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= Emma_Goldman =
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Introduction
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Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 - May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born
anarchist revolutionary, political activist, and writer. She played a
pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in
North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Born in Kaunas, Lithuania (then within the Russian Empire), to a
Lithuanian Jewish family, Goldman immigrated to the United States in
1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair in Chicago,
Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist
philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of
thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and
lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier
Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Frick survived
the attempt on his life in 1892, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years
in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that
followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing
information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the
anarchist journal 'Mother Earth'.
In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for
conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated
draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested--along with
248 others--in the so-called Palmer Raids during the First Red Scare
and deported to Russia in December 1919. Initially supportive of that
country's October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power,
Goldman changed her opinion in the wake of the Kronstadt rebellion;
she denounced the Soviet Union for its violent repression of
independent voices. She left the Soviet Union and in 1923 published a
book about her experiences, 'My Disillusionment in Russia'. While
living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography
called 'Living My Life'. It was published in two volumes, in 1931 and
1935. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Goldman traveled to
Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto,
Ontario, Canada, in 1940, aged 70.
During her life, Goldman was lionized as a freethinking "rebel woman"
by admirers, and denounced by detractors as an advocate of politically
motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures
spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom
of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and
homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism
and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of
incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of
obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status in the 1970s by a revival of
interest in her life, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled
popular interest.
Family
========
Emma Goldman was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Kaunas in
Lithuania, then within the Russian Empire. Goldman's mother Taube
Bienowitch had been married before to a man with whom she had two
daughters--Helena in 1860 and Lena in 1862. When her first husband
died of tuberculosis, Taube was devastated. Goldman later wrote:
"Whatever love she had had died with the young man to whom she had
been married at the age of fifteen."
Taube's second marriage was arranged by her family and, as Goldman
puts it, "mismated from the first". Her second husband, Abraham
Goldman, invested Taube's inheritance in a business that quickly
failed. The ensuing hardship, combined with the emotional distance
between husband and wife, made the household a tense place for the
children. When Taube became pregnant, Abraham hoped desperately for a
son; a daughter, he believed, would be one more sign of failure. They
eventually had three sons, but their first child was Emma.
Emma Goldman was born on June 27, 1869. Her father used violence to
punish his children, beating them when they disobeyed him. He used a
whip on Emma, the most rebellious of them. Her mother provided scarce
comfort, rarely calling on Abraham to tone down his beatings. Goldman
later speculated that her father's furious temper was at least partly
a result of sexual frustration.
Goldman's relationships with her elder half-sisters, Helena and Lena,
were a study in contrasts. Helena, the oldest, provided the comfort
the children lacked from their mother and filled Goldman's childhood
with "whatever joy it had". Lena, however, was distant and
uncharitable. The three sisters were joined by brothers Louis (who
died at the age of six), Herman (born in 1872), and Moishe (born in
1879).
Adolescence
=============
When Emma Goldman was a young girl, the Goldman family moved to the
village of Papilė, where her father ran an inn. While her sisters
worked, she became friends with a servant named Petrushka, who excited
her "first erotic sensations". Later in Papilė she witnessed a peasant
being whipped with a knout in the street. This event traumatized her
and contributed to her lifelong distaste for violent authority.
At the age of seven, Goldman moved with her family to the Prussian
city of Königsberg (then part of the German Empire), and she was
enrolled in a 'Realschule'. One teacher punished disobedient
students--targeting Goldman in particular--by beating their hands with
a ruler. Another teacher tried to molest his female students and was
fired when Goldman fought back. She found a sympathetic mentor in her
German-language teacher, who loaned her books and took her to an
opera. A passionate student, Goldman passed the exam for admission
into a gymnasium, but her religion teacher refused to provide a
certificate of good behavior and she was unable to attend.
The family moved to the Russian capital of Saint Petersburg, where her
father opened one unsuccessful store after another. Their poverty
forced the children to work, and Goldman took an assortment of jobs,
including one in a corset shop. As a teenager Goldman begged her
father to allow her to return to school, but instead he threw her
French book into the fire and shouted: "Girls do not have to learn
much! All a Jewish daughter needs to know is how to prepare gefilte
fish, cut noodles fine, and give the man plenty of children."
Goldman pursued an independent education on her own. She studied the
political turmoil around her, particularly the Nihilists responsible
for assassinating Alexander II of Russia. The ensuing turmoil
intrigued Goldman, although she did not fully understand it at the
time. When she read Nikolai Chernyshevsky's novel, 'What Is to Be
Done?' (1863), she found a role model in the protagonist Vera, who
adopts a Nihilist philosophy and escapes her repressive family to live
freely and organize a sewing cooperative. The book enthralled Goldman
and remained a source of inspiration throughout her life.
