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Iron in Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left
In 1906, speaking from a homemade soapbox near Times Square, 16-year-old Elizabeth Gurley Flynn stopped traffic on a Saturday night. Broadway producer David Belasco became so impressed he wanted to put her on stage. But she told him, "I'm in the labor movement and I speak my own piece."
And for more than 50 years this fiery American radical truly did speak her own piece, crossing and recrossing the United States, crusading for her brand of humane socialism. As the only woman leader of the Industrial Workers of the World she organized immigrant factory workers in the East, iron ore miners on Minnesota's Mesabi Range, and lumberjacks in the Pacific Northwest.
When the Red Scare that accompanied World War I gutted the Wobblies, she became a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. By the late Thirties, afraid that the "revolution" would pass her by, she joined the American Communist Party and was instantly thrust into the top ranks of its leadership. In 1961 she became the first woman to chair the party. Arrested more than a dozen times for exercising her right to free speech, she was a natural victim of McCarthyism, serving a three-year prison sentence in the 1950s.
After more than a decade of research, Helen C. Camp has produced the first full-length biography of the most notable American radical of the twentieth century. Based on Flynn's personal papers and writings, memoirs of her friends and colleagues, personal interviews, FBI files and trial transcripts, and other important unpublished materials in a wide range of historical repositories, Iron in Her Soul is an exhaustively researched, yet dramatic and readable account of a remarkable life.
And for more than 50 years this fiery American radical truly did speak her own piece, crossing and recrossing the United States, crusading for her brand of humane socialism. As the only woman leader of the Industrial Workers of the World she organized immigrant factory workers in the East, iron ore miners on Minnesota's Mesabi Range, and lumberjacks in the Pacific Northwest.
When the Red Scare that accompanied World War I gutted the Wobblies, she became a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. By the late Thirties, afraid that the "revolution" would pass her by, she joined the American Communist Party and was instantly thrust into the top ranks of its leadership. In 1961 she became the first woman to chair the party. Arrested more than a dozen times for exercising her right to free speech, she was a natural victim of McCarthyism, serving a three-year prison sentence in the 1950s.
After more than a decade of research, Helen C. Camp has produced the first full-length biography of the most notable American radical of the twentieth century. Based on Flynn's personal papers and writings, memoirs of her friends and colleagues, personal interviews, FBI files and trial transcripts, and other important unpublished materials in a wide range of historical repositories, Iron in Her Soul is an exhaustively researched, yet dramatic and readable account of a remarkable life.
396 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1995
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November 4, 2024
This is a good book, and I wanted to rate it higher, but the story of Flynn's life after the IWW isn't terribly interesting. It's mostly about the machinations inside the American Communist Party. The author had access to Flynn's notes, so it has an advantage over her autobiography, which ends not too long after the IWW years, and in that way it's valuable, though for me, she didn't show the same leadership during those years and became more of a secondary figure.
Flynn deserves to be more well known, and I'm sure that it's the political bias against communism in the US that keeps her from being seen as more of a heroine.
Flynn deserves to be more well known, and I'm sure that it's the political bias against communism in the US that keeps her from being seen as more of a heroine.
Displaying 1 of 1 review