Albert Richard Parsons

• Albert Richard Parsons
• Born: June 24, 1848
• Died: November 11, 1887

Anarchist and labor organizer, was born in Montgomery, Alabama. He was the youngest of ten children born to Samuel Parsons and Elizabeth (Thompkins) Parsons who had moved to Montgomery from the North in 1830. His father operated a shoe and leather factory. Parsons was orphaned as a young boy, his mother having died when he was less than two and his father when he was five years old.

Parsons lived in an older brother’s household in Tyler, Texas, until he was eleven. His education in public schools ended at the age of thirteen, when he was apprenticed as a printer to a Galveston newspaper. Soon afterward the Civil War broke out. Parsons joined a volunteer Confederate company and later enlisted in the regular Confederate forces.

At the end of the war Parsons returned to Waco, Texas, where he briefly attended college. His iconoclastic spirit expressed itself in 1868 when he established the Waco Spectator in support of Reconstruction. Given white Texans’ hostility to these policies, the Republican newspaper had little chance of surviving, and Parsons soon had to abandon it because of a lack of subscribers. He worked at several jobs during the next few years. One of these was as a traveling correspondent for the Houston Daily Telegraph. During his travels he met Lucy Eldine Gonzalez, whom he married on June 10, 1872. They had two children, Albert Richard Jr. and Lulu Eda.

In 1873 Parsons moved to Chicago where he became a typesetter on the Times and a member of the typographical union. With thousands of people out of work because of a depression, Parsons began to think about the labor question. He became a socialist and in 1875 joined the Social-Democratic party which was to merge into the Socialistic Labor party in 1878. Parsons played an active role in these parties as a speaker and writer.

Dismissed by the Times in 1877 because of his labor activities, Parsons devoted all his energy tolabor agitation. In the late 1870s the Socialistic Labor party was committed to a strategy of running candidates for office. Parsons took part in the campaigns and even ran unsuccessfully for several offices. By 1880, however, he rejected this political strategy, believing that through fraud and corruption the wealthy would always deny to socialist candidates the offices to which they had been honestly elected.

Parsons began turning toward anarchism and became involved in the International Working People’s Association (IWPA). Within the IWPA a New York faction supported individualistic acts of violence, while a Chicago faction called for concentrating on trade union organization. Parsons and other members of the Chicago group had no faith that trade union demands were sufficient or would be granted. Parsons believed instead that the trade unions served to organize workers and to prepare them for the inevitable necessity of violently overthrowing capitalism and the existing political system. In 1884, Parsons began editing The Alarm, the newspaper of the Chicago branch of the IWPA. He also conducted extensive speaking tours, particularly in the Midwest, in order to bring native-born workers into the IWPA.

The Chicago IWPA faction also threw its support behind the demand for the eight-hour day. This movement was initiated in 1884 by the city’s trade unions which called for a massive strike in May 1886. The IWPA had no hope that the movement would succeed but regarded it as a vehicle for radicalizing workers. Because the IWPA dominated the Chicago Central Labor Council, it was able to organize large demonstrations in preparation for the impending strike.

In May 1886 thousands of workers did strike, including workers at the Harvester plant. On May 3 a large force of police attacked a group of strikers demonstrating in front of the factory. At least one person was killed and many were wounded. A protest meeting was held the next day at the Haymarket. Parsons was among the IWPA leaders who spoke there. The meeting went peacefully until the end when most of the crowd had left. The police began to disperse those still there, and suddenly a bomb was thrown, killing one policeman and fatally wounding several others.

The public reacted hysterically to this act. Radicals were rounded up and eight anarchists, including Parsons, were charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Parsons had fled Chicago on May 3, but he returned for the trial, which began in June. Basic legal principles were violated during the course of the trial. The defendants were essentially tried for their political views. The jury found them guilty. Parsons and six of the others were sentenced to death. Unavailing appeals were made to the state supreme court and the United States Supreme Court.

The case received national attention, and many people appealed to the Illinois governor to spare the men’s lives. Parsons might well have had his sentence commuted, but he refused to ask for clemency, believing that commutation of his sentence would ensure the execution of his comrades. Ultimately, two of the men’s sentences were commuted, and a third committed suicide. Parsons and three others were hanged on November 11, 1887. In 1893, Governor John P. Altgeld pardoned the imprisoned men and condemned the trial.

Were it not for his trial and execution, Parsons probably would not be remembered. Though a skillful agitator, he led a fringe movement, and his views were not well thought out. In meeting his death, however, Parsons demonstrated personal qualities of bravery and devotion.

For information on Parsons, see the article on him in The Dictionary of American Biography by W. J. Ghent. See also L. E. Parsons, Life of Albert R. Parsons (1889); A. Calmer, Labor Agitator (1937); and F. Harris, The Bomb (1909). Parson’s anarchistic views are expressed in Anarchism (1887). An obituary appeared in The Chicago Tribune, November 11 and 12, 1887.