Her father, meanwhile, continued to insist on a domestic future for
her, and he tried to arrange for her to be married at the age of
fifteen. They fought about the issue constantly; he complained that
she was becoming a "loose" woman, and she insisted that she would
marry for love alone. At the corset shop, she was forced to fend off
unwelcome advances from Russian officers and other men. One man took
her into a hotel room and committed what Goldman described as "violent
contact"; two biographers call it rape. She was stunned by the
experience, overcome by "shock at the discovery that the contact
between man and woman could be so brutal and painful." Goldman felt
that the encounter forever soured her interactions with men.
Rochester, New York
=====================
In 1885, her sister Helena made plans to move to New York in the
United States to join her sister Lena and her husband. Goldman wanted
to join her sister, but their father refused to allow it. Despite
Helena's offer to pay for the trip, Abraham turned a deaf ear to their
pleas. Desperate, Goldman threatened to throw herself into the Neva
River if she could not go. Their father finally agreed. On December
29, 1885, Helena and Emma arrived at New York City's Castle Garden,
the entry for immigrants.
They settled upstate, living in the Rochester home which Lena had made
with her husband, Samuel. Fleeing the rising antisemitism of Saint
Petersburg, their parents and brothers joined them a year later.
Goldman began working as a seamstress, sewing overcoats for more than
ten hours a day, earning two and a half dollars a week. She asked for
a raise and was denied; she quit and took work at a smaller shop
nearby.
At her new job, Goldman met a fellow worker named Jacob Kershner, who
shared her love for books, dancing, and traveling, as well as her
frustration with the monotony of factory work. After four months, they
married in February 1887. Once he moved in with Goldman's family,
their relationship faltered. On their wedding night she discovered
that he was impotent; they became emotionally and physically distant.
Before long he became jealous and suspicious and threatened to commit
suicide should she leave him. Meanwhile, Goldman was becoming more
engaged with the political turmoil around her, particularly the
aftermath of executions related to the 1886 Haymarket affair in
Chicago and the anti-authoritarian political philosophy of anarchism.
Less than a year after the wedding, the couple were divorced; Kershner
begged Goldman to return and threatened to poison himself if she did
not. They reunited, but after three months she left once again. Her
parents considered her behavior "loose" and refused to allow Goldman
into their home. Carrying her sewing machine in one hand and a bag
with five dollars in the other, she left Rochester and headed
southeast to New York City.
Most and Berkman
==================
On her first day in New York City, Goldman met two men who would have
a significant and enduring influence on the course of her life. At
Sachs' Café, a gathering place for radicals, she was introduced to
Alexander Berkman, an anarchist who invited her to a public speech
that evening. They went to hear Johann Most, editor of a radical
publication called 'Freiheit' and an advocate of "propaganda of the
deed"--the use of violence to instigate change. She was impressed by
his fiery oration, and Most took her under his wing, training her in
methods of public speaking. He encouraged her vigorously, telling her
that she was "to take my place when I am gone." One of her first
public talks in support of "the Cause" was in Rochester. After
convincing Helena not to tell their parents of her speech, Goldman
found her mind a blank once on stage. She later wrote, suddenly:
Excited by the experience, Goldman refined her public persona during
subsequent engagements. She quickly found herself arguing with Most
over her independence. After a momentous speech in Cleveland, she felt
as though she had become "a parrot repeating Most's views" and
resolved to express herself on the stage. When she returned to New
York, Most became furious and told her: "Who is not with me is against
me!" She left 'Freiheit' and joined another publication, 'Die
Autonomie'.
Meanwhile, Goldman had begun a friendship with Berkman, whom she
affectionately called Sasha. Before long they became lovers and moved
into a communal apartment with his cousin Modest "Fedya" Stein and
Goldman's friend, Helene Minkin, on 42nd Street. Although their
relationship had numerous difficulties, Goldman and Berkman would
share a close bond for decades, united by their anarchist principles
and commitment to personal equality.
In 1892, Goldman joined with Berkman and Stein in opening an ice cream
shop in Worcester, Massachusetts. After a few months of operating the
shop, Goldman and Berkman were diverted to participate in the
Homestead Strike near Pittsburgh.
Homestead plot
================
Berkman and Goldman came together through the Homestead Strike. In
June 1892, a steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, owned by Andrew
Carnegie became the focus of national attention when talks between the
Carnegie Steel Company and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and
Steel Workers (AA) broke down. The factory's manager was Henry Clay
Frick, a fierce opponent of the union. When a final round of talks
failed at the end of June, management closed the plant and locked out
the workers, who immediately went on strike. Strikebreakers were
brought in and the company hired Pinkerton guards to protect them. On
July 6, a fight broke out between 300 Pinkerton guards and a crowd of
armed union workers. During the twelve-hour gunfight, seven guards and
nine strikers were killed.
