Lara Vapnek - Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Modern American Revolutionary

Praise for Lives of American Women

Finally! The majority of studentsby which I mean womenwill have the opportunity to read biographies of women from our nations past. (Men can read them too, of course!) The Lives of American Women series features an eclectic collection of books, readily accessible to students who will be able to see the contributions of women in many fields over the course of our history. Long overdue, these books will be a valuable resource for teachers, students, and the public at large.

COKIE ROBERTS, author of Founding Mothers and Ladies of Liberty

Just what any professor wants: books that will intrigue, inform, and fascinate students! These short, readable biographies of American womenspecifically designed for classroom usegive instructors an appealing new option to assign to their history students.

MARY BETH NORTON, Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History, Cornell University

For educators keen to include women in the American story, but hampered by the lack of thoughtful, concise scholarship, here comes Lives of American Women, embracing Abigail Adamss counsel to Johnremember the ladies. And high time, too!

LESLEY S. HERRMANN, Executive Director, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Students both in the general survey course and in specialized offerings like my course on U.S. womens history can get a great understanding of an era from a short biography. Learning a lot about a single but complex character really helps to deepen appreciation of what womens lives were like in the past.

PATRICIA CLINE COHEN, University of California, Santa Barbara

Biographies are, indeed, back. Not only will students read them, biographies provide an easy way to demonstrate particularly important historical themes or ideas.... Undergraduate readers will be challenged to think more deeply about what it means to be a woman, citizen, and political actor.... I am eager to use this in my undergraduate survey and specialty course.

JENNIFER THIGPEN, Washington State University, Pullman

These books are, above all, fascinating stories that will engage and inspire readers. They offer a glimpse into the lives of key women in history who either defied tradition or who successfully maneuvered in a mans world to make an impact. The stories of these vital contributors to American history deliver just the right formula for instructors looking to provide a more complicated and nuanced view of history.

ROSANNE LICHATIN, 2005 Gilder Lehrman Preserve American History Teacher of the Year

The Lives of American Women authors raise all of the big issues I want my classes to confrontand deftly fold their arguments into riveting narratives that maintain students excitement.

WOODY HOLTON, author of Abigail Adams

To my parents,

Daniel and Dianne Vapnek,

who taught me to ask questions

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Series design by Brent Wilcox

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vapnek, Lara, 1967

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn : modern American revolutionary / Lara Vapnek.

pages cm. (Lives of American women)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8133-4810-0 (e-book)

1. Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. 2. Women labor leadersUnited StatesBiography.

3. CommunistsUnited StatesBiography. 4. Women revolutionariesUnited

StatesBiography. I. Title.

HX84.F5V37 2015

335.00092dc23

[B]

2014027690

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A merican society underwent dramatic changes in the decades following the Civil War. Industrialization altered the workplace; immigration altered the cultural and religious profile of the nations citizenry; cities came to dominate the landscapeand serious questions about the benefits of capitalism began to emerge. Reformers called for improved conditions in the workplace, aid to arriving immigrants, and more democratic practices in government on every level. But more radical ideas also began to circulate, ideas that challenged core elements of capitalism, such as private ownership of the nations resources, and class and gender inequalities. The radical critique of American capitalism emerged as a central theme of the twentieth century.

Spurred by the Russian Revolution in the early twentieth century, the call for a radical alternative to capitalism grew in America. The riseand declineof this radical vision can be traced in the life of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. As Lara Vapnek shows us in her biography of this remarkable woman, Flynn responded to the political currents of her long life, sometimes adopting a moderate approach, sometimes building alliances with liberal reformers, and sometimes tirelessly defending the rights of fellow dissidents and revolutionaries. As a committed radical, Flynn rejected the idea that meaningful change could come through the suffrage or unionization movements. Liberation would only come through a revolution that overthrew capitalism entirely.

Like many leading radicals, Flynn embraced the American Communist Party. She grasped the failures of capitalism and the wide gaps between the promises of democracy and its realities, but tragically, she never applied the same critical eye to the Soviet Union or to the communist system. She uncritically supported the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War, insisting on the success of communism until her death in 1964.

Flynn began her public career in New York City in the 1910s. Over the course of her lifetime, she paid a high price for her outspoken radicalism. In 1951, as American anticommunism raged, the aging Flynn was arrested and charged with conspiracy to unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly... advocate and teach the duty and necessity of overthrowing the Government of the United States by force and violence. She was one of 109 members of the Communist Party to be indicted that year, and she served for twenty-eight months behind bars.