Lucy Parsons thus chose two highly regarded, technically proficient New York City photographers to take her photo in 1886. Their talents ensured that these portrait photos captured the public’s attention for decades to come. […]
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Always the contrarian, Lucy Parsons commanded treatment on her own terms as a wholly unique individual, entitled to equality, dignity, and respect; and she claimed that higher ground not only for herself but for all people, everywhere and forever. […] That Lucy Parsons was not “white” was apparent to both the audiences she addressed and the mass media that routinely reported on her activities. The published observations of her physical attributes referred to her skin color in euphemistic terms such as “dusky,” “mulatto” and “quadroon,” or bluntly as “negro” and “negress,” adjectives and nouns all used to sully her reputation and undermine her credibility. […] The relationship between photographer and sitter is, at best, an intimate collaboration that serves mutual purposes. This photograph of Lucy Parsons by Paul Grottkau is a perfect example of that truism, and quite possibly a conscious attempt to seize control of the public narrative from a hostile media. […] Hard facts about the [1886 Haymarket] bombing [in Chicago] still remain clouded and the guilt of most, if not all, of the eight convicted men is still questioned. The innocence of the four executed anarchists has been largely proven retroactively. It is one of the “Haymarket Martyrs,” Albert R. Parsons, executed on November 11, 1887, who connects Paul Grottkau the political activist to Paul Grottkau the professional photographer, via this singular image of a mixed-race woman. […] |
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