Working Class Hero: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is truly one of the great working class heroes of the last century, a woman who touched thousands of workers' lives, who was a spirited radical speaker and champion of civil liberties. As a young woman, Flynn was a renown labor orator and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and became nationally recognized for labor organizing and agitation. Later in her life, she was a leader of the Communist Party, USA, eventually becoming its National Chairperson, the only woman to have held that post.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is truly one of the great working class heroes of the last century, a woman who touched thousands of workers' lives, who was a spirited radical speaker and champion of civil liberties. As a young woman, Flynn was a renown labor orator and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and became nationally recognized for labor organizing and agitation. Later in her life, she was a leader of the Communist Party, USA, eventually becoming its National Chairperson, the only woman to have held that post.

Flynn was born in Concord, NH to socialist parents in 1890. Her parents were children of Irish immigrants with a long tradition of Irish Republicanism and socialism. Her parents moved to New York City and Flynn's earliest political experiences were at the Harlem Socialist Club. According to Mary Licht's essay "Rebel Girl: the Revolutionary Life and Work of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn" (People's Weekly World, 3/30/96), it was there that "Flynn, aged 15, made her first public speech. The topic was 'Women Under Socialism.'"

While still a young woman Flynn was thrown into the heart of the labor upheavals of the early 20th Century. The journalist Theodore Dreiser-who would go on to become the nation's greatest realist author and later a communist-described the young Elizabeth Gurley Flynn as "an East Side Joan of Arc."

In 1912, 14,000 mill workers went on strike in the industrial town of Lawrence, Massachusetts and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was there. She and IWW national leader "Big Bill" Haywood were sent to Lawrence to replace the jailed strike leaders Joe Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti. Known as the Bread and Roses strike because of the popular signs held by women on the picket line, the Lawrence strike was a huge victory and a national success for the IWW. It was also a testimony to the importance of working class women in the trade union movement.

Rebel Girl

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's moniker "rebel girl" was given to her by fellow IWW member Joe Hill. Hill was a troubadour and union organizer who was arrested in on trumped-up charges of killing a grocer in Salt Lake City, Utah during the "Copper Wars" where mine workers and owners battled in a bloody strike. Flynn went to Salt Lake and visited Hill in jail. The next day he sent her a copy of the song "rebel girl." Flynn personally took up the fight to save Joe Hill, asking of IWW members "can we afford to give up our Joe Hill without a struggle?" Despite appeals from U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and thousands of workers around the world, Joe Hill was executed on November 19, 1915. Before his execution, Hill sent the famous message to the movement: "Don't Mourn, Organize"

Flynn took the words to heart and honored Joe Hill and the other labor martyrs with her unyielding commitment to class struggle organizing. Defense of labor leaders, political prisoners and immigrants began Flynn's hallmark. She helped found and was the chair of the Workers Liberty Defense Union in 1917. She then served a Chair of the International Labor Defense (ILD) from 1926 until it's dissolution in 1940.

The ILD was a legal rights organization closely linked to the Communist Party and played an important role in defending Leftists and trade unionists. Flynn and the ILD helped defend Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants arrested on flimsy on murder charges because of their anarchist political beliefs in 1920. Despite an international campaign by anarchists, socialists and communists to save them, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927. Later, the ILD led the fight to free the Scottsboro Boys, nine young African American men falsely accused of rape in Tennessee in 1931.

Flynn was also a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and was a member of their National Board.

The Communist Party

Through Flynn's constant struggle to defend the working class and fight for equal rights for women, she was increasingly working side-by-side with the Communist Party and eventually joined in 1937. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was rapidly elected to the Party's National Committee and then Political Bureau. Flynn chaired the Party's Women's Commission for ten years and had a regular column in the Daily Worker newspaper.

The ACLU expelled Flynn from the Board and the organization in 1940 of her Party membership. Flynn and others decried the attack on freedom of speech within an organization dedicated to civil liberties.

In 1942 Flynn ran for U.S. Congress and in 1951, she and other communist leaders were charged under the McCarthy era Smith Act with conspiracy to teach the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Flynn again ran for office while awaiting sentencing. On january 24, 1951, Flynn, Claudia Jones, and Betty were sent to the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. She spent 28 months there as a political prisoner.

Flynn was elected as Chair of National Committee of the Communist Party, USA in 1961.

After the McCarthy era, the McCarran Act was ruled unconstitutional early in 1964, Flynn and other Party leaders were once again allowed to use their U.S. passports for international travel. In August 1964, Flynn traveled to the Soviet Union representing the Communist Party at an international gathering. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn died in Moscow on September 5.

Flynn received a state funeral in Red Square and her body lay in state in the hall of Soviet Trade Unions. Thousands of Soviet workers and people, as well as international dignitaries came to pay their respects to this working class giant. Flynn's death received front page treatment from the New York Times.

Half of Flynn's remains were placed in the Kremlin Wall, the others were returned to the U.S. to be buried in Wladheim Cemetary near the graves of Eugene Debs, Bill Haywood, and the Haymarket Martyrs.

To read more on Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, check out her books: The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life 1906-1926 (International Publishers, 1973), and the Alderson Story: My Life As a Political Prisoner (International Publishers, 1963). Also check out Words on Fire: The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall and Elizabeth Gurley (Rutgers University Press, 1987) and Iron in Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left by Helen C. Camp (Washington State University Press, 1999)