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The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life
An epic firsthand account of women and labor in the early years of the 20th century. The fiery IWW, labor defense & Communist leader writes vividly of her early life.
Dedication
Preface
Illustrations
Childhood & Early Youth
Socialist & IWW Agitator, 1906-12
The Lawrence Textile Strike
The Paterson Silk Strike
The IWW, 1912-14
World War I & Its Aftermath
Sacco & Vanzetti
Index
originally published by Masses & Mainstream
Dedication
Preface
Illustrations
Childhood & Early Youth
Socialist & IWW Agitator, 1906-12
The Lawrence Textile Strike
The Paterson Silk Strike
The IWW, 1912-14
World War I & Its Aftermath
Sacco & Vanzetti
Index
originally published by Masses & Mainstream
351 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
About the author
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
34 books14 followersA labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the American Communist Party in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
December 31, 2023
Fantastic memoir from one of the best US labor organizers of the early 20th century. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was at the nexus of working class organizing during the height of the IWW and her viewpoint from within the movement is very valuable for us today. Lots of good lessons on how to build a movement, the one real shame being that her later work was so hampered by her repression by the US government.
Great book, big time recommend!
Great book, big time recommend!
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March 29, 2011THE REBEL GIRL
An autobiography – My first life 1906 – 1926
By Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
I’ve always had a soft spot for romantic, idealistic, revolutionaries, not the bomb-throwers or advocates of assassination and other forms of violence but those that devoted their lives to fighting for a better life for the working people of the world. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was one of those indomitable thorns in the side of the Robber Barons during that turbulent period of the labor movement in the early part of the Twentieth Century.
She was born into a family of Irish rebels and socialists in Concord Massachusetts in 1890. Her father, a self-educated quarry worker gained entrance to Dartmouth but was unable to finish because he had to support his mother and siblings after the untimely death of his brother. He took a job as a mapmaker and the family traveled with him from job to job until 1900 when they landed in the South Bronx of New York City and her mother, tired of traveling decided to stay there.
While attending grammar school PS she won a silver medal for, “merit in an Essay on the City’s History” from the New York Times and a gold medal on graduation in 1904 in English and one for proficiency in debate. She continued with debating after grammar school and was invited to speak at the Harlem Socialist Club in 1906 where she spoke on, “What Socialism Will do for Women.” This brought her invitations to speak on the street where she learned technique and success can lead to arrest.
While speaking in the theater district of Broadway she attracted the attention of producer David Belasco who invited her to his office and asked if she would like to be an actress in a new production on labor to which she replied; “…I’m in the labor movement and I speak my own piece.” During that same time a young unknown editor of Broadway Magazine named Theodore Dreiser heard her and wrote about her as “…an ardent Socialist orator,” in an article he entitled, “An Eastside Joan of Arc.”
That same year she left school and joined mixed local #179 of the IWW in New York. She spoke on the Russian workers slaughtered and imprisoned after the 1905 Revolution by the Tsar and at fundraisers in defense of Big Bill Haywood, George Pettibone and Christopher Moyer, leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, accused of murdering Idaho Governor Steunenberg. All three were acquitted.
She married Jack Jones, a miner and IWW organizer in 1908 while speaking in favor of the strikers on the Mesabi Range in Minnesota. She became pregnant, they moved to Chicago but the baby died shortly after a premature birth. She threw herself back into activity. She did a national tour through the Northwest and Canada then rejoined her husband and they worked the free speech fight in Missoula Montana until she went to Spokane as a speaker in another free speech fight where she was put in charge of the paper The Industrial Worker and spoke only in IWW halls because she was again pregnant. In April of 1909 she determined that she was no longer in love with her husband who had not come the days travel from Missoula to see her and wanted her to give up speaking and “settle down.” She went home to New York and to have her baby. Fred, who later bragged he had been in jail twice in defense of free speech before he was born, arrived the day before Haley’s Comet traversed the firmament May 19, 1910.
E. Gurley Flynn continued speaking and advocating for Socialism and the IWW in fights for free speech, defense organizations for framed labor leaders, strikes and the improvement of life for working people across the country. The final chapter of her first life, which ends in 1926 is the struggle to save Sacco and Vanzetti a year before they were executed in August 1927.
