Gunfire, shouting, hanging, all because cops couldn't stand the fact that workers were fighting for their right to an eight-hour work day.

This formerly enslaved woman was in the middle of all the chaos.

Who was she?

This is two-minute black history.

What you didn't learn in school.

On May 4, 1886, a bloody war between a group of union workers and police began in Chicago is now known as the Haymarket Rebellion.

But what did formerly enslaved FBI-hunted Lucy Parsons have to do with it all?

Parsons was an anti-capitalist labor activist who helped organize a peaceful march for workers' rights.

But when police killed several striking workers on May 3, only 2,000 out of an expected 20,000 people gathered the next day to demand fair working conditions.

Then there was the bomb.

It's unknown where the bomb came from.

But after its explosion, police shot in the dark, killing seven of their own officers and four workers.

A year later, four civilians, including Parsons' own husband, were hanged for the policeman's crime.

Still, Lucy Parsons kept fighting.

In the next few decades, she published a newspaper called Freedom, became the only woman to address the industrial workers of the World Union and delivered anarchist speeches so powerful.

The Chicago PD said she was more dangerous than a thousand rioters.

In other words, despite the risk to her own life, Parsons continued to fight for workers and impoverished people's rights.

We still have strikes, police brutality and poverty today.

But we can keep fighting, with that same level of perseverance and resilience.

In order to move towards the future, you've got to look to the past.

This has been Two Minute Black History, a podcast by Push Black.

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