Archives West Finding Aid

Activist Minnie Parkhurst was born in Iowa on December 27, 1886 to parents William Ansel and Frances Eudora Arnold Parkhurst. She was active in many movements in the early years of the twentieth century, including pacifism, socialism, feminism, and anarchism. While living in Boise, Idaho, in 1912, Parkhurst met and married Ed Rimer (1884-1965). After initially taking Rimer’s last name, Parkhurst returned to her maiden name, which she used for the rest of her life.

Parkhurst’s political activism began in Boise, where she ran for city commissioner on the IWW-Socialist platform. She lost this campaign, and by 1914 she and Rimer had moved to Seattle, where she joined a theatre group and worked for the Neo-Malthusian League, which focused on birth control and population growth. She also served as the secretary of the Seattle Birth Control League and was a founding member of the Seattle branch of the International Workers’ Defense League.

Through her activism, Parkhurst befriended and corresponded with many other political activists, including Emma Goldman and Louise Olivereau, who was imprisoned for sedition between 1917 and 1920. In August 1917, Olivereau had used her own money to distribute letters that urged men to refuse the draft, which was considered a crime under the Espionage Act. Parkhurst worked to appeal Olivereau’s prison sentence and published a pamphlet about her friend’s story that included excerpts from the trial transcript and the closing speech. Although she had been sentenced to ten years in prison, Olivereau ultimately served only twenty-eight months before her release in March 1920.

In addition to her activist work, Parkhurst enjoyed poetry, drama, hiking, and swimming. She began a new career path in the 1920s, and sold Ford Motor Cars before working as an independent real estate agent. Parkhurst died on May 27, 1972 in Woodinville, Washington. She is buried in Sunset Hills Memorial Park in Bellevue.