The book is a travelogue through the labor struggles that took place before and during a period more often referred to as the “Roaring twenties” and associated with the flappers in short skirts and rolled down stockings and prohibition than the Ludlow Massacre Where a Rockefeller owned mining company hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to supplement the Colorado National Guard in murdering 19 women and children living in a tent city and the fire in Triangle Shirtwaist fire that killed 146 textile workers in New York. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s Autobiography takes you through all of the struggles and battles that get short shrift in textbooks on U.S. history.
The second half of her Autobiography was never completed. She died shortly after beginning it in 1964 at 74. She had intended it to be a book on the life of an active communist as opposed to the life of an ex-communist of which there several. Her statement was, after being released from Alderman Prison after serving time for “… for attempting to overthrow the government,” “I will never move from where I stand.” She went back to work defending workers and others from the ravages of McCarthyism. We could use more like her.
An autobiography – My first life 1906 – 1926
By Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
I’ve always had a soft spot for romantic, idealistic, revolutionaries, not the bomb-throwers or advocates of assassination and other forms of violence but those that devoted their lives to fighting for a better life for the working people of the world. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was one of those indomitable thorns in the side of the Robber Barons during that turbulent period of the labor movement in the early part of the Twentieth Century.
She was born into a family of Irish rebels and socialists in Concord Massachusetts in 1890. Her father, a self-educated quarry worker gained entrance to Dartmouth but was unable to finish because he had to support his mother and siblings after the untimely death of his brother. He took a job as a mapmaker and the family traveled with him from job to job until 1900 when they landed in the South Bronx of New York City and her mother, tired of traveling decided to stay there.
While attending grammar school PS she won a silver medal for, “merit in an Essay on the City’s History” from the New York Times and a gold medal on graduation in 1904 in English and one for proficiency in debate. She continued with debating after grammar school and was invited to speak at the Harlem Socialist Club in 1906 where she spoke on, “What Socialism Will do for Women.” This brought her invitations to speak on the street where she learned technique and success can lead to arrest.
While speaking in the theater district of Broadway she attracted the attention of producer David Belasco who invited her to his office and asked if she would like to be an actress in a new production on labor to which she replied; “…I’m in the labor movement and I speak my own piece.” During that same time a young unknown editor of Broadway Magazine named Theodore Dreiser heard her and wrote about her as “…an ardent Socialist orator,” in an article he entitled, “An Eastside Joan of Arc.”
That same year she left school and joined mixed local #179 of the IWW in New York. She spoke on the Russian workers slaughtered and imprisoned after the 1905 Revolution by the Tsar and at fundraisers in defense of Big Bill Haywood, George Pettibone and Christopher Moyer, leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, accused of murdering Idaho Governor Steunenberg. All three were acquitted.
She married Jack Jones, a miner and IWW organizer in 1908 while speaking in favor of the strikers on the Mesabi Range in Minnesota. She became pregnant, they moved to Chicago but the baby died shortly after a premature birth. She threw herself back into activity. She did a national tour through the Northwest and Canada then rejoined her husband and they worked the free speech fight in Missoula Montana until she went to Spokane as a speaker in another free speech fight where she was put in charge of the paper The Industrial Worker and spoke only in IWW halls because she was again pregnant. In April of 1909 she determined that she was no longer in love with her husband who had not come the days travel from Missoula to see her and wanted her to give up speaking and “settle down.” She went home to New York and to have her baby. Fred, who later bragged he had been in jail twice in defense of free speech before he was born, arrived the day before Haley’s Comet traversed the firmament May 19, 1910.
E. Gurley Flynn continued speaking and advocating for Socialism and the IWW in fights for free speech, defense organizations for framed labor leaders, strikes and the improvement of life for working people across the country. The final chapter of her first life, which ends in 1926 is the struggle to save Sacco and Vanzetti a year before they were executed in August 1927.
The book is a travelogue through the labor struggles that took place before and during a period more often referred to as the “Roaring twenties” and associated with the flappers in short skirts and rolled down stockings and prohibition than the Ludlow Massacre Where a Rockefeller owned mining company hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to supplement the Colorado National Guard in murdering 19 women and children living in a tent city and the fire in Triangle Shirtwaist fire that killed 146 textile workers in New York. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s Autobiography takes you through all of the struggles and battles that get short shrift in textbooks on U.S. history.
The second half of her Autobiography was never completed. She died shortly after beginning it in 1964 at 74. She had intended it to be a book on the life of an active communist as opposed to the life of an ex-communist of which there several. Her statement was, after being released from Alderman Prison after serving time for “… for attempting to overthrow the government,” “I will never move from where I stand.” She went back to work defending workers and others from the ravages of McCarthyism. We could use more like her.
