Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

American labor organizer and Communist leader. Flynn was born in Concord, New Hampshire, to a pair of radical Irish immigrants who soon were forced to move the family to an impoverished section of South Bronx. Early on in her life, she became an orator and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), working with them from 1906 to 1928. An excellent public speaker, she traveled all over the country advocating labor defense and free speech. She received the nickname "Rebel Girl" from the IWW folksinger Joe Hill.

In 1911, she gave birth to a son, Fred, whom her mother and sister Kathie took care of during his early life. At the end of World War I, she organized the Workers Defense League to fight the anti-labor raids of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. She also became a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which would later expell her for being a Communist. From 1928 to 1938, she suffered from mental exhaustion as the IWW and other leftist groups were forcibly atomized by the government. During this time she had a love affair with anarchist organizer (and womanizer) Carlo Tresca. In 1940, her son Fred died after having an operation.

After her relationship with Tresca ended, she joined the Communist Party USA and by 1941, she had joined the party's National Board. She appealed to the uneducated and downtrodden workers through her many articles in the Daily Worker, and she always felt uncomfortable with the power struggles within the Party.

In the early 1950's, she suffered (along with other Communist leaders) the McCarthy era. She was indicted under the Smith Act and defended herself through a nine-month trial. She was sentenced to a three-year term in the Alderson Federal Penitentiary and served from January 1955 to May 1957. After being released from prison, she joined in the middle faction of the CP led by Eugene Dennis, and in 1961 was the first woman to be elected National Chair of the Communist Party.

She died in the Soviet Union in 1964 and was given an elaborate state funeral. Upon her request, her ashes were scattered near the site of the Haymarket massacre in Chicago, Illinois. She wrote countless Daily Worker articles and a few books — including her prison memoirs Alderson Story (1963) and her autobiography Rebel Girl (1955).