Kim Kelly (journalist) on Lucy Parsons

“The nineteenth century allowed little room for women of color to find their voices-let alone share them with the masses-and the few who did manage to break their silence often became figures of mixed curiosity and revulsion. There are few greater examples of that than Lucy Parsons...Her enthralling demeanor, sophisticated oratory skills, and blistering anti-capitalist rhetoric also made her a star to live crowds, defying the nineteenth-century social convention against women addressing mixed crowds...Her impassioned entreaties on behalf of suffering laborers earned her both awe and scorn from the press, which would call her a "red-mouthed anarchist" in one line and then breathlessly wax on about her beauty and fashionable dresses in the next.”

“Lucy Parsons was a study in contradictions, many of them of her own devising. She strove to project the image of the perfect Victorian wife and mother, even while writing columns encouraging workers to dynamite the homes of the rich. She feuded with fellow anarchist Emma Goldman over the idea of "free love," wearing her public persona of pious chastity like a mourning veil while taking on new lovers in private. Her identity as one of the best-known anarchists in America clashed with her later involvement in the Communist Party, and the harsh criticism she reserved for generations of younger anarchist activists. Her horrific treatment of her son, Albert, Jr., whom she had confined in a psychiatric institution after he expressed his desire to join the military, remains difficult to fathom.”