Direct Action

Named after Voltaire, the French philosopher, Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) was born in Leslie, Michigan, into a poor family with ties to the Abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad. Influenced by Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft and Clarence Darrow, she became a prominent American anarchist speaker, writer, activist and poet. She died on June 20, 1912 at the St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and was buried at the Waldheim Cemetery (now Forest Home Cemetery), in Forest Park, Chicago.