Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - (Ceres: Rutgers Studies in History) by Mary Anne Trasciatti (Hardcover)

About the Book

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is one of the most important figures in the history of American labor. This stirring biography traces her personal and political life, foregrounding her commitment to civil liberties as the enduring force behind her worldview and returns her to her rightful place at the heart of the working-class movement.

Book Synopsis

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was involved in almost every major campaign of the U.S. Left in the first two thirds of the twentieth century. An outstanding orator, writer, and tactician, Flynn is one of the most important figures in the history of the American labor movement. Inspired by the Irish freedom struggle and appalled by the exploitation and grinding poverty she saw around her, she devoted her life to the advancement of civil liberties. Here, Mary Anne Trasciatti traces Flynn's personal and political life to explore the broader social issues of a fraught era.

Born in 1890, Flynn began her activist career by joining the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) when she was just sixteen, and she ended it as the first female chair of the American Communist Party, a position she held from 1961 until her death in 1964. In the intervening years she organized workers into unions, led strikes, championed women's rights, supported anti-imperialist movements around the globe, protested deportation, advocated for prison reform, and fought for Black liberation. Above all, she showed absolute devotion to workers and their struggles.

Slandered as an "un-American" in the anticommunist fervor of the 1940s and 1950s, Flynn was eventually ousted from the very organization she helped found, the American Civil Liberties Union, and imprisoned for two years. Though her own movement abandoned her, her commitment to the cause never wavered. This stirring biography illuminates Flynn's inspiring life and worldview and returns her to her rightful place at the heart of labor and civil liberties history.

Review Quotes

"A detailed and accessible account of a remarkable woman. . . . At a time when the right to speak freely is again under attack, Flynn's example and Trasciatti's scholarship are worthy of attention."

-- "In Depth NH"

"It is certainly time, actually past time, for a revival of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's saga and her reputation. Guided by the continuing thread of Flynn's civil liberties work, Trasciatti's Elizabeth Gurley Flynn will be the book to bring her back."--Paul Buhle "coeditor of Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson"

"Trasciatti is at her strongest in the political realm."

-- "Portside"

"Trasciatti makes Flynn fully human. . . . The end result is a richly drawn portrait of a bold, principled, and savvy woman who deserves to be remembered and celebrated."

-- "New Pages"

"Trasciatti has done the reading public a huge favor by writing this book. She has resurrected the life of a woman whose importance to the never-ending work towards a socially just society has never been appropriately acknowledged. Perhaps even more importantly, this text resuscitates and brings to a new audience elements of US history that the powerful are working overtime to erase. Engagingly composed and accessibly written, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution is a book well worth one's time."-- "CounterPunch"

"Informed and informative, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is an extraordinary work of meticulous and exhaustive research into the life and achievements of a civil liberties icon. Exceptionally well written, organized, and presented. . . . An exceptional biography."-- "Midwest Book Review"

"Elizabeth Gurley Flynn represents an important addition to the scholarship on the history of the American Left. Trasciatti weaves the personal together very effectively with the political in the presentation of significant new documentation and the breadth of Flynn's activism."--Norman Markowitz "author of The Rise and Fall of the People's Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941-"

About the Author

MARY ANNE TRASCIATTI is a professor of rhetoric and the director of labor studies at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. She coedited the collections Where Are the Workers?: Labor's Stories at Museums and Historic Sites and Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.