Affirm Black Women Portrait Series: Lucy Parsons
“Oh, Misery, I have drunk thy cup of sorrow to its dregs, but I am still a rebel.” - Lucy Parsons
The Chicago Police Department declared her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” Newspapers called her the “goddess of anarchy.” The FBI felt so threatened they confiscated her personal papers and a library of 1,500 books after her death.
This terrifying woman - Lucy Parsons - was born enslaved and married a former Confederate soldier turned Reconstruction activist. Lucy and Albert Parsons worked as union organizers, speakers, and writers, in the Chicago labor movement fighting for humane working conditions and an eight-hour workday.
An excerpt from one of Lucy Parsons’ speeches:
Do you wonder why there are anarchists in this country, in this great land of liberty, as you love to call it? Go to New York. Go through the byways and alleys of that great city. Count the myriads starving; count the multiplied thousands who are homeless…
You will be dumbfounded by your discoveries, you who have paid no attention to these poor, save as objects of charity and commiseration. They are not objects of charity, they are the victims of the rank injustice that permeates the system of government, and of political economy that holds sway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
View the complete Affirm Black Women portrait series here
“…I have dedicated my career to ensuring that the words engraved on the front of the Supreme Court building— ‘Equal Justice Under Law’—are a reality and not just an ideal.” — Ketanji Brown Jackson