June 23, 2020
An interesting memoir of the struggles of different labour group in the USA at the turn of the 20th century. Many long battles for decent wages and an 8 hour work week. Child labour was also in vogue and their used to be company towns where corporations owned everything.
It's very clear how police and hired goons beat up and sometimes killed people for just wanting to start a union. You could get arrested for handing out pamphlets about socialism or birth control...A very telling book about corporations, society and workers.
It's very clear how police and hired goons beat up and sometimes killed people for just wanting to start a union. You could get arrested for handing out pamphlets about socialism or birth control...A very telling book about corporations, society and workers.
June 11, 2011
The Rebel Girl is a memoir by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of her early work as a Socialist labor organizer for the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World). The first chapter tells of her life growing up in an Irish-American family. Her mother was an Irish nationalist and a feminist while her father was a Socialist. When she was 16 Elizabeth gave her first speech at a New York Socialist meeting on the rights of women.
She was so good at public speaking that it became her life's work, traveling all over the US while still a teenager. Mining towns in the Rockies and Minnesota, lumber camps in the Northwest, textiles strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey are all places she went to help workers fight for safe working conditions and living wages.
Later on she talks of ideological struggles within the IWW leadership, her two marriages and raising a child, World War I, and the oppressive atmosphere in the US after the war against the Left. The Rebel Girl ends with the trial and appeals for the two Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.
The book was meant to be the first volume of her autobiography covering 1906 to 1924, her years before joining the Communist Party, and was first published in 1955. She died before she could complete the second volume which was to cover the 35 years she spent as a Communist.
Flynn is a great writer and tells her story of the early 20th century labor movement well. As a first person account, it is full of detail and personal perspective. At times I longed for a more objective account of some events for balance and this book has encouraged me to read further about the events described.
She was so good at public speaking that it became her life's work, traveling all over the US while still a teenager. Mining towns in the Rockies and Minnesota, lumber camps in the Northwest, textiles strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey are all places she went to help workers fight for safe working conditions and living wages.
Later on she talks of ideological struggles within the IWW leadership, her two marriages and raising a child, World War I, and the oppressive atmosphere in the US after the war against the Left. The Rebel Girl ends with the trial and appeals for the two Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.
The book was meant to be the first volume of her autobiography covering 1906 to 1924, her years before joining the Communist Party, and was first published in 1955. She died before she could complete the second volume which was to cover the 35 years she spent as a Communist.
Flynn is a great writer and tells her story of the early 20th century labor movement well. As a first person account, it is full of detail and personal perspective. At times I longed for a more objective account of some events for balance and this book has encouraged me to read further about the events described.
March 4, 2021
E.G. Flynn you are an inspiration and this is my love letter to you:
Thank you for being a trail blazer, a fearless leader and unstoppable force. You are a pivotal in the labor movement and I don't think you receive the recognition your deserve. Consider this my promise to you, to keep fighting for the collective. Your wildly radical ideas ring true today and I can't thank you enough for penning them so all socialist in the making can pick up where you have left off.
From one comrade to another (and with love)
Thank you for being a trail blazer, a fearless leader and unstoppable force. You are a pivotal in the labor movement and I don't think you receive the recognition your deserve. Consider this my promise to you, to keep fighting for the collective. Your wildly radical ideas ring true today and I can't thank you enough for penning them so all socialist in the making can pick up where you have left off.
From one comrade to another (and with love)
June 24, 2022
"The Notorious EGF" was a prominent labor leader in the early 20th century. She went everywhere. Fought for everyone. Got arrested often. Flynn is the idealistic superstar of the much maligned IWW. This autobiography introduces us to the whos who of the labor movement. Flynn worked with and knew so many people. Her life was a whirlwind of speeches, strikes, negotiations, and fights. Is our socialist/communist author really biased towards the working class? Oh you betcha. I felt like I got to know her as a person pretty well throughout the book. Her voice is very strong throughout and despite a LOT of info being presented, the text never feels dry or dull.
There are clear section headers and we more or less go in chronological order of events. I would stop reading and google different people or events to dig into more details. It even incited some genealogical research into some of the smaller villains we meet. I gained a great deal of knowledge about many labor events (and people) I had never heard of before including some despicable acts of violence against strikers in my home state.
