismarck DT Bismarck (ND) Daily Tribune
BRFAL Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Record Group 105), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC
Brownsville DH Brownsville (TX) Daily Herald
Centralia E and T Centralia (WI) Enterprise and Tribune
Charleston N and C Charleston (SC) News and Courier
Chicago DB Chicago Day Book
Chicago DN Chicago Daily News
Chicago MN Chicago Morning News
CHS, HADC Chicago Historical Society, Haymarket Affair Digital Collection
Cincinnati CT Cincinnati Commercial Tribune
Cincinnati EP Cincinnati Evening Post
Cincinnati TS Cincinnati Times-Star
Cleveland DH Cleveland Daily Herald
Cleveland LH Cleveland Leader and Herald
Cleveland PD Cleveland Plain Dealer
Columbus DE Columbus (OH) Daily Enquirer
CT Chicago Tribune
CWH Civil War History
Dallas DH Dallas Daily Herald
Dallas MN Dallas Morning News
Dallas WH Dallas Weekly Herald
DBCAH Earl Vandale Collection, Dolph Briscoe Center for American Hist
ory, Austin, Texas
Decatur HD Decatur (IL) Herald Despatch
Denver EP Denver Evening Post
Denver RMN Rocky Mountain News (Denver)
Detroit ALL Advance and Labor Leaf
Detroit FP Detroit Free Press
DI-O Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean
DISR Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield)
DN Evanston (IL) Daily Northwestern
DW Daily Worker
El Paso DH El Paso Daily Herald
Evansville C and P Evansville (IN) Courier and Press
FMC Federal Manuscript Census (available online at Ancestry.com)
Fort Worth DG Fort Worth Daily Gazette
Galveston DN Galveston Daily News
Houston WT Houston Weekly Telegraph
HW Harper’s Weekly
IC Intermountain Catholic
ILWCH International Labor and Working-Class History
ISJ Illinois State Journal
ISR International Socialist Review
IW Industrial Worker
JAAH Journal of African American History
JAC Journal of American Culture
JAH Journal of American History
JIH Journal of Illinois History
JISHS Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
JNH Journal of Negro History
JPE Journal of Political Economy
JSH Journal of Social History
JUH Journal of Urban History
Juneau DR-M Juneau (AK) Daily Record-Miner
KL Knights of Labor (Chicago)
LE Labor Enquirer (Denver)
LMS Lizzie May Swank
LP Lucy Parsons
ME Mother Earth
Milwaukee DJ Milwaukee (WI) Daily Journal
Milwaukee DS Milwaukee (WI) Daily Sentinel
Milwaukee YN Milwaukee (WI) Yenowine’s News
MLR Monthly Labor Review
MQ Midwest Quarterly
MQR Mennonite Quarterly Review
NA National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC
NAR North American Review
New Orleans T-P New Orleans Times-Picayune
New York CA New York Commercial Advertiser
New York DP New York Daily People
New York DT New York Daily Tribune
New York EW New York Evening World
NYT New York Times
OBUM One Big Union Monthly
OH Ohio History
OHQ Oregon Historical Quarterly
Omaha DB Omaha (NE) Daily Bee
Omaha MWH Omaha (NE) Morning World Herald
Pittsburgh GE Pittsburgh Grassroots Examiner
RA Radical America
RG Record Group, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC
Rockford DR Rockford (IL) Daily Register
Rockford R-R Rockford (IL) Register-Republican
Sacramento R-U Sacramento (CA) Record-Union
St. Paul DG St. Paul (MN) Daily Globe
SHQ Southwestern Historical Quarterly
SSH Social Science History
St. Louis G-D St. Louis Globe-Democrat
TA Chicago Trade Assembly
Tacoma DN Tacoma (WA) Daily News
Topeka SJ Topeka (KS) State Journal
TSLA Texas State Library and Archives, Austin, Texas
Waco DE Waco Daily Examiner
Waco EN Waco Evening News
Waco TH Waco Times Herald
Wilkes-Barre TL Wilkes-Barre (PA) Times Leader
WP Washington Post
WST Wyoming State Tribune, Cheyenne
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. “I am not a candidate”: Cincinnati TS, October 13, 1886.
2. Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 2015).
CHAPTER 1: WIDE-OPEN WACO
1. St. Louis G-D, September 18, 1886, 3. This newspaper article is the Rosetta Stone of Lucy Parsons’s early life. Information that can be verified independently includes the name of her mother and her and her mother’s owner, the name of her mother’s husband and his place of work, and details about Oliver Benton aka Oliver Gathings.
2. “shooting around… a little fun”: Dorothy Waties Renick, “This Place We Call Home: A Serial History of Waco and McLennan County,” Waco TH, May 4, 1924, 2; William H. Curry, A History of Early Waco with Allusions to Six Shooter Junction (Waco: Library Binding Company, 1968), 32, 129–131; “actresses”: John Sleeper and J. C. Hutchins, compilers, Waco and McLennan County, Texas, Containing a City Directory of Waco, Historical Sketches of the City and County… (Waco: Dayton Kelley, 1876; reprint, Texian Press, 1966).
