Lucy Parsons (1853-1942) was a radical labor organizer, anarchist and is remembered as a powerful orator. She was born in Texas (likely as a slave) to parents of Native American, Black American and Mexican ancestry.

In 1871 she married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier, and both were forced to flee from Texas north to Chicago because of the intolerance caused by their interracial marriage.

Described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters", Lucy Parsons and her husband became highly effective anarchist organizers primarily involved in the labor movement but also participating in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color, the homeless and women.

In 1886, her husband Albert, who had been heavily involved in the labor movement for the eight-hour day , was arrested and executed by the state of Illinois on charges that he had conspired in the Haymarket Riot—an event which was widely regarded as a political frame-up, and which marked the beginning of May Day labor rallies in protest.

In 1905, she participated in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1939 she renounced anarchism as a counter-revolutionary ideology and joined the American Communist Party. She died in 1942. The state still viewed Lucy Parsons as such threat to the status quo that after her death, police seized her library of over 1500 books and all of her personal papers.