Emma Goldman (1869-1940) grew up in Jewish Kovno and St Petersburg. Her formal education was limited, but she read widely and in St Petersburg she associated with a radical student circle. In the late 1880s she immigrated to the U.S and settled in Rochester NY. There and later in New Haven Conn, she worked in clothing factories, mixing with socialist and anarchist fellow workers.
Goldman addressing the workers
Although anarchists were more often the victims of violence than its offenders, the stereotype of the long-haired, wild-eyed anarchist assassin emerged in the 1880s and was firmly established in the public mind. Anarchists, many of them German immigrants, were prominent figures in Chicago’s labour movement. There was a peaceful rally against the Chicago Harvesting Machine Co in May 1886, After Harrison and most of the demonstrators had departed, a contingent of police arrived and demanded that the crowd disperse. At that point a bomb exploded among the police, killing one, and the police responded with gunfire. In the ensuing melee, 6 workers were killed and many more injured.
The Chicago Haymarket Affair created general hysteria against immigrants and labour leaders, and led to renewed suppression by police. Although the identity of the bomb thrower was never found, 8 anarchist leaders were arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy. 4 Chicago Eight members were hanged in Nov 1887; 1 committed suicide in his cell; and 3 were given long sentences. Only later, in criticising the unjust trial, did Illinois Gov John Altgeld pardon the 3 surviving Haymarket prisoners in 1893.
In NY Goldman formed a close association with Alexander Berkman (1870–1936) who’d been gaoled for trying to assassinate Henry Clay Frick during the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike Massacre. In 1893 she herself was gaoled in New York for inciting a riot when some unemployed workers reacted to a fiery speech she had delivered. Released 2 years later, Goldman embarked on lecture tours of Europe and U.S. By then she’d repudiated her earlier tolerance of violence as an acceptable means of achieving social ends.
Goldman and Berkman
In 1906 Berkman was freed, and he and Goldman reunited. In that year she founded Mother Earth, a periodical she edited until its suppression in WW1. Goldman was a follower of the brilliant Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), writing essays on anarchist theory and practice in Mother Earth that honoured Kropotkin’s writings. Her campaigns were often controversial eg pro contraception. So it was unsurprising that her American naturalisation was revoked by legal steps in 1908. 2 years later she published Anarchism and Other Essays.
Mother Earth periodical
published until WW1
But this did come as a surprise to me. Goldman also lectured on the contemporary dramatic works of Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, George Bernard Shaw etc. She was influential in introducing many European playwrights to American audiences; her lectures on their work were published in 1914 as The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Yet she was gaoled in 1916 for the conception issue.
When WW1 broke out in Europe, Goldman opposed US involvement, and later she lobbied against military conscription. She believed it was an imperialist war that was sacrificing ordinary people as cannon fodder. In July 1917 she was sentenced to 2 years prison for her anti-war activities, including time in The Penitentiary Hospital NY.
By the time of her release in Sept 1919, the U.S was caught up in hysteria over the rumoured network of communist operatives, and her ideas earned Goldman the enmity of powerful political and economic authorities. J Edgar Hoover turned the deportation of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman into a personal crusade, branding them as two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country. Red Emma was declared a subversive alien and in Dec, along with Berkman and 247 others, was deported to the Soviet Union. 2 years after leaving Russia, she recorded her experiences in My Disillusionment in Russia (1923).
Congress had long passed a law barring all foreign anarchists from entering or remaining in the country. In the repressive mood that followed WW1, anarchism in the US was further suppressed. And in an awful trial in 1920, two immigrant Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of killing a payroll clerk and a guard in Mass. Despite worldwide protests that raised serious questions about the guilt of the defendants, including by Goldman, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927.
She remained active, living at various times in Sweden, Germany, England, France etc, continuing to lecture and writing her autobiography, Living My Life (1931). In 1940 she worked for the anti-Fascist cause in the Spanish Civil War, then suffered a stroke in 1940 and died in Toronto aged 70.
In 1990 the Emma Goldman Papers Project created an exhibit that commemorated the life of this heroine decades after her death. Starting in San Francisco, the exhibit toured across the U.S and the world. Historical photographs, personal letters and government documents traced Goldman's political and personal evolution. Included were correspondence from Goldman to birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, the warrant for Goldman's deportation, newspaper articles and horrible editorial cartoons.
by Vivian Gornick, 2013
Goldman’s early experiences in Russia and as a struggling immigrant to the U.S laid the ground work for her own later analyses of workers’ problems. Though Goldman was already my family’s Russian, Jewish, feminist, immigrant hero, I'd recommend reading Vivian Gornick’s book.