When a majority of the nation's newspapers expressed support of the
strikers, Goldman and Berkman resolved to assassinate Frick, an action
they expected would inspire the workers to revolt against the
capitalist system. Berkman chose to carry out the assassination and
ordered Goldman to stay behind in order to explain his motives after
he went to jail. He would be in charge of "the deed"; she of the
associated propaganda. Berkman set off for Pittsburgh on his way to
Homestead, where he planned to shoot Frick.
Goldman, meanwhile, decided to help fund the scheme through
prostitution. Remembering the character of Sonya in Fyodor
Dostoevsky's novel 'Crime and Punishment' (1866), she mused: "She had
become a prostitute in order to support her little brothers and
sisters ... Sensitive Sonya could sell her body; why not I?" Once on
the street, Goldman caught the eye of a man who took her into a
saloon, bought her a beer, gave her ten dollars, informed her she did
not have "the knack," and told her to quit the business. She was "too
astounded for speech". She wrote to Helena, claiming illness, and
asked her for fifteen dollars.
On July 23, Berkman gained access to Frick's office while carrying a
concealed handgun; he shot Frick three times, and stabbed him in the
leg. A group of workers--far from joining in his 'attentat'--beat
Berkman unconscious, and he was carried away by the police. Berkman
was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Goldman suffered during his long absence.
Convinced Goldman was involved in the plot, police raided her
apartment. Although they found no evidence, they pressured her
landlord into evicting her. Furthermore, the 'attentat' had failed to
rouse the masses: workers and anarchists alike condemned Berkman's
action. Johann Most, their former mentor, lashed out at Berkman and
the assassination attempt. Furious at these attacks, Goldman brought a
toy horsewhip to a public lecture and demanded, onstage, that Most
explain his betrayal. He dismissed her, whereupon she struck him with
the whip, broke it on her knee, and hurled the pieces at him. She
later regretted her assault, confiding to a friend: "At the age of
twenty-three, one does not reason."
"Inciting to riot"
====================
When the Panic of 1893 struck in the following year, the United States
suffered one of its worst economic crises. By year's end, the
unemployment rate was higher than 20 percent, and "hunger
demonstrations" sometimes gave way to riots. Goldman began speaking to
crowds of frustrated men and women in New York City. On August 21, she
spoke to a crowd of nearly 3,000 people in Union Square, where she
encouraged unemployed workers to take immediate action. Her exact
words are unclear: undercover agents insist she ordered the crowd to
"take everything ... by force". But Goldman later recounted this
message: "Well then, demonstrate before the palaces of the rich;
demand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny
you both, take bread." Later in court, Detective-Sergeant Charles
Jacobs offered yet another version of her speech.
A week later, Goldman was arrested in Philadelphia and returned to New
York City for trial, charged with "inciting to riot". During the train
ride, Jacobs offered to drop the charges against her if she would
inform on other radicals in the area. She responded by throwing a
glass of ice water in his face. As she awaited trial, Goldman was
visited by Nellie Bly, a reporter for the 'New York World.' She spent
two hours talking to Goldman and wrote a positive article about the
woman she described as a "modern Joan of Arc."
Despite this positive publicity, the jury was persuaded by Jacobs's
testimony and frightened by Goldman's politics. The assistant district
attorney questioned Goldman about her anarchism, as well as her
atheism; the judge spoke of her as "a dangerous woman". She was
sentenced to one year in the Blackwell's Island Penitentiary. Once
inside, she suffered an attack of rheumatism and was sent to the
infirmary. There, she befriended a visiting doctor and received
informal training in nursing, eventually being placed in charge of a
16-bed women's ward in the infirmary. She also read dozens of books,
including works by the American activist-writers Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Henry David Thoreau; novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne; poet Walt
Whitman, and philosopher John Stuart Mill. When Goldman was released
after ten months, a raucous crowd of nearly 3,000 people greeted her
at the Thalia Theater in New York City. She soon became swamped with
requests for interviews and lectures.
To make money, Goldman decided to continue the medical studies she had
started in prison, but her preferred fields of
specialization--midwifery and massage--were unavailable to nursing
students in the United States. She sailed to Europe, lecturing in
London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. She met with renowned anarchists such
as Errico Malatesta, Louise Michel, and Peter Kropotkin. In Vienna,
she received two diplomas for midwifery and put them immediately to
use back in the United States.
