workingclasshistory:

On this day, 7 August 1890, legendary US labour organiser, feminist and socialist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born. She played a leading role in the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union, was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and an active fighter for birth control and women’s suffrage.
As an organiser in the IWW, she helped organise campaigns and strikes amongst garment workers in the north-east, miners in Minnesota and much more; she was arrested 10 times, once during a union fight for free-speech in Spokane, Washington.
Flynn later joined the Communist Party, and was one of numerous CP activists to be jailed for advocating “violent overthrow” of the government, serving two years in the Alderson federal prison camp.
Our podcast episode 16 is about women in the early IWW, and features as its theme tune Joe Hill’s song Rebel Girl, inspired by Flynn: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/12/02/e16-women-in-the-early-iww/ https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1778987595619716/?type=3