Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley

FLYNN, ELIZABETH GURLEY (1890–1964). Christened “the Rebel Girl” by Wobbly bard Joe Hill, Flynn was a “jawsmith” for the Industrial Workers of the World (1906–1928) and a great orator, which in the era of street life and mass strikes was like being a media star today. In the major East Coast strikes—Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Paterson and Passaic, New Jersey—she agitated and led the immigrant workers. To her, labor defense was vital to organizing, and in this capacity she participated in the free-speech fights in Missoula, Montana (1908), and Spokane, Washington (1909–1910). She brought to the English-speaking public the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, with which she was intimately involved for seven years (1919–1926). She organized the Workers Defense League to fight for the victims of the Palmer Raids and was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union, which ousted her in 1940 because she was a member of the Communist Party.

Flynn’s life was illustrious and stormy. Her parents were radical Irish immigrants, and although born in Concord, New Hampshire, she grew up in the poverty of the South Bronx. After a brief marriage she left her husband, returned to her family, and remained with them most of her life. Her mother and her sister Kathie, a schoolteacher, raised her son, Fred (1911–1940), who died tragically as the result of an operation. From 1928 to 1938 Flynn rested and recovered from physical and mental exhaustion owing to fatiguing labor battles and a tragic love affair with the anarchist organizer and womanizer Carlo Tresca.

After this breakdown she joined the Communist Party (although she occasionally claimed to have joined in 1928) and rose quickly, joining the Party’s National Board in 1941. In the Communist Party she was mainly a figurehead and rarely dissented from the major Party line, avoiding conflict and feeling outclassed intellectually by the sophisticated, college-educated city folk. Having no base of support, Flynn always felt uncomfortable in the Party, having come in at the top instead of having risen from the ranks. She was one of their most popular speakers and columnists, faithfully writing two to four times a week for twenty-six years for the Daily Worker. Her constituency were the rough-and-tumble miners and immigrant workers, and she preferred militant organizing to bureaucratic and reform work.

Flynn was indicted with the top Party leadership under the Smith act and endured, with great flair and eloquence, a nine-month trial, where she provided her own defense. She was sentenced to a three-year term in the Alderson Federal Penitentiary and served from January 1955 through May 1957. When she returned to active political life, the Party was in disarray. She had missed the vital 1956 period of reassessment and reevaluation, which served her well, since it meant she wasn’t connected with either the hard-line, Moscow-oriented William Z. Foster faction or the more reform John Gates group. She sided with the middle-of-the-road, compromise Eugene Dennis position and in 1961 became the first woman selected as national chairman. She ran for state assembly, headed the Woman’s Commission, and traveled abroad.

Flynn grew discouraged with the Party’s tired old leadership, policy, and morals, but only criticized Party policy privately. She still saw herself as part of an international movement, but she longed to retire and write the second half of her memoirs. While awaiting jail in 1955 she had written the autobiography of her “first life” (1906–1926), The Rebel Girl (1955), and after, a prison memoir, The Alderson Story (1963).

She died in the Soviet Union and was given an elaborate state funeral. However, she always felt part of the American people and had requested that her ashes remain near the Haymarket martyrs in Chicago. She was no feminist, but she was an exceptional woman in the male-dominated Industrial Workers of the World and Communist Party. In her later life she regretted that she hadn’t fought more against male chauvinism. She inspired many women, however, with her colorful speeches and example.

Baxandall, Rosalyn. Words on Fire: The Life and Writings of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

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

Guide to the Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Papers TAM.118. Tamiment Library and Robert F; Wagner Labor Archives, New York University. http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_118/

Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life, 1906–1926. New York: International Publishers, 1955.

Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. The Alderson Story. New York: International Publishers, 1963.

Lamont, Corliss, ed. The Trial of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by the American Civil Liberties Union. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968.

Vapnek,Lara. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Modern American Revolutionary. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 2015.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, “Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World,” web edition. Eugene Plawiuk, 1997.