Alternating between lectures and midwifery, Goldman conducted the
first cross-country tour by an anarchist speaker. In November 1899,
she returned to Europe to speak, where she met the Czech anarchist
Hippolyte Havel in London. They went together to France and helped
organize what would have been the 1900 International Anarchist
Congress on the outskirts of Paris. Afterward, Havel immigrated to the
United States, traveling with Goldman to Chicago. They shared a
residence there with friends of Goldman.
McKinley assassination
========================
On September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz, an unemployed factory worker and
anarchist, shot U.S. President William McKinley twice during a public
speaking event in Buffalo, New York. McKinley was hit in the
breastbone and stomach, and died eight days later. Czolgosz was
arrested, and interrogated around the clock. During interrogation he
claimed to be an anarchist and said he had been inspired to act after
attending a speech by Goldman. The authorities used this as a pretext
to charge Goldman with planning McKinley's assassination. They tracked
her to the residence in Chicago she shared with Havel, as well as with
Mary and Abe Isaak, an anarchist couple and their family. Goldman was
arrested, along with Isaak, Havel, and ten other anarchists.
Earlier, Czolgosz had tried but failed to become friends with Goldman
and her companions. During a talk in Cleveland, Czolgosz had
approached Goldman and asked her advice on which books he should read.
In July 1901, he had appeared at the Isaak house, asking a series of
unusual questions. They assumed he was an infiltrator, like a number
of police agents sent to spy on radical groups. They had remained
distant from him, and Abe Isaak sent a notice to associates warning of
"another spy".
Although Czolgosz repeatedly denied Goldman's involvement, the police
held her in close custody, subjecting her to what she called the
"third degree" (intense interrogation by police). She explained her
housemates' distrust of Czolgosz, and the police finally recognized
that she had not had any significant contact with the attacker. No
evidence was found linking Goldman to the attack, and she was released
after two weeks of detention. Before McKinley died, Goldman offered to
provide nursing care, referring to him as "merely a human being".
Czolgosz, despite considerable evidence of mental illness, was
convicted of murder and executed.
Throughout her detention and after her release, Goldman steadfastly
refused to condemn Czolgosz's actions, standing virtually alone in
doing so. Friends and supporters--including Berkman--urged her to quit
his cause. But Goldman defended Czolgosz as a "supersensitive being"
and chastised other anarchists for abandoning him. She was vilified in
the press as the "high priestess of anarchy", while many newspapers
declared the anarchist movement responsible for the murder. In the
wake of these events, socialism gained support over anarchism among
U.S. radicals. McKinley's successor, Theodore Roosevelt, declared his
intent to crack down "not only against anarchists, but against all
active and passive sympathizers with anarchists".
''Mother Earth'' and Berkman's release
========================================
After Czolgosz was executed, Goldman withdrew from society and, from
1903 to 1913, lived at 208-210 East 13th Street, New York City.
Scorned by her fellow anarchists, vilified by the press, and separated
from her love, Berkman, she retreated into anonymity and nursing. "It
was bitter and hard to face life anew," she wrote later.
Using the name E. G. Smith, she left public life and took on a series
of private nursing jobs while suffering from severe depression. The
U.S. Congress's passage of the Anarchist Exclusion Act (1903) stirred
a new wave of oppositional activism, pulling Goldman back into the
movement. A coalition of people and organizations across the left end
of the political spectrum opposed the law on grounds that it violated
freedom of speech, and she had the nation's ear once again.
After an English anarchist named John Turner was arrested under the
Anarchist Exclusion Act and threatened with deportation, Goldman
joined forces with the Free Speech League to champion his cause. The
league enlisted the aid of noted attorneys Clarence Darrow and Edgar
Lee Masters, who took Turner's case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Although Turner and the League lost, Goldman considered it a victory
of propaganda. She had returned to anarchist activism, but it was
taking its toll on her. "I never felt so weighed down," she wrote to
Berkman. "I fear I am forever doomed to remain public property and to
have my life worn out through the care for the lives of others."
In 1906, Goldman decided to start a publication, "a place of
expression for the young idealists in arts and letters". 'Mother
Earth' was staffed by a cadre of radical activists, including
Hippolyte Havel, Max Baginski, and Leonard Abbott. In addition to
publishing original works by its editors and anarchists around the
world, 'Mother Earth' reprinted selections from a variety of writers.
These included the French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Russian
anarchist Peter Kropotkin, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and
British writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Goldman wrote frequently about
anarchism, politics, labor issues, atheism, sexuality, and feminism,
and was the first editor of the magazine.
