Where did our name, "The Firebrand", come from?

The Firebrand Community Center is named after a radical newspaper published in the early 1900's by the anarchist Ross Winn, who died in Mt Juliet, Tennessee in 1912. Winn was a typesetter by trade, and dedicated most of his adult life to the publication of several radical political journals and papers. Originally from Texas, Winn spent his later life in Mt. Juliet, a few miles outside of Nashville, where he lived with his wife, Gussie, her family, and their son, Ross Jr.

Winn's last paper was known as "The Advance - Winn's Firebrand", and he was setting type for the August, 1912 issue up until the day before he died of a long battle with tuberculosis. Winn lived most of his life in poverty, and spent the majority of his family's slim earnings to continue the distribution of his papers, which saw contributions and subscriptions from anarchists all over the country. Our logo is taken from the original masthead of Winn's "Firebrand", which read "The Advance - Ross Winn's Firebrand: A Periodical of the Period". Whether or not Winn created the drawing is uncertain.

Very little is known about Ross Winn as much of his history and work is only now being discovered and compiled. The family whose home he lived and died in wasn't happy with Winn's anti-authoritarian ideas and writings, and as a consequence much of his work was simply lost or forgotten. His dedication to the free press and courage in continuing to publish radical literature from the rural countryside of a historically conservative Tennessee is important to us and our local history. We know that Winn's work and memory won't be found in the state archives or in a monument in a city park, so we offer it here, in the form of a community center and infoshop which carries on the ideals of true liberty and individual freedom that he and so many others have dedicated their lives to.

"The prophet stands upon the signal tower of progress and beholds the dawn of a new age while the world sleeps in intellectual darkness. The prophet stands upon the shore of the great ocean of truth and sees land on the other side. But the world has no use for the prophet until he has been dead two centuries."

- Ross Winn, in "The Advance - Winn's Firebrand", June 1912, two months before his death

A research project to uncover and accumulate more information about Ross Winn and his writings continues. If you have any questions or information on him, his wife or any of his projects, please contact: rosswinn(at)riseup.net.

Ross Winn's obituary, written by Emma Goldman which appeared in "The Anarchist 27" in 1912: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ross_Winn%27s_Obituary