Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Who was the person behind the NH historical marker controversy?

State officials recently removed a historical marker in Concord at the birthplace of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, following outcry from New Hampshire Republicans who called her "anti-American" and said they were "offended" by the decision to put up the sign.

Flynn was born in the capital city in 1890. She became a crusader for women's and worker's rights, a founding member of the ACLU and, later, a leader of the Communist Party.

NHPR's Morning Edition host Rick Ganley spoke with historian Dr. Lara Vapnek, who wrote the biography "Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Modern American Revolutionary." They discuss Flynn's life and legacy, and how growing up in New Hampshire influenced her activism.

Can you tell us more about what Flynn's youth in Concord was like? How did growing up in the capital city influence her?

At the time when Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born in 1890, Concord was kind of a hotbed of workers activism. Her parents were both involved in the labor movement in Concord, and I think Flynn attributed some of her feminism to her mother's experiences in Concord. Her mother believed really strongly in women's equality. And when she lived in Concord, she actually went to White's Opera House to see the famous suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony speak on behalf of women's rights. She led several significant strikes, and these were strikes largely of immigrant workers, many of them women. And basically these were workers in general who were going out on strike and basically saying, ‘We deserve a piece of the American dream. We deserve fair compensation, limited hours and also to organize,’ because that was something that was not protected at the time.

She was actually imprisoned for her affiliation with the Communist Party. I'm wondering about how her advocacy led her towards communism.

She believed strongly from a young age that capitalism was not the best way to organize society, and that led her and her family toward socialism. And at that point, the party was in a more moderate phase. It was part of the Popular Front, which was this idea that communists had to fight against fascism. She was impressed by their efforts to organize workers across lines of race, and gender and skill. So all of these things impressed her and made her decide to join the party.

New Hampshire Republicans objected to Flynn's historical marker because of those ties to communism, and some said they were offended. In fact, The Boston Globe reported that Joseph Kennedy on the executive council called Flynn "anti-American." What do you make of that?

I don't think that Flynn saw herself as anti-American at all. I mean, I think that she believed that part of being an American was the right to free speech, the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. And as far as she was concerned, being an American meant the right to express dissenting ideas. And throughout her life, that's really what she did. I mean, socialism was always a dissenting idea in America — communism, probably even more so, but so too was feminism [and] advocacy for birth control.

So as a professor of history, what do you think of the controversy over Flynn's marker? What do you think it says about how people engage with historical figures?

I mean, I think a lot of historical figures are imperfect. You know, if we want to get rid of all of our imperfect historical figures, like we're going to have to get rid of George Washington. I mean, he was a slave owner, but he was the first president of the nation. And it doesn't mean that by commemorating him, we have to celebrate slavery. But I think that there's an effort among historians to try to understand people within the context of their time. So I think, just as we could appreciate George Washington as being obviously a significant American, but a flawed figure in some ways, I think the same thing should probably extend to somebody like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who did a lot of significant and historically important things, but certainly wasn't perfect. I don't want to apologize for her communism or justify it. It's part of the historical record. So I think, you know, the task before us is really to try to understand it, rather than just erase it because we're afraid that it might upset people.