On May 18 of the same year, Alexander Berkman was released from
prison. Carrying a bouquet of roses, Goldman met him on the train
platform and found herself "seized by terror and pity" as she beheld
his gaunt, pale form. Neither was able to speak; they returned to her
home in silence. For weeks, he struggled to readjust to life on the
outside: an abortive speaking tour ended in failure, and in Cleveland
he purchased a revolver with the intent of killing himself. Upon
returning to New York, he learned that Goldman had been arrested with
a group of activists meeting to reflect on Czolgosz. Invigorated anew
by this violation of freedom of assembly, he declared, "My
resurrection has come!" and set about securing their release.
Berkman took the helm of 'Mother Earth' in 1907, while Goldman toured
the country to raise funds to keep it operating. Editing the magazine
was a revitalizing experience for Berkman. But his relationship with
Goldman faltered, and he had an affair with a 15-year-old anarchist
named Becky Edelsohn. Goldman was pained by his rejection of her but
considered it a consequence of his prison experience. Later that year
she served as a delegate from the U.S. to the International Anarchist
Congress of Amsterdam. Anarchists and syndicalists from around the
world gathered to sort out the tension between the two ideologies, but
no decisive agreement was reached. Goldman returned to the U.S. and
continued speaking to large audiences.
Reitman, essays, and birth control
====================================
For the next ten years, Goldman traveled around the country nonstop,
delivering lectures and agitating for anarchism. The coalitions formed
in opposition to the Anarchist Exclusion Act had given her an
appreciation for reaching out to those of other political positions.
When the U.S. Justice Department sent spies to observe, they reported
the meetings as "packed". Writers, journalists, artists, judges, and
workers from across the spectrum spoke of her "magnetic power", her
"convincing presence", her "force, eloquence, and fire".
In the spring of 1908, Goldman met and fell in love with Ben Reitman,
the so-called "Hobo doctor". Having grown up in Chicago's Tenderloin
District, Reitman spent several years as a drifter before earning a
medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago.
As a doctor, he treated people suffering from poverty and illness,
particularly venereal diseases. He and Goldman began an affair. They
shared a commitment to free love and Reitman took a variety of lovers,
but Goldman did not. She tried to reconcile her feelings of jealousy
with a belief in freedom of the heart but found it difficult.
Two years later, Goldman began feeling frustrated with lecture
audiences. She yearned to "reach the few who really want to learn,
rather than the many who come to be amused". She collected a series of
speeches and items she had written for 'Mother Earth' and published a
book titled 'Anarchism and Other Essays.' Covering a wide variety of
topics, Goldman tried to represent "the mental and soul struggles of
twenty-one years".
When Margaret Sanger, an advocate of access to contraception, coined
the term "birth control" and disseminated information about various
methods in the June 1914 issue of her magazine 'The Woman Rebel,' she
received aggressive support from Goldman. The latter had already been
active in efforts to increase birth control access for several years.
In 1916, Goldman was arrested for giving lessons in public on how to
use contraceptives. Sanger, too, was arrested under the Comstock Law,
which prohibited the dissemination of "obscene, lewd, or lascivious
articles", which authorities defined as including information relating
to birth control.
Although they later split from Sanger over charges of insufficient
support, Goldman and Reitman distributed copies of Sanger's pamphlet
'Family Limitation' (along with a similar essay of Reitman's). In 1915
Goldman conducted a nationwide speaking tour, in part to raise
awareness about contraception options. Although the nation's attitude
toward the topic seemed to be liberalizing, Goldman was arrested on
February 11, 1916, as she was about to give another public lecture.
Goldman was charged with violating the Comstock Law. Refusing to pay a
$100 fine, she spent two weeks in a prison workhouse, which she saw as
an "opportunity" to reconnect with those rejected by society.
World War I
=============
Although President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in 1916 under the
slogan "He kept us out of the war", at the start of his second term,
he announced that Germany's continued deployment of unrestricted
submarine warfare was sufficient cause for the U.S. to enter the Great
War. Shortly afterward, Congress passed the Selective Service Act of
1917, which required all males aged 21-30 to register for military
conscription. Goldman saw the decision as an exercise in militarist
aggression, driven by capitalism. She declared in 'Mother Earth' her
intent to resist conscription, and to oppose U.S. involvement in the
war.
To this end, she and Berkman organized the No Conscription League of
New York, which proclaimed: "We oppose conscription because we are
internationalists, antimilitarists, and opposed to all wars waged by
capitalistic governments." The group became a vanguard for anti-draft
activism, and chapters began to appear in other cities. When police
began raiding the group's public events to find young men who had not
registered for the draft, Goldman and others focused their efforts on
distributing pamphlets and other writings. In the midst of the
nation's patriotic fervor, many elements of the political left refused
to support the League's efforts. The Women's Peace Party, for example,
ceased their peace efforts and turned to war relief once the U.S.
entered the war. The Socialist Party of America took an official
stance against U.S. involvement but supported Wilson in most of his
activities.
