The original elusive chanteuse, Lucy Parsons was dodgy about her personal life and ethnicity (she claimed she was Mexican and indigenous, though research shows she had an African American mother). But Parsons, who was born Lucia Parsons, was very clear about targeting the titans of industry and encouraged workers to radically fight them in the late 1880s. The socialist and anarchist was married to one of the protestors in the infamous Haymarket Square labor protest in Chicago. She came to prominence when her husband, Albert Parsons, was executed for his involvement in the protest. The widow began to travel widely speaking out against capitalist greed and denouncing America’s unjust political system.