**** stars!
There are clear section headers and we more or less go in chronological order of events. I would stop reading and google different people or events to dig into more details. It even incited some genealogical research into some of the smaller villains we meet. I gained a great deal of knowledge about many labor events (and people) I had never heard of before including some despicable acts of violence against strikers in my home state.
**** stars!
December 13, 2019
Le Petit Heroine de Socialisme!
I'm awstruck by this incredible and fearless Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who crusaded against capitalism and unjust treatment of the working class and less-fortunate. My god how cold-blooded the workers got treated before the Labor movement with its strikes for better working hours and overall conditions came about. An all-male Capitalist system left to itself is a complete disaster; wich created slavery, wars, supression of people, races+++. Women didn't get to vote before 1919 in the US - nearly 150 years after the constitution and about 2000 years after the birth of democracy. That is embarressing.
Elisabeth Gurley Flynn, from the age of 15 in 1906 wrote speeches and spoke to the working class all over the country through decades, and got arrested for it dozens of times. She reminds in many ways of Greta Thunberg.
I'm awstruck by this incredible and fearless Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who crusaded against capitalism and unjust treatment of the working class and less-fortunate. My god how cold-blooded the workers got treated before the Labor movement with its strikes for better working hours and overall conditions came about. An all-male Capitalist system left to itself is a complete disaster; wich created slavery, wars, supression of people, races+++. Women didn't get to vote before 1919 in the US - nearly 150 years after the constitution and about 2000 years after the birth of democracy. That is embarressing.
Elisabeth Gurley Flynn, from the age of 15 in 1906 wrote speeches and spoke to the working class all over the country through decades, and got arrested for it dozens of times. She reminds in many ways of Greta Thunberg.
December 16, 2020
3.5 stars
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a key figure in many of the most interesting struggles of the early 20th century. She left school early to get involved in the labor struggles of that time and was an ardent Socialist. She began speaking to crowds while still a teenager. She was jailed countless times. She was involved with the Wobbles and visited Joe Hill in jail. She was a founder of the ACLU. Later in life she embraced Communism. This was intended to be the first volume of her autobiography but except for a book on her life in prison, this was all she wrote.
It's easy to admire her fire, her commitment, her passion for bettering the lives of the average working person. She glosses over a few events, and her version of some is not always the generally accepted one, but she certainly shines a spotlight on some of the glaring injustices of that time.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a key figure in many of the most interesting struggles of the early 20th century. She left school early to get involved in the labor struggles of that time and was an ardent Socialist. She began speaking to crowds while still a teenager. She was jailed countless times. She was involved with the Wobbles and visited Joe Hill in jail. She was a founder of the ACLU. Later in life she embraced Communism. This was intended to be the first volume of her autobiography but except for a book on her life in prison, this was all she wrote.
It's easy to admire her fire, her commitment, her passion for bettering the lives of the average working person. She glosses over a few events, and her version of some is not always the generally accepted one, but she certainly shines a spotlight on some of the glaring injustices of that time.
February 24, 2025
A view into the life of a revolutionary trade unionist and socialist in the early 20th century. Through Flynn’s account of her life you meet a lot of important figures in the early Union/socialist movement including Hayward, Debs, and Larkin. A very interesting life. The book was a bit of a rough read. At points repetitive and not the most engaging writing. Worth a read if you’re interested in the topic.
August 27, 2022
I read /The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926)/, by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn:
https://libcom.org/article/rebel-girl...
As a feminist and former communist (who flooded the market with acid to destabilize the bourgeoisie) I had to read this book!
(Yes, I've clearly lost my way!)
https://libcom.org/article/rebel-girl...
As a feminist and former communist (who flooded the market with acid to destabilize the bourgeoisie) I had to read this book!
(Yes, I've clearly lost my way!)
November 29, 2023
Well worth reading. Yes, she was a communist, but it was the wealthy industrialists who drove her there. What I don't forgive her for is that later in life she never spoke out against Stalin or the Soviet Union. Did she really believe workers were treated well there?
August 28, 2022
If you’re interested in the early days of the US Labor movement, this is a must read. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a bad ass!
March 10, 2023
Fascinating read. It's not particularly well written but what a woman of her time accomplished is amazing.