On June 15, 1917, Goldman and Berkman were arrested during a raid of
their offices, in which authorities seized "a wagon load of anarchist
records and propaganda". 'The New York Times' reported that Goldman
asked to change into a more appropriate outfit, and emerged in a gown
of "royal purple". The pair were charged with conspiracy to "induce
persons not to register" under the newly enacted Espionage Act, and
were held on $25,000 bail each. Defending herself and Berkman during
their trial, Goldman invoked the First Amendment, asking how the
government could claim to fight for democracy abroad while suppressing
free speech at home:
We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for
democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is
the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily
being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up
by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is
curtailed and every independent opinion gagged? Verily, poor as we are
in democracy, how can we give of it to the world?
The jury found Goldman and Berkman guilty. Judge Julius Marshuetz
Mayer imposed the maximum sentence: two years' imprisonment, a $10,000
fine each, and the possibility of deportation after their release from
prison. As she was transported to Missouri State Penitentiary, Goldman
wrote to a friend: "Two years imprisonment for having made an
uncompromising stand for one's ideal. Why that is a small price."
In prison, she was assigned to work as a seamstress, under the eye of
a "miserable gutter-snipe of a 21-year-old boy paid to get results".
She met the socialist Kate Richards O'Hare, who had also been
imprisoned under the Espionage Act. Although they differed on
political strategy--O'Hare believed in voting to achieve state
power--the two women came together to agitate for better conditions
among prisoners. Goldman also met and became friends with Gabriella
Segata Antolini, an anarchist and follower of Luigi Galleani. Antolini
had been arrested transporting a satchel filled with dynamite on a
Chicago-bound train. She had refused to cooperate with authorities and
was sent to prison for 14 months. Working together to make life better
for the other inmates, the three women became known as "The Trinity".
Goldman was released on September 27, 1919.
Deportation
=============
Goldman and Berkman were released from prison during the United
States' Red Scare of 1919-20, when public anxiety about wartime
pro-German activities had expanded into a pervasive fear of Bolshevism
and the prospect of an imminent radical revolution. It was a time of
social unrest due to union organizing strikes and actions by activist
immigrants. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar
Hoover, head of the U.S. Department of Justice's General Intelligence
Division (now the FBI), were intent on using the Anarchist Exclusion
Act and its 1918 expansion to deport any non-citizens they could
identify as advocates of anarchy or revolution. "Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman," Hoover wrote while they were in prison, "are,
beyond doubt, two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country and
return to the community will result in undue harm."
At her deportation hearing on October 27, 1919, Goldman refused to
answer questions about her beliefs, on the grounds that her American
citizenship invalidated any attempt to deport her under the Anarchist
Exclusion Act, which could be enforced only against non-citizens of
the U.S.. She presented a written statement instead: "Today so-called
aliens are deported. Tomorrow native Americans will be banished.
Already some patrioteers are suggesting that native American sons to
whom democracy is a sacred ideal should be exiled." Louis Post at the
Department of Labor, which had ultimate authority over deportation
decisions, determined that the revocation of her husband Kershner's
American citizenship in 1908 after his conviction had revoked hers as
well. After initially promising a court fight, Goldman decided not to
appeal his ruling.
The Labor Department included Goldman and Berkman among 249 aliens it
deported 'en masse,' mostly people with only vague associations with
radical groups, who had been swept up in government raids in November.
'Buford', a ship the press nicknamed the "Soviet Ark", sailed from the
Army's New York Port of Embarkation on December 21. Some 58 enlisted
men and four officers provided security on the journey, and pistols
were distributed to the crew. Most of the press approved
enthusiastically. The Cleveland 'Plain Dealer' wrote: "It is hoped and
expected that other vessels, larger, more commodious, carrying similar
cargoes, will follow in her wake." The ship landed her charges in
Hanko, Finland, on Saturday, January 17, 1920. Upon arrival in
Finland, authorities there conducted the deportees to the Russian
frontier under a flag of truce.
Russia
========
Goldman initially viewed the Bolshevik revolution in a positive light.
She wrote in 'Mother Earth' that despite its dependence on Communist
government, it represented "the most fundamental, far-reaching and
all-embracing principles of human freedom and of economic well-being".
By the time she neared Europe, she expressed fears about what was to
come. She was worried about the ongoing Russian Civil War and the
possibility of being seized by anti-Bolshevik forces. The state,
anti-capitalist though it was, also posed a threat. "I could never in
my life work within the confines of the State," she wrote to her
niece, "Bolshevist or otherwise."
