Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley

▪ American activist

born Aug. 7, 1890, Concord, N.H., U.S.

died Sept. 5, 1964, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.

      American labour organizer, political radical, and communist.

      Flynn was the daughter of working-class socialists. While still in grammar school she was active in local socialist clubs, and in 1906 she joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). She left high school in 1907 to devote full time to organizing for the IWW. She took part in the IWW's "free speech" campaigns in Missoula, Montana, in Spokane, Washington, and in other cities and was arrested several times. Back east she helped organize the Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile strike of 1912 and the Paterson, New Jersey, strike of 1913. She raised relief and legal defense funds for the Mesabi iron miners' strike in Minnesota in 1916. In 1918 she helped establish and until 1922 served as secretary of the Workers' Liberty Defense Union, in 1920 she was a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, and in 1927–30 she was chairman of International Labor Defense. In the post-World War I years she was mainly engaged in legal defense of labour and political agitators and aliens who were threatened with deportation for their political views. She was also a key fund-raiser in the Sacco and Vanzetti case (Sacco-Vanzetti case).

      After a lengthy period of ill health, Flynn resumed her political activities in the 1930s, and in 1937 she joined the Communist Party. Three years later she was removed from the national committee of the American Civil Liberties Union for her Communist Party membership. She was a tireless organizer and writer on behalf of the party, and she gained a reputation as a rousing platform speaker. She was arrested along with 12 other Communist leaders in 1951 and in 1953 was convicted of violating the 1940 Smith Alien Registration Act and was confined in the federal women's reformatory in Alderson, West Virginia, from January 1955 to May 1957. Her I Speak My Own Piece: Autobiography of “The Rebel Girl” was published in 1955. (“The Rebel Girl” was a song written by the IWW's minstrel, Joe Hill (Hill, Joe), and inspired by the young Flynn.) In March 1961 she was chosen chairman of the national committee of the Communist Party of the United States. She was the first woman to hold the post, and she retained it until her death. A suit carried to the Supreme Court (Aptheker v. Secretary of State), challenging the constitutionality of a provision of the 1950 Subversive Activities Control Act that denied the issuance of passports to communists, was won in 1964, and she promptly secured a passport in order to visit the Soviet Union. When she died that year, she was given a state funeral in Red Square.

Additional Reading

Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall (ed.), Words on Fire: The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1987); and Helen C. Camp, Iron in Her Soul (1995), examine Flynn's life and work.

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