The Anarchist’s Pamphleteer
While the nation held its breath over the Haymarket executions in Chicago, a woman faced down Seattle police to distribute radical literature on Government Square.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
As the date for the scheduled execution of the Chicago anarchists approached, Mrs. Lucy Parsons appeared on the streets of Seattle with an armful of pamphlets. An enormous crowd soon collected about her, and the officers compelled her to move on. The Chief of Police ordered, however, that she be allowed to sell the pamphlets, but not to cause a blockade on the street. She admitted the justice of this, but soon after took up her stand on Government Square, she having been advised by friends that the city police could not molest her there. Soon after, however, another tremendous crowd congregated around her and a Deputy United States Marshal made her move on. She then walked up and down the street selling the pamphlets until she was exhausted. The person who furnished the pamphlets said she sold fully 3,000 copies at five cents each.
“The justice, which is being distributed under the sanction of Jay Gould, Vanderbilt, et al., wears not only a bandage over her eyes but also a watchword on her breast which reads: 'The Public be damned.'”
Lucy Parsons, a powerful labor organizer, was a frequent target of surveillance during the 'Red Scare' atmosphere of the late 19th century. Her presence in Seattle’s Government Square—now Pioneer Square—highlights the historical role of the city as a hotbed of radical organizing and the recurring tension between public dissent and municipal control of sidewalk space.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.