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Contribution to Book
Anarchist Motherhood: Toward the Making of a Revolutionary Proletariat in Illinois’ Coal Towns
Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives: Italian Workers of the World
  • Caroline Waldron Merithew, University of Dayton
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
1-1-2002
Abstract

In the winter of 1900, several months before Leon Czolgosz assassinated U.S. President William McKinley for the cause of anarchy and for the love of Emma Goldman, a group of French-speaking and Italian women residing in northern Illinois’s coal-mining communities formed a club, Il Gruppo Femminile Luisa Michel, and began to put egalitarian theory into practice.

One of the women’s first acts of rebellion was a challenge to the all-male Prosperity Club – an anarchist saloon and a key venue of radical culture and activism in the region. With the help of some sympathetic members, Luisa Michel planned an assault on the Prosperity Club to demand that the rules of membership be changed. Unable to enter the saloon themselves, the women had male comrades serve as their proxy voices. Attending a Sunday meeting that was designated as a time to discuss club regulations, one of the Luisa Michel allies suggested that the club rule stating the 'anyone can be a member' be changed because it was unclear regarding "the sex of those who are allowed to apply." Why not clarify the wording and state that "anyone, man or woman, may become a member?" After all, the ally argued, it was "necessary and even urgent to focus first of all on the emancipation of women in order to achieve the emancipation of all workers."

Inclusive pages
217-246
ISBN/ISSN
9780802084620
Comments

Permission documentation is on file.

The volume in which this chapter appeared can be found here.

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Place of Publication
Toronto, Canada
Peer Reviewed
Yes
Citation Information
Caroline Waldron Merithew. "Anarchist Motherhood: Toward the Making of a Revolutionary Proletariat in Illinois’ Coal Towns" Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives: Italian Workers of the World (2002)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/caroline_merithew/3/