Skip to content

Biography · Chapter 07, 1840–1920

Hannah Silverman, Strike Captain

A teenager who led the women's picket lines.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn with striking silk workers and their children in Paterson, spring 1913.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn with striking silk workers and their children in Paterson, spring 1913.Unidentified photographer, "Paterson Strike, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, etc.," 1913. Internet Archive (mms_kerr_bx_2_fl_29_05). Public domain.

Hannah Silverman, a young Jewish silk worker, became one of the most visible figures of the 1913 Paterson strike. Newspapers gave her age as seventeen (the New York Times) or fifteen (the Evening World). She led the women's picket lines, was arrested at least three times, and headed the procession of strikers to the Paterson Pageant in New York. Bill Haywood called her 'the greatest little IWW in the country,' and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn hailed her as the 'Joan d'Arc of the silk strike.' When she came before Judge Klenert, he suspended her sentence. After the strike, the historical record largely loses her, as it lost so many of the young women who built American labor.

Sources

  1. ScholarshipThe 1913 Paterson Silk Strike. PBS American Experience.
  2. Primary sourceCoverage of Hannah Silverman. The Evening World (New York), 1913.
  3. Primary sourceCoverage of the Paterson strike, June 21, 1913. The New York Times, 1913.

Cite this page (Chicago)