Katana VentraIP

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (August 7, 1890 – September 5, 1964) was an American labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in Red Square attended by over 25,000 people.[1]

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Eugene Dennis

Henry Winston

(1890-08-07)August 7, 1890
Concord, New Hampshire, U.S.

September 5, 1964(1964-09-05) (aged 74)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

Waldheim Cemetery, Chicago

Communist

Labor leader, activist

Career[edit]

Industrial Workers of the World[edit]

In 1907, Flynn became a full-time organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW; also known as the "Wobblies"), and attended her first IWW convention in September of that year.[5] Over the next few years she organized campaigns among garment workers in Pennsylvania, silk weavers in New Jersey, restaurant workers in New York, miners in Minnesota, Missoula, Montana, and Spokane, Washington; and textile workers in Massachusetts. During this period, author Theodore Dreiser described her as "an East Side Joan of Arc".


In 1909, Flynn participated in a free speech fight in Spokane, in which she chained herself to a lamp-post in order to delay her arrest.[6] She later accused the police of using the jail as a brothel,[7] an accusation that prompted them to try to confiscate all copies of the Industrial Worker reporting the charge. On March 4, 1910, Spokane relented, giving the IWW the right to hold speech meetings and letting all IWW protestors free.[8][9]

In popular culture[edit]

A fictionalized version of Flynn is depicted in John Updike's novel In the Beauty of the Lilies in which she is said to have had an affair with the anarchist Carlo Tresca, supported by Flynn's letters and memoir. Tresca had also had a relationship with Flynn's sister Bina, and was the father of her nephew, Peter D. Martin.[39][40]


Flynn is depicted in Jess Walter's novel The Cold Millions.[41]


Flynn is also portrayed in the musical "Joe Hill Revival".[42]


Flynn appears as a potential leader for the Combined Syndicates of America in the Hearts of Iron 4 mod Kaiserreich.

Matilda Robbins

Cleveland, OH: IWW Publishing Bureau, 1916.

Sabotage: The Conscious Withdrawal of the Workers' Industrial Efficiency.

Debs, Haywood, Ruthenberg, New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1939.

I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier — for Wall Street. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1940.

Earl Browder: The Man from Kansas. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1941.

Questions and Answers on the Browder Case. New York: Citizens' Committee to Free Earl Browder, 1941.

Coal Miners and the War. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1942.

Women in the War. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1942.

Daughters of America: Ella Reeve Bloor, Anita Whitney. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1942.

Women Have a Date with Destiny. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1944.

New York: Communist Party, U.S.A., 1946.

Meet the Communists.

Woman's Place in the Fight for a Better World. New York, New Century Publishers, 1947.

The Twelve and You: What Happens to Democracy is Your Business, Too! New York: New Century Publishers, 1948.

Labor's Own William Z. Foster: A Communist's Fifty Years of Working-Class Leadership and Struggle. New York: New Century Publishers, 1949.

Stool-Pigeon. New York: New Century Publishers, 1949.

The Plot to Gag America. New York: New Century Publishers, 1950.

A Message to All Women Communists from Elizabeth Gurley Flynn on Mother's Day, May 1950. New York: National Women's Commission, Communist Party, U.S.A., 1950.

Debs and Dennis, Fighters for Peace. New York: New Century Publishers, 1950.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks to the Court: Opening Statement to the Court and Statement in the Case of the Sixteen Smith Act Victims in the Trial at Foley Square, New York. New York: New Century Publishers, 1952.

13 Communists Speak to the Court. New York: New Century Publishers, 1953.

New York, New Century Publishers, 1953.

Communists and the People: Summation Speech to the Jury in the Second Foley Square Smith Act Trial of Thirteen Communist Leaders.

I Speak My Own Piece: Autobiography of "The Rebel Girl." New York: Masses and Mainstream 1955.

An Appeal to Women. New York: Campaign Committee, People's Rights Party, 1955.

Horizons of the Future for a Socialist America. New York: Communist Party, USA, 1959.

Freedom Begins at Home. New York: New Century Publishers, 1961.

Ben Davis on the McCarran Act at the Harvard Law Forum. by New York: Gus Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee, 1962. (introduction)

Benjamin J. Davis

The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner. New York: International Publishers, 1963.

The McCarran Act, Fact and Fancy. New York: Gus Hall-Benjamin J. Davis Defense Committee, 1963.

The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926). New York: International Publishers, 1973. —Revised and amended edition of I Speak My Own Piece.

New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1977.

Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Lara Vapnek, . New York: Routledge, 2015

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Modern American Revolutionary

Caballero, Raymond. McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.

Words on Fire: The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Rutgers University Press, 1987.

Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall

Helen C. Camp, Iron In Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1995.

Mary Anne Trasciatti, "Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, and the Rise and Fall of the Liberal-Radical Alliance, 1920-1940," American Communist History, vol. 15, no. 2 (Aug. 2016), pp. 191–216.

The Cold Millions. New York: HarperCollins, 2020

Jess Walter

Sabotage, The Conscious Withdrawal of the Workers' Industrial Efficiency

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. . Archived from the original on October 27, 2009.

"Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)"

–Reprint from the Communist Party USA's People's Weekly World

The Rebel Girl: A Remembrance

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Works by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

at Dartmouth College Library

The Papers of Elizabeth G. Flynn

and The Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Photographs at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University Special Collections

The Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Papers