She quickly discovered that her fears were justified. Days after
returning to Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), she was shocked to hear a
party official refer to free speech as a "bourgeois superstition". As
she and Berkman traveled around the country, they found repression,
mismanagement, and corruption instead of the equality and worker
empowerment they had dreamed of. Those who questioned the government
were demonized as counter-revolutionaries, and workers labored under
severe conditions. They met with Vladimir Lenin, who assured them that
government suppression of press liberties was justified. He told them:
"There can be no free speech in a revolutionary period." Berkman was
more willing to forgive the government's actions in the name of
"historical necessity", but he eventually joined Goldman in opposing
the Soviet state's authority.
In March 1921, strikes erupted in Petrograd when workers took to the
streets demanding better food rations and more union autonomy. Goldman
and Berkman felt a responsibility to support the strikers, stating:
"To remain silent now is impossible, even criminal." The unrest spread
to the port town of Kronstadt, where the government ordered a military
response to suppress striking soldiers and sailors. In the Kronstadt
rebellion, approximately 1,000 rebelling sailors and soldiers were
killed and two thousand more were arrested; many were later executed.
In the wake of these events, Goldman and Berkman decided there was no
future in the country for them. "More and more", she wrote, "we have
come to the conclusion that we can do nothing here. And as we can not
keep up a life of inactivity much longer we have decided to leave."
In December 1921, they left the country and went to the Latvian
capital city of Riga. The U.S. commissioner in that city wired
officials in Washington, D.C., who began requesting information from
other governments about the couple's activities. After a short trip to
Stockholm, they moved to Berlin for several years; during this time
Goldman agreed to write a series of articles about her time in Russia
for Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the 'New York World.' These were
later collected and published in book form as 'My Disillusionment in
Russia' (1923) and 'My Further Disillusionment in Russia' (1924). The
publishers added these titles to attract attention; Goldman protested,
albeit in vain.
England, Canada, and France
=============================
Goldman found it difficult to acclimate to the German leftist
community in Berlin. Communists despised her outspokenness about
Soviet repression; liberals derided her radicalism. While Berkman
remained in Berlin helping Russian exiles, Goldman moved to London in
September 1924. Upon her arrival, the novelist Rebecca West arranged a
reception dinner for her, attended by philosopher Bertrand Russell,
novelist H. G. Wells, and more than 200 other guests. When she spoke
of her dissatisfaction with the Soviet government, the audience was
shocked. Some left the gathering; others berated her for prematurely
criticizing the Communist experiment. Later, in a letter, Russell
declined to support her efforts at systemic change in the Soviet Union
and ridiculed her anarchist idealism.
In 1925, the spectre of deportation loomed again, but James Colton, a
Scottish anarchist Goldman had first met in Glasgow whilst on a
speaking tour in 1895, had offered to marry her and provide British
citizenship. Although they were only distant acquaintances, she
accepted and they were married on June 27, 1925, Goldman's 58th
birthday. Her new status gave her peace of mind and allowed her to
travel to France and Canada. The pair sporadically exchanged
correspondence until Colton's death in 1936. Life in London was
stressful for Goldman; she wrote to Berkman: "I am awfully tired and
so lonely and heartsick. It is a dreadful feeling to come back here
from lectures and find not a kindred soul, no one who cares whether
one is dead or alive." She worked on analytical studies of drama,
expanding on the work she had published in 1914. But the audiences
were "awful," and she never finished her second book on the subject.
Goldman traveled to Canada in 1927, just in time to receive news of
the impending executions of Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti in Boston. Angered by the many irregularities of
the case, she saw it as another travesty of justice in the United
States. She longed to join the mass demonstrations in Boston; memories
of the Haymarket affair overwhelmed her, compounded by her isolation.
"Then," she wrote, "I had my life before me to take up the cause for
those killed. Now I have nothing."
In 1928, she began writing her autobiography, with the support of a
group of American admirers, including journalist H. L. Mencken, poet
Edna St. Vincent Millay, novelist Theodore Dreiser and art collector
Peggy Guggenheim, who raised $4,000 for her. She secured a cottage in
the French coastal city of Saint-Tropez and spent two years recounting
her life. Berkman offered sharply critical feedback, which she
eventually incorporated at the price of a strain on their
relationship. Goldman intended the book, 'Living My Life,' as a single
volume for a price the working class could afford (she urged no more
than $5.00); her publisher Alfred A. Knopf released it as two volumes
sold together for $7.50. Goldman was furious, but unable to force a
change. Due in large part to the Great Depression, sales were sluggish
despite keen interest from libraries around the United States.
Critical reviews were generally enthusiastic; 'The New York Times',
'The New Yorker', and 'Saturday Review of Literature' all listed it as
one of the year's top non-fiction books.
