Elizabeth Gurley flynn speaks in Brownsville
One hundred years ago today … Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, radical activist leader and one of the founding members of the ACLU (see our January 19 post here) spoke at the Brownsville Labor Lyceum, 219–227 Sackman Street, Brooklyn.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, ca. 1910-1920. Bain News Services. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Bain Collection.
According to the Tribune, Flynn (the “woman”) decried the ongoing imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs, head of the US. Socialist Party, who was serving a sentence for sedition. (We will get to him later in the year.) She did so his despite the government officials and law enforcement types in the crowd.
New York Tribune, 21 April, 1920. p. 6. Newspapers.com.
Flynn’s action looks particularly bold in light of the fact that one year earlier, practically to the day, the Brownsville Labor Lyceum had been a target of one of the Palmer Raids (see our January 2 post here) precisely for hosting an event in support of Debs (Pritchett, 37).
Brownsville was an important socialist bastion in the early 1900s, though 1920. In 1919 it had elected Charles Solomon, one of the five socialists removed from the Assembly in January 1920. (See our January 8 post here.) Wendell E. Pritchett writes,
The Socialist Party was successful in working class neighborhoods like Brownsville because its leaders came from the sweatshops and understood the struggles facing their constituents. Socialism was a grassroots movement in New York City, based on immigrant culture…. Within Brownsville, [the Socialist Party leadership] supported striking workers, assisted residents in battles agains landlords and city agencies. (35–6)