Her early life is shrouded in mystery: she herself said she was of mixed Mexican and Native American ancestry; historians believe she was born to an African-American slave, possibly in Virginia, then married a black freedman in Texas.

After Albert Parsons was executed in 1887 following the Haymarket affair, she became internationally famous as an anarchist speaker, touring frequently across the United States and visiting England.

She was helped financially by the Pioneer Aid and Support Association and completed The Life of Albert R. Parsons with her young lover Martin Lacher.

She clashed with Emma Goldman over their differing attitudes to free love and continued her activism as she grew older, supporting Angelo Herndon, Tom Mooney, and the Scottsboro Boys.

[8][9] One story she told was that she was born in Texas to Marie del Gather (who was of Spanish-Mexican ancestry) and John Waller, a Muscogee Native American.

Lucy Parsons always opposed racism and it is likely she had witnessed the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in Waco, while Albert was shot in the leg for helping black people to register to vote.

[13] When the Chicago railroad strike of 1877 occurred as part of the Great Upheaval, Albert Parsons at first told the crowds to remain non-violent and to vote for the Workingmen's Party to achieve political change.

[3]: 43  In November, Albert Parsons founded the American Group of Chicago as local part of the International Working People's Association (IWPA), which contained five of the eight men who would later be the Haymarket affair defendants, namely himself and Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, Oscar Neebe and August Spies.

[18][19] Two days later, August Spies addressed striking workers at the McCormick Reaper factory; Chicago Police and private security guards known as Pinkertons attacked the gathering, shooting at least one person dead.

They arrested the entire staff including Parsons, whom an officer called "a black bitch"; she was released without charge since the police were hoping she would lead them to her partner.

[1]: 226–227 [3]: 81  Other mass arrests and unlawful searches were made and Julius S. Grinnell, the Illinois Attorney General who would go on to prosecute the case, said "Make the raids first then look up the law afterwards".

[3]: 84 [20] Lucy Parsons reported in the Denver Labor Enquirer: "They have invaded the homes of everyone who has ever been known to have raised a voice or sympathized with those who have had aught to say against the present system of robbery and oppression".

All but one of the men were members of the Central Labor Union and the most fervent advocates of propaganda by the deed (including Lucy Parsons and Lizzie Holmes) had not been charged.

[3]: 90, 91  The mainstream media campaign against anarchists was intense, with the Chicago Tribune calling for executions and Texas newspapers revisiting the presumed scandal of Parsons leaving her marriage with Oliver Benton for Albert.

In response, Parsons visited her partner in jail with a journalist from the Tribune and he said he had been romantically attached to Benton's wife but that she was a different person to Lucy.

[3]: 86, 87 [20] Lucy Parsons attended every day of the trial and was there when her partner, George Engel, Fielden, Fischer, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab and Spies were sentenced to death.

Afterwards, she made a seven-week lecture tour in order to raise funds for the defense committee; she addressed more than 200,000 people in places such as Cincinnati, New York and Philadelphia.

[3]: 108  She spoke with the socialist Thomas J. Morgan at a rally in Sheffield, Indiana, which was just across the state line from Illinois, so that the Chicago police were unable to stop the event.

[1]: 322  After his death sentence was announced, Albert Parsons wrote to his wife "I have one request to make of you: Commit no rash act to yourself when I am gone, but take up the great cause of Socialism where I am compelled to lay it down.

In the evening Governor of Illinois Richard J. Oglesby announced that of the other men condemned to death, Fielden and Schwab would have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment and Engel, Fischer, Parsons and Spies would be executed the next day.

[1]: 396 [3]: 138, 140  Twenty years later, she edited and published The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists in Court: When asked if they had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon them: October 7, 8, and 9, 1886 which sold more than 10,000 copies in 18 months.

Chicago police chief George W. Hubbard resolved to stop the event and on the day itself, Lacher and another man were arrested as they protested for Parsons' right to speak.

[3]: 192, 193  In August 1896, her house burned down and her stock of books was damaged, although she later sold fire-damaged copies of Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis and The Life of Albert R.

While Goldman promoted free love, emancipation for women and the freedom of the individual, Parsons (despite having extra-marital sex in her private life) publicly endorsed monogamy, marriage and motherhood, and she still believed in the primacy of the struggle of the working class as a whole.

[1]: 451 [3]: 207 Parsons was visited by anarchist Errico Malatesta in 1900 and the same year made a speech alongside trade unionist Jay Fox at a picnic on Memorial Day.

[3]: 254  She was despondent about the US anarchist movement, discussing its failure with friends such as Nord, yet she continued her activism, supporting Angelo Herndon, Tom Mooney and the Scottsboro Boys.

[3]: 256–258 [27] She went blind, received a pension and lived in poverty in Avondale at North Troy Street with a library of around 3,000 books which featured the work of Engels, French socialists, Victor Hugo, Jack London, Marx, Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy and Voltaire.

[29]: 283 Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary Parsons' fellow activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn remembered her as a passionate speaker and revolutionary.

[5][31] Historians have criticised Parsons' lack of interest in the struggles of African Americans, with her stance reflecting a belief in the need for the working class generally to rise up against its employers, rather than appealing to the need for racial equality.

[35] A historical marker dedicated to Lucy and her husband Albert was erected in 1997 by the City of Chicago at the location of their home, 1908 North Mohawk Street, in the Old Town neighborhood.