Lizzie Holmes

Elizabeth (nickname, "Lizzie") May Hunt was born in Iowa on December 21, 1850. She was the daughter of Jonathan Hunt (1822–1900) and the radical feminist Hannah Jackson Hunt (1825–1903), an occasional contributor to the free love journal Lucifer, the Light-Bearer. When Lizzie Hunt was four years old, her family moved to a "free love" commune in Berlin Heights, Ohio, which is where she spent her remaining childhood years. Holmes received a relatively early and advanced education, which allowed her to start teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Ohio by the time she was fifteen. At the age of 17, Holmes married her first husband, Hiram J. Swank. According to Holmes, Hiram Swank died after five years of marriage, and Holmes left for Chicago accompanied only by her mother, her two brothers, and her children. The census records at the time do not confirm Swank's death, and it is possible that Holmes left Swank in Ohio and constructed a new public persona as a widow in Chicago. In either case, Swank does not play a role in the remainder of Lizzie's life. ==Organizing in Chicago==

Upon her arrival in Chicago, Holmes began working as a seamstress in a cloak factory. She expressed some frustration at her inability to find work as a music teacher, but she ultimately viewed her seamstress job as formative for her politics, explaining in a later interview with the Chicago Times that she had a "desire to know the [working class] intimately" and that she learned "all the struggles, the efforts of genteel poverty, the pitiful pride with which working girls hide their destitution and drudgery from the world." She was subsequently fired from her work as a seamstress due to her efforts to unionize her workplace, but Holmes remained undeterred in her affiliation with the union. Parsons introduced Lizzie Holmes to both socialism and anarchism, with Holmes quickly understanding the socialist critique of capitalism based on her time in the garment industry. Parsons also introduced Holmes to more radical organizations, and Holmes joined the anarchists in the International Working People's Association in 1885. Holmes's affiliation with the radical labor movement in Chicago also gave her multiple opportunities to write articles, which she took up in addition to her organizing work. Holmes became a prolific writer of both non-fiction articles and works of fiction throughout the 1880s, publishing stories and educational material in a variety of radical newspapers and magazines. Holmes wrote multiple articles decrying the horrific labor conditions she experienced in the garment factories, and her stories were picked up by newspapers like the Anti-Monopolist, Labor Enquirer, and Nonconformist. Holmes eventually served as the assistant editor of The Alarm, the newspaper of the International Working People's Association. Her editing work took some time away from labor organizing, but Holmes still found time to march with the seamstresses. On April 28, 1885, Lizzie Holmes and Lucy Parsons led a march on the newly build Chicago Board of Trade building, solidifying their reputation as leaders in the Chicago anarchist and labor movement. Their prominence constantly drew the ire of the authorities, who painted both Parsons and Holmes as dangerous terrorists. In November 1885, Lizzie married fellow anarchist William Holmes. Upon their marriage, they both moved out of Chicago and into Geneva, Illinois. Lizzie Holmes re-established herself as a school teacher in Geneva, but neither she nor William gave up on anarchist organizing. Both of them regularly returned to Chicago to organize with Albert and Lucy Parsons, including in the days directly preceding the Haymarket affair. == Haymarket and its aftermath ==

Lizzie Holmes returned to Chicago the day before the Haymarket affair. On May 3, 1886, Lizzie led a march of several hundred sewing women, demanding an eight-hour workday. The march was covered by the Chicago Tribune, who described the marching women as having "worn faces and threadbare clothing, bearing evidence of a struggle for an uncomfortable existence." In spite of her testimony, Parsons was sentenced to death by hanging. Many of the anarchist organizations and institutions previously built up by Lizzie Holmes came under both legal and public scrutiny following the Haymarket Affair, as public opinion turned against anarchism. The Alarm came back, with Lizzie as editor, but under the shadow of Haymarket, it never achieved the same level of attention or interest. Lizzie Holmes was investigated by the authorities on multiple occasions, and under the threat of legal duress, she moved away from the level of radical organizing that had occupied so much of her life in previous years. Holmes and her husband moved to Colorado in 1889, eventually settling in New Mexico in the mid-1890s. Despite these circumstances, Holmes still found time to write for various newspapers and magazines. During the early years of the 1890s, Holmes wrote a novel entitled ''Hagar Lyndon; or, A Woman's Rebellion, which she published serially in Lucifer, the Light-Bearer in 1893. Holmes would also write for other radical newspapers, including the newly formed Free Society, which she contributed to with her husband. Holmes would eventually write a series of short stories for the American Federation of Labor, in a move criticized by some other anarchists as too accommodating, as the American Federation of Labor was far more conservative than many anarchist labor unions. Holmes did not shy away from radical politics in the stories she wrote for the American Federationist,'' however, and in subsequent years, the stories have been praised by labor scholars as interesting encapsulations of the labor movement that Holmes inhabited. == Later years and death ==

Holmes continued to write for various radical newspapers until 1908, after which she quietly left public life. Holmes and her husband lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico during the bulk of her late years, until they moved to Santa Fe in 1926. That same year, on August 8, Lizzie Holmes died in her home at the age of 75. Two years later, in 1928, her husband William Holmes followed her at the age of 78. ==Legacy==

Holmes was instrumental in building the labor movement in Chicago, and many of the ideas that she advocated for only came to fruition following her death. Holmes was a constant figure in the fight for the eight-hour workday, a demand that would become federal law in the United States in 1938 under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Within the anarchist movement itself, Lizzie Holmes never reached the level of recognition achieved by names like Emma Goldman and Voltarine de Cleyre, but she has been recognized as an early influence on much of their work. Her willingness to talk about gender inequality in stark terms, as well as her fierce devotion to women's liberation, has led to some scholars like Jessica Moran calling her an early anarchist feminist. Contemporary labor scholars have also begun to re-examine her fiction as a source for late 19th century labor history, with scholars like Ruth Percy and Blaine McKinley mining her short stories for nuggets of truth regarding the labor movement and its relationship to the conditions of the working class in the United States. ==Selected works==

• "Woman's future position in the world", 1899 • "Ladies' Self-Improvement Club at Leighton", 1904 • "In the Land of the Free", 1904 • "Slumming – A Story", 1904 • "Our Tyrants", 1904 • "The True Incentive", 1904 • "A Choice of Despotisms", 1904 • "The Labor of the Children", 1904 • "Women Workers of Chicago, How the pioneer work was done by a band of self-sacrificing women who paved the way for the powerful unions of the present day", 1905 ==References==