3. McLennan County District Court Minutes, vol. F, 1869–1871, microfilm reel 984506, and vol. B, 1863–1871, reel 984503, Baylor University, Waco, Texas; Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, M821, reel 32, Record of Criminal Offenses Committed in the State of Texas, vols. 1–3, Case #1574, Record Group 105, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC (either M821 or M822, reel number, BRFAL, RG 105, NA, hereafter).
4. Anne Bailey, Between the Enemy and Texas: Parsons’s Texas Cavalry in the Civil War (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1989), 5–6; “on the range”: Lucy E. Parsons, ed., Life of Albert R. Parsons with Brief History of the Labor Movement in America (Chicago: Mrs. Lucy E. Parsons, 1889), 1–7. See also Gary Goodman, “Albert R. Parsons in Texas: The Origins of a Radical Agitator,” typescript in the Paul Avrich Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Albert’s birthdate of 1845 is the one given by his father when he was interviewed by a Montgomery census-taker in 1850. Albert routinely claimed that he was born in 1848.
5. Bailey, Between the Enemy and Texas, 7; “so hot for secession”: Renick, “This Place We Call Home,” 2. For the broadside advertising Parsons’s book (which was apparently never written, or at least never published), see Earl Vandale Collection, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, Austin, Texas (DBCAH hereafter).
6. William D. Carrigan, The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836–1916 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 95.
7. Ellis Bailey, A History of Hill County, Texas, 1838–1965 (Waco: Texian Press, 1966), 40–41; Gathings genealogy: Margaret Reid, “Re: James Jackson Gathings, Jr., Hill Co. TX,” Genealogy.com, April 8, 2000, http://genforum.genealogy.com/gathings/messages/4.html; David Minor, “Gathings, James J.,” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, n.d., www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fga44.
8. Walter L. Buenger, “Secession Convention,” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, n.d., www.tshaonline.org/handbook-search-results?arfarf=secession%20convention; Clayton E. Jewett, Texas in the Confederacy: An Experiment in Nation-Building (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002).
9. Tony E. Duty, “The Home Front—McLennan County in the Civil War,” Texana 12 (1974): 197–199; William H. Parsons, Condensed History of Parsons’ Texas Cavalry Brigade, 1861–1865 (Corsicana, TX, 1903); Bailey, Between the Enemy and Texas, 8–14.
10. “frontier boy”: Parsons, ed., Life, 7; 1860 Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston (FMC with date and place hereafter), available online at Ancestry.com; Maury Darst, “Galveston News,” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, n.d., www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eeg03.
11. “These were stirring… Wild Bill”: Parsons, ed., Life, 8; Bailey, Between the Enemy and Texas, 4–5; Anne Bailey, ed., In the Saddle with the Texans: Day-to-Day with Parsons’s Cavalry Brigade, 1862–1865 (Buffalo Gap, TX: State House Press, 2003), 186–191. Albert Parsons gave his age as eighteen when he enlisted in 1861, but he was sixteen. His early military record is available online at Fold 3, www.fold3.com/image/12959966 (Co. B, 11, Spaight’s Battalion Texas Vols [S
abine Pass]; Capt. I. R. Burch’s Art’y Co., Likens’ Batt’n Texas Vols [enlisted November 8, 1861, for 12 months, paid December 1862]). See also Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, ID 586957, M323 War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
12. “freedom war”: George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Federal Writers Project Slave Narratives), Texas Narratives, vol. 16, pt. 2, 1; pt. 4, 195; Supplement Series 2, Texas Narratives, 507; “folks everywhere”: Texas Narratives, vol. 16, pt. 1, 305.
13. “who have not settled”: Ira Berlin, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie Rowland, eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, Series 1, vol. 1, The Destruction of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 774, 188, 676, 681, 780–781, 773–774; Dale Baum, “Slaves Taken to Texas for Safekeeping During the Civil War,” in Charles D. Grear, ed., The Fate of Texas: The Civil War and the Lone Star State (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008), 83–104. Unless otherwise noted, emphasis is reproduced from the original.
14. “Cause nobody”: American Slave, Texas Narratives, vol. 16, pt. 3, 142; American Slave, Supplement Series 2, Texas Narratives, 480; Dale Baum, The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), x, 211, 235; “so long and so far”: Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 4. See also NYT, December 23, 1863, 10. I am indebted to George Forgie for these citations.
15. Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Vintage, 1980), 32–34; American Slave, Supplement Series 2, Texas Narratives, 179–180, 481; American Slave, Texas Narrratives, vol. 16, pt. 3, 79; pt. 4, 219.
16. “from sun to sun”: American Slave, Texas Narratives, vol. 16, pt. 4, 219; W. R. Poage, McLennan County Before 1980 (Waco: Texian Press, 1981), 113–115.
17. Baum, “Slaves Taken,” 85–86, 89; Duty, “Home Front,” 216–217.