LUCY PARSONS BOOK
AIRED: Season 5, Episode 4
THE DETECTIVE: Elyse Luray
THE PLACE: Chicago, Illinois and Middletown, Connecticut
THE CASE:
Amid the stacks at the Wesleyan University Library, a student has found a book emblazoned with the name and address of the legendary anarchist Lucy Parsons.
The biracial black and Native American activist fought in the late 1800s for the rights of the poor and disenfranchised in the face of an increasingly oppressive industrial economic system.
Did this once-feared radical own the manifesto? If so, it would pose a mystery: after Parsons died, police supposedly raided her house and confiscated all of her subversive literature. So how did this book elude them?
History Detectives explores a major labor movement uprising and Parsons’ abiding acts of defiance.
Feature: The Early Labor Movement
Find out more about how workers became protected from exploitation.
Think you have a case for the History Detectives? Send us your mystery here. 