Hellraisers Journal: Gurley Flynn's Victory at Paterson Recalls 1909 Free Speech Fight at Spokane
Submitted by JayRaye on Mon, 12/14/2015 - 12:53pmNever before had I come in contact with women of that type, and they were interesting.
Also, I was glad to be with them, for in a jail one is
always safer with others than alone.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Tuesday December 14, 1915
From Archives of The Workingman's Paper: Gurley Flynn on the Spokane Jail
Fresh from her victorious one-woman fight for Free Speech with the city of Paterson, New Jersey (see photograph at right), Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn plans to continue her struggle to establish the rights of union organizers to speak to the silk workers in that city. With this struggle in mind, Hellraisers offers an article, written by Miss Flynn for the December 11, 1909, edition of The Workingman's Paper in which she described her experience in the county jail at Spokane during the I. W. W. Free Speech Fight in that city which took place during the winter of 1909 and 1910.
Miss Flynn came to Spokane as a young married woman, having married John A. Jones in Lake County, Minnesota on January 7, 1908. The newly weds arrived in Missoula, Montana, in time to play an active role in that victorious struggle for Free Speech. They then moved on to the fight for Free Speech in Spokane, Washington, where Gurley Flynn was arrested as an I. W. W. "agitator."
Miss Flynn's article gives us some idea of the special hardships endured by women when prisons and jails employ male guards rather than matrons. The male guards are often less than trustworthy to be in charge of the keys which give them unfettered access to women prisoners, day and night.
