Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical by Jacqueline Jones (review)

In her new biography of Lucy Parsons, Jacqueline Jones shares a scene from a socialist meeting in the late 1880s, after the execution of Parsons's famous husband, Albert. Parsons sat in the back, hiding her presence from radicals who did not appreciate her continued advocacy of violence. As the Chicago socialist Tommy Morgan gave a lecture denouncing the use of physical force, Jones tells us that Parsons, "haughty and arrogant, strutted down the center aisle," eventually taking over the meeting to the deafening cheer of the crowds (228). This anecdote seems an appropriate opening to a discussion of Jones's book, for it not only captures Parsons's defiant and controversial character, her popularity as a speaker, and her symbiotic relationship with the press (Jones found this anecdote in a newspaper), but it also characterizes Jones's approach to this biography—upfront, bold, and unapologetic. Indeed, by carefully reconstructing both the public and private worlds of Lucy Parsons, Jones boldly complicates the "secular sainthood" that has defined Parsons's reputation for decades (ix).

One of Jones's major contributions is her definitive answer to the question of Parsons's origins. Although Parsons long claimed to be of Native and Mexican heritage—and she has been celebrated as such by these communities for decades—Jones provides clear evidence that Lucy Parsons was born to an enslaved woman, Charlotte, and a white man, perhaps her enslaver, in Virginia in 1851. Notably, a newspaper article that Jones calls the "Rosetta Stone of Lucy Parsons' early life" helped her crack this enduring mystery, which highlights the important role that digitized newspapers played in Jones's research by allowing her greater access to Parsons's speeches and life story (361). Throughout the book, Jones frequently questions what made Parsons hide her background and forsake her relations in the South. At times, you can feel Jones's disappointment in this decision, especially given the fact that Parsons made her career as part of a labor movement that perpetually reviled and excluded black workers who came North for new opportunities. Ultimately, she argues that Parsons's choice to hide her enslaved past demonstrates that the anarchist remained "bound by the prejudices of the overwhelming majority of white Americans" (348).

Just as Jones myth-busts Parsons's narrative about her racial identity, Jones also holds her to account for the Haymarket bombing. Jones spends several chapters exploring the affair, and while she draws on both Paul Avrich and Floyd Dell to argue that Parsons's glorification of dynamite was a "rhetorical strategy," she repeatedly insists that those words had negative consequences (107). Furthermore, in her analysis of the Haymarket trial, Jones argues that Lucy and Albert concocted a false story to prove Albert's innocence—both insisted that their children, Albert Jr. and Lulu, had joined their parents at the demonstration, something a father with knowledge of the bombs would not do. Dismissing this as a "fiction," Jones argues that the Parsons "likely" knew "that someone had planned some kind of action" (152). Thus, while documenting the injustice of the trial, Jones is highly skeptical that Parsons's violent words did not contribute to violent deeds. This critical eye, however, does not prevent Jones from carefully detailing the very dangerous world that Parsons and other radicals inhabited in late-19th-century Chicago, one in which a violent self-defense made sense. She demonstrates the gleeful way that the city elite called for the murder of radicals, and police officers who regularly broke up peaceful meetings. In scenes that resonate today, Jones often recounts peaceful meetings that were incited into violence by police brutality, only for newspapers the next morning to excoriate radical groups for their violent tendencies.

Despite at times criticizing Parsons's "stubbornly consistent ideology" and the racial blindness of her radical messaging, Jones clearly believes that Parsons's legacy has much to teach...