May 27, 2016
It's always great to read a book critical of the stuff I am into written by someone sympathetic to the stuff I'm into. I also like it that her comments are directed at certain tactics and not at particular isms. Probably because she wrote speeches for uneducated and often migrant workers for 50 years before writing this book, her language is direct and exciting. One great surprise bonus goodness for me was her connections with Irish rebels like James Connolly and James Larkin. Also fun to have cameos from Mother Jones, Eugene Debs and Fiorello LaGuardia.
It's an autobiography, so okay, she's gonna make herself look good, but I admire how she tries to negotiate a path between what she calls the over-centralization of Big Bill Haywood and the 'freaks' who for example march through a very catholic workers' neighborhood to show solidarity with the strikers but are holding a banner that says "no gods, no masters" ... in Gurley Flynn's estimation: a tactical error.
I had previously known her as a big deal IWW orator who quit and became a big deal CP leader, so I was surprised to learn she was practically married to hardcore anarchist Carlo Tresca and was very active in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. I like complicated people who don't fit easily into categories.
One question this book raised in my mind was about the relative importance of defense work versus offense. If the IWW got its shit together and was causing the kind of furor today that it did back then, wouldn't it face the same kind of persecution? Vigilantes, frame-ups and mass deportation? By the end of this book, Gurley Flynn is so busy with the ACLU affiliated "Workers Defense Union" and Sacco-Vanzetti, there's no space left for visiting picket lines.
I wish she had gotten around to writing "her second life," the communist party part, because I could stand to read a lot more of her autobiography, but also I wonder if she'd be as honest and direct in criticism of their tactics or if she fell for that whole 'scientific' authority they cloak themselves in. Big Up the Rebel Girl!
This book is full of all these old timey (s)heros of the revolution and it made me wonder, where are the giant professional rebels of today? Without the rank and file fighting unions, the Gurley Flynns of today are not getting out past small rooms of the like-minded.
It's an autobiography, so okay, she's gonna make herself look good, but I admire how she tries to negotiate a path between what she calls the over-centralization of Big Bill Haywood and the 'freaks' who for example march through a very catholic workers' neighborhood to show solidarity with the strikers but are holding a banner that says "no gods, no masters" ... in Gurley Flynn's estimation: a tactical error.
I had previously known her as a big deal IWW orator who quit and became a big deal CP leader, so I was surprised to learn she was practically married to hardcore anarchist Carlo Tresca and was very active in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. I like complicated people who don't fit easily into categories.
One question this book raised in my mind was about the relative importance of defense work versus offense. If the IWW got its shit together and was causing the kind of furor today that it did back then, wouldn't it face the same kind of persecution? Vigilantes, frame-ups and mass deportation? By the end of this book, Gurley Flynn is so busy with the ACLU affiliated "Workers Defense Union" and Sacco-Vanzetti, there's no space left for visiting picket lines.
I wish she had gotten around to writing "her second life," the communist party part, because I could stand to read a lot more of her autobiography, but also I wonder if she'd be as honest and direct in criticism of their tactics or if she fell for that whole 'scientific' authority they cloak themselves in. Big Up the Rebel Girl!
This book is full of all these old timey (s)heros of the revolution and it made me wonder, where are the giant professional rebels of today? Without the rank and file fighting unions, the Gurley Flynns of today are not getting out past small rooms of the like-minded.
September 8, 2016
Anyone interested in the history of labor or activism in the U.S. should read this book. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a powerful orator, a dedicated and tireless activist working to make life better for the working class. Her story should also be of interest to those interested in women's history and Irish-American history.
July 16, 2016
It's interesting to think that this was meant to be volume 1 of her autobiography. I would have happily dived into a volume 2 if it existed. Yes, sometimes it jumped around where I wanted more detail, but there was so much that Flynn covered that to get the amount of detail I wanted would have required several more volumes. In any case, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was fascinating.
June 22, 2007
A classic of radical reading. Inspiring for sure.
August 22, 2007
Hurray for the IWW and CPA!!!
July 22, 2009
An ex-IWW writing about Socialist activism pretty much in the hey day of American radicalism, 1906-26.
December 6, 2013
a wandering and freewheeling, but fascinating biographical account of an important American labor leader
January 14, 2017
This book inspired me and showed me that caring and activism are absolutely essential and doable.
Read
April 28, 2008E.G.B. is such a badass. Dense blow-by-blow accounts of her endeavors from day 1.
April 25, 2017
Fascinating woman. very dry writing style
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews