Lucy Parsons was an African, Native and Mexican-American revolutionary anarchist labor activist from the late nineteenth and 20th century America. Emerging out of the Chicago Haymarket affair of 1886, in which eight anarchists were imprisoned or hung for their beliefs, Lucy Parsons led tens of thousands of workers into the streets in mass protests across the country. Defying both racial and gender discrimination, she was at the forefront of movements for social justice her entire life.

International Workers' Day or May Day is the commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, where police fired on demonstrators, killing dozens during a general strike for the 8-hour work day.