May Day hero: Lucy Parsons union organizer, anti-capitalist fighter
By Monica Moorehead posted on May 7, 2021
Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, an original founder when May Day launched in 1886, was born into slavery in the early 1850s on a Virginia plantation. She, her mother and others were able to escape and move to Texas. There she met her future spouse, Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier who helped register newly freed people to vote during Reconstruction. This action made him a target of the KKK who threatened to lynch him.
Brenda Stokely, union and women’s activist, speaks in front of Parsons banner at May Day rally, New York City. WW-photo G. Dunkel