The names and faces of revolutionaries and radicals of the past fill the walls of the Lucy Parsons Center in Jamaica Plain, but its collective efforts are greatly focused on the present.
Found on Centre Street, the faded red overhang outside sets straight what the business is, a collectively run bookstore that is also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
“It’s a free space where lots of organizations use our space for their public meetings, reading groups, stuff like that,” said bookseller and volunteer Magz, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her identity. She asked MassLive not to name her or show her appearance out of fear that doing so would make her more easily identifiable and threaten her and the store’s safety from right-wing agitators and pro-fascist groups.
“The books are an important part of the space, of course,” she said. “We are committed to the documentation and education of the progressive movement in all its facets. The books are one way that we get to people and we love that these books circulate around the city, around the world, and we use the sale of those books to support our projects that are more than just your average bookstore.”
The bookstore entered Magz’s orbit in mid-2021 after moving back into Boston. When her then-roommate was part of the core strategic team, inviting her “kind of off the cuff,” she said.
She attended a training session for new volunteers and found a purpose — all after she initially thought “Sure, why not?”
The store is named after former enslaved person, anarchist journalist and labor organizer Lucy Parsons. Born in Virginia in 1851, she married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier — “I know, wild story!” Magz said.
The two became journalists and covered the growing labor movement in the late 19th century.
“She continued to be a prolific, largely anarchist-leaning organizer,” Magz said. “She was chosen as the namesake of the space because she worked with all kinds of people on all kinds of social issues. She was absolutely not a reformist, but she worked with people across political lines for the social struggles that needed the labor.”
A bust and photos of Parsons stand on store shelves as a tribute to her legacy. The store itself, originally called Red Books when it opened in 1969, was named after Parsons “as a nod to that desire to work with all kinds of people, (and) for her political approach to organizing,” Magz said.
T-shirts for sale show the face of the store’s most devoted supporter and funder, former University of Massachusetts, Boston professor George Salzman.
An activist himself, he moved to Oaxaca, Mexico after he retired in 1999 to help found Science for the People, “a group of radical activist scientists who (sought) to address the intersection of science and social issues,” according to the University of Michigan.
After his death in 2020, Magz said Salzman ordered a large part of his salary back to the store so that the center could buy the property. The COVID-19 pandemic shut the physical store down. But it still offered curbside book pickups, Magz said. Volunteers continued masking four years later while the store continued to thrive.
“I think [Salzman’s] support really kept this place afloat in a really big way [and] allowed us to do a lot…
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