Albert Parsons (1848 - 1887)

Tue Jun 20, 1848

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Albert Parsons, born on this day in 1848, was an American anarchist newspaper editor, labor activist, and husband to radical Lucy Parsons. In 1887, Parsons, with three others, was executed by the state during the Haymarket Affair.

Lucy Parsons was a well-known radical labor activist in her own right, dubbed by the Chicago Police Department as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters”.

After fighting in the Civil War, Albert settled in Texas and became an activist for the rights of former slaves, later serving a Republican official during reconstruction. With Lucy, he moved to Chicago in 1873, working for radical newspapers and engaging in labor organizing.

In 1879, Parsons withdrew from all participation in electoral politics. In his memoirs, Albert writes "In 1879 I withdrew from all active participation in the political Labor Party, having been convinced that the number of hours per day that the wage-workers are compelled to work, together with the low wages they received, amounted to their practical disfranchisement as voters…

“…My experience in the Labor Party had also taught me that bribery, intimidation, duplicity, corruption, and bulldozing grew out of the conditions which made the working people poor and the idlers rich, and that consequently the ballot-box could not be made an index to record the popular will until the existing debasing, impoverishing, and enslaving industrial conditions were first altered.”

In 1887, Parsons became one of four Chicago labor leaders convicted of conspiracy and hanged following the Haymarket affair, in which a workers’ rally for the eight hour day devolved into a riot and anti-worker hysteria.

Parsons’ final words on the gallows were “Will I be allowed to speak, oh men of America? Let me speak, Sheriff Matson! Let the voice of the people be heard! O-”, but his words were cut short by the opening of the trap door.

Lucy Parsons continued her activism after his death, going on to help found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

“Formerly the master selected the slave; today the slave selects his master, and he has got to find one or else he is carried down here to my friend, the gaoler.”

- Albert Parsons