Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
| Elizabeth Gurley Flynn | |
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| Chairperson of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA | |
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In office January 31, 1961 – September 5, 1964 |
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| Preceded by | Eugene Dennis |
| Succeeded by | Henry Winston |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
August 7, 1890 Concord, New Hampshire |
| Died | September 5, 1964 (aged 74) Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Resting place | Waldheim Cemetery, Chicago |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | labor leader, activist |
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (August 7, 1890 – September 5, 1964) was a 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 Communist Party USA 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.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1890. The family moved to New York in 1900, where she was educated at the local public schools. Her parents introduced her to socialism. When she was only sixteen she gave her first public speech, "What Socialism Will Do for Women," at the Harlem Socialist Club. As a result, she felt compelled to speak out for social change, making a decision she later regretted, to leave Morris High School before graduation.
A year later, in 1907 she met a Minnesota local organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, J. A. Jones. He was sixteen years older than she, but Flynn stated in her autobiography, "I fell in love with him and we were married in January 1908." The union produced two sons, John Vincent who died a few days after birth, and Fred Flynn, born 19 May 1910 (he died in 1940).
In 1907, Flynn became a full-time organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, and attended her first IWW convention in September of that year. Over the next few years she organized campaigns among garment workers in Pennsylvania, silk weavers in New Jersey, restaurant workers in New York, miners in Minnesota, Missoula, Montana, and Spokane, Washington; and textile workers in Massachusetts. During this period, author Theodore Dreiser described her as "an East Side Joan of Arc".
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