Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn was born in Concord, New Hampshire on 7th August, 1890.
The family moved to New York in 1900
and Flynn was educated at the local public school. Converted by her
parents to socialism, she was only 16
when she gave her first speech, What Socialism
Will Do for Women, at the Harlem Socialist Club. As a result
of her political activities, Flynn was expelled from high school.
In 1907 Flynn became a full-time organizer for the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW). Over the next few years she organised
campaigns among garment workers in Pennsylvania, silk weavers in New
Jersey, restaurant workers in New York, miners in Minnesota and textile
workers in Massachusetts. During this period the writer, Theodore
Dreiser, described her as "an East Side Joan of Arc.".
Flynn was arrested ten times during this period but was never convicted
of any criminal activity.
A founding member of the American Civil Liberties
Union, Flynn was active in the campaign against the conviction
of Sacco-Vanzetti. Flynn was particularly
concerned with women's rights. She supported
birth control and women's suffrage.
Flynn also criticised the leadership of trade
unions for being male dominated and not reflecting the needs of
women.
In 1936 Flynn joined the Communist Party
and wrote a feminist column for his journal, the Daily
Worker. Two years later she was elected to the national committee.
During the Second World War she played an important
role in the campaign for equal economic opportunity and pay for women
and the establishment of day care centres for mothers working in industry.
In 1942 Flynn ran for Congress at large in New
York and received 50,000 votes.
In July 1948 12 leaders of the Communist
Party were arrested and accused of advocating the overthrow of
the U.S. government by force and violence. Flynn launched a campaign
for their release, but in June 1951 was arrested in the second wave
of arrests and charged with violating the Alien
Registration Act.
After a nine-month trial she was found guilty and served two years
in the women's penitentiary at Alderson, West Virginia. She later
wrote an account of her prison experiences in The
Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner
(1955).
After serving five years she was released and soon afterwards became
national chairman of the Communist Party
in 1961. She made several visits to the Soviet
Union and died while there in September, 1964. Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn was given a state funeral in Red Square. In accordance with
her wishes, Flynn's remains were flown to the U.S. for burial in Chicago's
Waldheim Cemetery, near the graves of Eugene
Dennis, Bill Haywood and the Haymarket
Martyrs.
(1)
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, speech about the Paterson
Strike at the New York Civic Club Forum (31st January, 1914)
What is a labour victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing. Workers
must gain economic advantage, but they must also gain revolutionary
spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For workers to gain
a few cents more a day, a few minutes less a day, and go back to work
with the same psychology, the same attitude toward society is to achieve
a temporary gain and not a lasting victory. For workers to go back
with a class-conscious spirit, with an organized and determined attitude
toward society means that even if they have made no economic gain
they have the possibility of gaining in the future.
(2)
Police report on Elizabeth Gurley in 1924.
1906-16, Organizer, lecturer for I.W.W.
1918-24,
Organizer, Workers Defense Union
Arrested
in New York, 1906, free-speech case, dismissed; active in Spokane,
Washington, free-speech fight, 1909; arrested, Missoula, Montana,
1909, in free-speech fight of I.W.W., Spokane, Washington, free-speech
fight of I.W.W., hundreds arrested; in Philadelphia arrested three
times, 1911, at strike meetings of Baldwin Locomotive Works; active
in Lawrence textile strike, 1912; hotel-workers strike, 1912, New
York; Paterson textile strike, 1913; defense work for Ettor-Giovanitti
case, 1912; Mesaba Range strike, Minnesota, 1916; Everett IWW case,
Spokane, Washington, 1916; Joe Hill defense, 1914, Arrested Duluth,
Minnesota, 1917, charged with vagrancy under law passed to stop I.W.W.
and pacifist speakers, case dismissed. Indicted in Chicago IWW case,
1917.
(3)
Mary Heaton Vorse, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
The Nation
(17th February, 1926)
She began this amazing record by getting arrested on a street corner
when she was fifteen. Her father was arrested with her. He never has
been arrested since. It was only the beginning for her.
The judge
inquired, "Do you expect to convert people to socialism by talking
on Broadway?"
She looked
up at him and replied gravely, "Indeed I do."
The judge
sighed deeply in pity. "Dismissed," he said.
Joe O'Brien
gives me a picture other at that time. He was sent to cover the case
of these people who had been arrested for talking socialism on Broadway.
He expected to find a strong-minded harpy. Instead he found a beautiful
child of fifteen, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. A young
Joan of Arc is what she looked like to him with her dark hair hanging
down her back and her blue Irish eyes ringed with black lashes. That
was how she entered the Labor movement. Since then she has never stopped.
Presently
she joined the I.W.W., which was then in its golden age. Full of idealism,
it swept the Northwest. They had free-speech fights everywhere. The
authorities arrested them and more came. They crammed the jails to
bursting.
"In
one town," said Elizabeth, "there were so many in jail that
they let them out during the day. We outside had to feed them. Every
night they went back to jail. At last the wobblies decided that when
the jail opened they would not come out. People came from far and
near to see the wobblies who wouldn't leave jail."
This part
of her life, organizing and fighting the fights of the migratory workers
of the West, is the part other life that she likes most. Her marriage
did not affect her activities. The arrival of her son did. His birth
closed this chapter other life.
My first
sight of her was in Lawrence in the big strike of 1912. I arrived
just after the chief of police had refused to allow the strikers to
send their children to the workers' homes in other towns. There had
been a riot at the railway station. Children had been jostled and
trampled. Women fainted. The town was under martial law. Ettor and
Giovannitti were in jail for murder as accessory before the fact.
I walked
with Bill Haywood into a quick-lunch restaurant. "There's Gurley,"
he said. She was sitting at a lunch counter on a mushroom stool, and
it was as if she were the spirit of this strike that had so much hope
and so much beauty. She was only about twenty-one, but she had gravity
and maturity. She asked me to come and see her at her house. She had
gone on strike, bringing with her her mother and her baby.
There was
ceaseless work for her that winter. Speaking sitting with the strike
committee, going to visit the prisoner in jail, and endlessly raising
money. Speaking, speaking, speaking, taking trains only to run back
to the town that was ramparted by prison-like mills before which soldiers
with fixed bayonets paced all day long. Almost every night when we
didn't dine in the Syrian restaurant we dined in some striker's home,
very largely among the Italians. It seemed to me I had never met so
many fine people before. I did not know people could act the way those
strikers could in Lawrence. Every strike meeting was memorable - the
morning meetings in a building quite a way from the center of things,
owned by someone sympathetic to the strikers, the only place they
were permitted to assemble. The soup kitchen was out here and here
groceries were also distributed and the striking women came from far
and near. They would wait around for a word with Gurley or with Big
Bill. In the midst of this excitement Elizabeth moved calm and tranquil.
For off the platform she is a very quiet person. It was as though
she reserved her tremendous energy for speaking.
The Paterson
textile strike followed Lawrence. In Lawrence there was martial law
and militia. It was stern, cruel, and rigorous. The Paterson authorities
were all of that and besides they were petty, niggling, and hectoring.
Arrests were many. Jail sentences were stiff and given for small cause.
Elizabeth was also arrested, but set free again The Paterson strike
of all the strikes stands out in her memory. She got to know the people,
and their courage and spirit were things that none of us who were
there could ever forget.
The strike
on the Mesaba Range was the end of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's activities
as organizer in the I.W.W. Just after the Espionage Act had been passed
it happened that we went to the theater together. "If I were
in the I.W.W. now," she said, "whether I opened my mouth
or didn't I would surely be arrested. It's rather nice to draw a long
breath." Next day she was arrested just the same. She was one
of the 166 people associated with the I.W.W. indicted for conspiracy.
Defense
work was no new thing to her, and from 1918 until recently her major
activities have been getting political prisoners out of jail. And
since 1921 she has concentrated on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. There
has been constant work,
there have been arrests, there has been her preoccupation with comrades
in jail for their opinions. She comes out of
her first twenty years in the labor movement undimmed and undiscouraged.
(4)
Hugo Black, Supreme Court Judge, statement
on the conviction of the twelve leaders of the Communist Party (June
4, 1951)
At the outset I want to emphasize what the crime involved in this
case is, and what it is not. These petitioners were not charged with
an attempt to overthrow the Government. They were not charged with
overt acts of any kind designed to overthrow the Government. They
were not even charged with saying anything or writing anything designed
to overthrow the Government. The charge was that they agreed to assemble
and to talk and publish certain ideas at a later date. The indictment
is that they conspired to organize the Communist Party and to use
speech or newspapers and other publications in the future to teach
and advocate the forcible overthrow of the Government. No matter how
it is worded, this is a virulent form of prior censorship of speech
and press, which I believe the First Amendment forbids.
But let us assume, contrary to all constitutional ideas of fair criminal
procedure, that petitioners although not indicted for the crime of
actual advocacy, may be punished for it. Even on this radical assumption,
the other opinions in this case show that the only way to affirm these
convictions is to repudiate directly or indirectly the established
"clear and present danger" rule. This the Court does in
a way which greatly restricts the protections afforded by the First
Amendment. The opinions for affirmance indicate that the chief reason
for jettisoning the rule is the expressed fear that advocacy of Communist
doctrine endangers the safety of the Republic. Undoubtedly, a governmental
policy of unfettered communication of ideas does entail dangers. To
the Founders of this Nation, however, the benefits derived from free
expression were worth the risk. I have always believed that the First
Amendment is the keystone of our Government, that the freedoms it
guarantees provide the best insurance against destruction of all freedom.
So long as this Court exercises the power of judicial review of legislation,
I cannot agree that the First Amendment permits us to sustain laws
suppressing freedom of speech and press on the basis of Congress'
or our own notions of mere "reasonableness." Such a doctrine
waters down the First Amendment so that it amounts to little more
than an admonition to Congress. The Amendment as so construed is not
likely to protect any but those "safe" or orthodox views
which rarely need its protection.
Public opinion being what it now is, few will protest the conviction
of these Communist petitioners. There is hope, however, that in calmer
times, when present pressures, passions, and fears subside, this or
some later Court will restore the First Amendment liberties to the
high preferred place where they belong in a free society.
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