Today, Ella Reeve Bloor is remembered as one of the most prominent socialist feminists in United States history. She gave countless speeches and lectures focusing on topics of women's suffrage and mobilization as workers, often stressing the “direct connection between the ballot and our work." For some, Bloor echoed the voice of working women in the early twentieth century by vocalizing the intersection of socialism and suffrage. She argued that because working women were marginalized by the law as it was, their only form of political power was through protest which frequently proved dangerous and ineffective. She believed that women needed the right to vote if they hoped to have a say in changing laws and therefore improve their working conditions and lives in general.
Bloor's autobiography, We Are Many, was published in 1940 and served as the basis for the Woody Guthrie song, "1913 Massacre."
Life magazine photographed Bloor's public funeral reception in Harlem. Alice Neel's 1951 painting of her funeral reception, "The Death of Mother Bloor," shows her in front of a line of mourners passing by her bier. It was included in the 2021 Alice Neel retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
QUITE a lady - I will voice her in the upcoming PBS Documentary SLATERSVILLE, by the talented filmmaker, Christian de Rezendes.
