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2 books match the query 'Rebel Girl'

cover of Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924

Beyond the Rebel Girl

Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924

Heather Mayer

Oregon State University Press, 2018

More than a century after their founding in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World—or Wobblies as they are commonly known—remain a popular subject for study and discussion among students of labor history and social justice. They are often portrayed as lovable underdogs, with their songs and cartoons, generally irreverent attitude, and stalwart courage in the face of systemic persecution from vigilantes, law enforcement, and government officials.

In Beyond the Rebel Girl, historian Heather Mayer questions the well-worn vision of Wobblies as young, single, male, itinerant workers. While such workers formed a large portion of the membership, they weren’t the whole picture. In small towns across the Northwest, and in the larger cities of Seattle, Portland, and Spokane, women played an integral role in Wobbly life. Single women, but also families—husband and wife Wobbly teams—played important roles in some of the biggest fights for justice. IWW halls in these Northwest cities often functioned as community centers, with family-friendly events and entertainment.

Women were drawn to the IWW for its radical vision, inclusionary policies, birth control advocacy, and emphasis on freedom of choice in marriage. The IWW also offered women an avenue for activism that wasn’t focused primarily on the fight for suffrage. Beyond the Rebel Girl deepens our understanding of how the IWW functioned and how the union supported women in their fight for birth control, sexual emancipation, and better labor conditions, all while facing persecution at the local, state, and federal levels.
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cover of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

The Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution

Mary Anne Trasciatti

Rutgers University Press, 2025

International Labor History Association Honorable Mention Book Award for 2025

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was involved in almost every major campaign of the U.S. Left in the first two thirds of the twentieth century. An outstanding orator, writer, and tactician, Flynn is one of the most important figures in the history of the American labor movement. Inspired by the Irish freedom struggle and appalled by the exploitation and grinding poverty she saw around her, she devoted her life to the advancement of civil liberties. Here, Mary Anne Trasciatti traces Flynn’s personal and political life to explore the broader social issues of a fraught era.
 
Born in 1890, Flynn began her activist career by joining the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) when she was just sixteen, and she ended it as the first female chair of the American Communist Party, a position she held from 1961 until her death in 1964. In the intervening years she organized workers into unions, led strikes, championed women’s rights, supported anti-imperialist movements around the globe, protested deportation, advocated for prison reform, and fought for Black liberation. Above all, she showed absolute devotion to workers and their struggles.
 
Slandered as an “un-American” in the anticommunist fervor of the 1940s and 1950s, Flynn was eventually ousted from the very organization she helped found, the American Civil Liberties Union, and imprisoned for two years. Though her own movement abandoned her, her commitment to the cause never wavered. This stirring biography illuminates Flynn’s inspiring life and worldview and returns her to her rightful place at the heart of labor and civil liberties history.

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