Albert Richard Parsons (June 20 1848 - 11 November 1887) was an anarchist labor activist, hanged under doubtful circumstances following a bomb attack on police at the Haymarket Riot.
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Ancestry
In his autobiography Parsons' claimed that an immigrant ancestor arrived at Narragansett Bay from England some time in 1632. One of the Tompkins on his mother's side was with George Washington in the revolution and fought at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also a descendant of Major General Samuel Holden Parsons of Massachusetts, an officer in the revolution, as well as a Captain Parsons who was wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Birth
Albert Parsons was born on June 20 or 24, 1848 in Montgomery, Alabama to Samuel Parsons (?-1853) of Maine. His mother was a Tompkins-Broadwell of New Jersey, who died in 1850. The parents had moved to Montgomery, Alabama where Samuel had started a shoe and leather factory and they'd had ten children. One step brother was William Henry Parsons {1826-1907}. Parsons called his brother a "general". William H. Parsons was the Colonel of the 12th Regiment, Texas Cavalry {Parson's Mounted Volunteers}.
Civil War
At age 13, in 1861 he volunteered to fight for the Confederacy in the American Civil War in a unit known as the "Lone Star Greys." In 1861. His first military exploit was on the passenger steamer Morgan where he made a trip into the Gulf of Mexico and intercepted and assisted in the capture of General David E. Twiggs's army which had evacuated the Texas frontier and headed to Indianapolis to leave for Washington, DC.
Reconstruction
He later regretted his support for slavery and personally apologized to the black nanny who raised him as an orphan. Living in Texas with his brother William, he married Lucy Ella Gonzales (or Waller), a woman of mixed African American, Native, Mexican and Caucasian heritage, who also became famous as an activist as Lucy Parsons. Pressure from the Ku Klux Klan over their interracial marriage forced them to leave the South and they moved north to Chicago.
Labor politics
In Chicago, he became an anarchist (libertarian socialist), labor activist, and finally a founding member of the International Working People's Association (IWPA). Albert Parsons became recording secretary of the Chicago Eight-Hour League in 1878, and was appointed a member of a national eight-hour committee in 1880. On May 1, 1886, Parsons, with his wife Lucy and two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, in what is regarded as the first-ever May Day Parade, in support of the eight-hour work day. Over the next few days 340,000 laborers joined the strike.
Haymarket Square
Parsons addressed a rally at Haymarket Square on May 4. At the end of the event, after Parsons left and as the audience was already drifting away, police requested the crowd to disperse. At that point a bomb thrown into the square exploded, killing four policemen. Seven men were arrested afterward. Parsons avoided arrest and moved to Waukesha, Wisconsin, where he remained until June 21; afterward, he turned himself in to stand in solidarity with his comrades. There were witnesses to testify that none of the eight threw the bomb. However, all were found guilty, and only Oscar Neebe was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while the rest of them were sentenced to death. Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab asked for clemency and their sentences were commuted to life in prison on November 10, 1887, by Governor Richard James Oglesby. (The three were pardoned by Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld and released on June 26, 1893.) Of the remaining five, Louis Lingg killed himself in his cell with a cigar bomb on November 10, 1887, and Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel were hanged the next day.
His wife, Lucia Gonzales Parsons, was noteworthy in her own right. She was a feminist, journalist, and labor leader, and one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World.
External links
- Autobiography of Albert Parsons
- Albert Parsons
- A Song for Albert Parsons by Luke Tan
- Meet the Haymarket Defendants
