Lucy E. Parsons

The Voice of the People will yet be Heard

Retrieved on April 29, 2010 from www.lucyparsonsproject.org

From Roediger, Dave, and Franklin Rosemont, eds. Haymarket Scrapbook.
Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., Chicago, 1986.

The twentieth anniversary of the 11th of November, which has just been observed in Chicago, was a great success from many standpoints, notably among which was the increased number of young people who took part in it...

As these years speed by, our comrades’ lives will be better understood; their great work for the uplifting of humanity understood and appreciated. This has been the case of the martyrs of all ages....

“The Voice of the People” will yet be heard.

The Demonstrator
November 20, 1907

* * * * *

It is now 18 months since I published the [Famous Speeches of the Haymarket Martyrs]. In that time I have traveled from Los Angeles, Wa Vancouver, B.C., to New York city, twice. I have devoted my entire energies to visiting Locals of the AF of L. From those Locals I have received most courteous treatment everywhere. I have credentials from some of the best known central bodies in this country, including the Central Federated Union of New York city. I am continually rapping at the doors of Locals, being admitted and selling the speeches. The result is that I have sold 10,000 copies and am just going to place my order with the printer for the sixth edition, making 12,000.

I regard these speeches as the greatest piece of propaganda literature extant; and when circulated among organized labor are bound to bear fruit.

The Agitator
December, 15, 1911

* * * * *

Parsons, Spies, Lingg, Fischer and Engel: Although all that is mortal of you is laid beneath that beautiful monument in Waldheim Cemetery, you are not dead. You are just beginning to live in the hearts of all true lovers of liberty. For now, after forty years that you are gone, thousands who were then unborn are eager to learn of your lives and heroic martyrdom, and as the years lengthen the brighter will shine your names, and the more you will come to be appreciated and loved.

Those who so foully murdered you, under the forms of law — lynch law — in a court of supposed justice, are forgotten.

Rest, comrades, rest. All the tomorrows are yours!

The Labor Defender
November 1926