Forest Home Cemetery Overview
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  • History of Forest Home Cemetery
    • Native Americans
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    • Gravestone Symbols
    • Unique Gravestone Monuments >
      • White Bronze
      • Rustic Gravestones
      • Photo-ceramic
      • Tiffany Designed Monuments
      • Druids
      • International Organization of Odd Fellows (IOOF)
    • Mausoleum
    • Ashes Scattered and Interred
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  • Labor Activists
    • Haymarket Monument >
      • The Haymarket Affair
      • Haymarket Time Capsule
      • George Engel
      • Samuel Fielden
      • Louis Lingg
      • Adolph Fischer
      • Albert Parsons
      • Michael Schwab
      • August Spies
      • Oscar Neebe
    • Radical Row >
      • Eddie Balchowsky
      • Voltarine de Cleyre
      • Eugene Dennis
      • Raya Dunayevskaya
      • Joseph Dietzgen
      • William Z. Foster
      • Emma Goldmen
      • Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
      • Ben Reitman
      • Lucy Parsons
      • Franklin Rosemont
      • Ann Sosnovsky Winokur
    • Labor and Political Burials >
      • Joe Mariani
      • Cigar Makers' International
      • International Alliance of Bill Posters and Billers of America
  • People of Interest Buried in Cemetery
    • Ashbel Steele
    • Austin Family
    • Philander Barclay
    • Edwin Oscar Gale
    • Sophy and Charles Drechsler
    • Fedinand Haase
    • Doris Humphrey
    • Flora Gill
    • Dr. Clarence and Grace Hemingway
    • Dr. Frank and Phyllis Oreland
    • Augustin and Elizabeth Porter
    • Edward Hand and Lillie Morey Pitkin
    • Martha Louise Rayne
    • Origen White Herrick
    • Dr Thomas Roberts Hurlbut
    • Joseph and Betty Kettlestrings
    • Roos Family
    • James Fletcher Skinner
    • Billy Sunday
    • Adolph Westphal
  • Ethnic and Other Groupings
    • African American
    • Dutch
    • Hispanic
    • Roma (Gypsy)
    • Children
    • Military
  • Disaster Victims
    • Eastland ship disaster
    • Iroquois Theatre Fire
    • Smallpox Epidemic
    • St. Valentine's Day Massacre
  • Cemetery Tours
  • Addtional Resources
    • Forest Park Review articles

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
(1890-1964)

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Flynn, "The Rebel Girl," was born in Concord, New Hampshire, in a poor working-class family. Her mother was a suffragette. Flynn's exposure to the poverty of textile workers in New Hampshire and later New York City had a profound effect on her. In 1906 she began speaking at Socialist Party street meetings and she joined the IWW in 1907.

She soon emerged as an outstanding labor organizer and agitator, displaying stunning leadership abilities in the Lawrence Strike (Massachusetts, 1912) and the Paterson Strike (New Jersey, 1912-13). She had a vibrant, militant style and was widely heralded for her extraordinary energy and courage. Flynn worked closely with Big Bill Haywood and Eugene Debs. She also helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 1937 she joined the CPUSA. In the McCarthy period she was convicted under the Smith Act and received a three-year prison term. In 1961, after the death of Eugene Dennis, she became the chair of the CPUSA. While traveling in the Soviet Union she became ill. She died in Moscow, where a state funeral – attended by Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet Party leaders was held. She authored two autobiographical volumes. Her ashes were returned to the U.S. for burial at Forest Home.

Flynn inspired the IWW's Joe Hill to write a song about her, The Rebel Girl: "Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor, And her dress may not be very fine; But a heart in her bosom is beating That is true to her class and her kind. And the grafters in terror are trembling When her spite and defiance she'll hurl; For the only and thoroughbred lady Is the Rebel Girl.


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Additional Resources

  • Sabotage, The Conscious Withdrawal of the Workers' Industrial Efficiency
  • Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
  • The Rebel Girl: A Remembrance–Reprint from the Communist Party USA's People's Weekly World
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