In 1933, Goldman received permission to lecture in the United States
under the condition that she speak only about drama and her
autobiography--but not current political events. She returned to New
York on February 2, 1934, to generally positive press coverage--except
from Communist publications. Soon she was surrounded by admirers and
friends, besieged with invitations to talks and interviews. Her visa
expired in May, and she went to Toronto in order to file another
request to visit the United States. This second attempt was denied.
She stayed in Canada, writing articles for U.S. publications.
In February and March 1936, Berkman underwent a pair of prostate gland
operations. Recuperating in Nice and cared for by his companion, Emmy
Eckstein, he missed Goldman's sixty-seventh birthday in Saint-Tropez
in June. She wrote in sadness, but he never read the letter; she
received a call in the middle of the night that Berkman was in great
distress. She left for Nice immediately, but when she arrived that
morning, Goldman found that he had shot himself and was in a nearly
comatose paralysis. He died later that evening.
Spanish Civil War
===================
In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War started after an attempted 'coup
d'état' by parts of the Spanish Army against the government of the
Second Spanish Republic. At the same time, the Spanish anarchists,
fighting against the Nationalist forces, started an anarchist
revolution. Goldman was invited to Barcelona and in an instant, as she
wrote to her niece, "the crushing weight that was pressing down on my
heart since Sasha's death left me as by magic". She was welcomed by
the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and Federación Anarquista
Ibérica (FAI) organizations, and for the first time in her life lived
in a community run by and for anarchists, according to true anarchist
principles. "In all my life", she wrote later, "I have not met with
such warm hospitality, comradeship and solidarity." After touring a
series of collectives in the province of Huesca, she told a group of
workers: "Your revolution will destroy forever [the notion] that
anarchism stands for chaos." She began editing the weekly 'CNT-FAI
Information Bulletin' and responded to English-language mail.
Goldman began to worry about the future of Spain's anarchism when the
CNT-FAI joined a coalition government in 1937--against the core
anarchist principle of abstaining from state structures--and, more
distressingly, made repeated concessions to Communist forces in the
name of uniting against fascism. In November 1936, she wrote that
cooperating with Communists in Spain was "a denial of our comrades in
Stalin's concentration camps". The USSR, meanwhile, refused to send
weapons to anarchist forces, and disinformation campaigns were being
waged against the anarchists across Europe and the United States. Her
faith in the movement unshaken, Goldman returned to London as an
official representative of the CNT-FAI.
Delivering lectures and giving interviews, Goldman enthusiastically
supported the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists. She wrote regularly for
'Spain and the World', a biweekly newspaper focusing on the civil war.
In May 1937, Communist-led forces attacked anarchist strongholds and
broke up agrarian collectives. Newspapers in England and elsewhere
accepted the timeline of events offered by the Second Spanish Republic
at face value. British journalist George Orwell, present for the
crackdown, wrote: "[T]he accounts of the Barcelona riots in May ...
beat everything I have ever seen for lying."
Goldman returned to Spain in September, but the CNT-FAI appeared to
her like people "in a burning house". Worse, anarchists and other
radicals around the world refused to support their cause. The
Nationalist forces declared victory in Spain just before she returned
to London. Frustrated by England's repressive atmosphere--which she
called "more fascist than the fascists"--she returned to Canada in
1939. Her service to the anarchist cause in Spain was not forgotten.
On her seventieth birthday, the former Secretary-General of the CNT,
Mariano R. Vázquez, sent a message to her from Paris, praising her for
her contributions and naming her as "our spiritual mother". She called
it "the most beautiful tribute I have ever received".
Final years
=============
As the events preceding World War II began to unfold in Europe,
Goldman reiterated her opposition to wars waged by governments.
"[M]uch as I loathe Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Franco", she wrote
to a friend, "I would not support a war against them and for the
democracies which, in the last analysis, are only Fascist in
disguise." She felt that Britain and France had missed their
opportunity to oppose fascism, and that the coming war would only
result in "a new form of madness in the world".
Death
=======
On Saturday, February 17, 1940, Goldman suffered a debilitating
stroke. She became paralyzed on her right side, and although her
hearing was unaffected, she could not speak. As one friend described
it: "Just to think that here was Emma, the greatest orator in America,
unable to utter one word." For three months she improved slightly,
receiving visitors and on one occasion gesturing to her address book
to signal that a friend might find friendly contacts during a trip to
Mexico. She suffered another stroke on May 8 and she died six days
later in Toronto, aged 70.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed her body to be
brought back to the United States. She was buried in German Waldheim
Cemetery (now named Forest Home Cemetery) in Forest Park, Illinois, a
western suburb of Chicago, near the graves of those executed after the
Haymarket affair. The bas relief on her grave marker was created by
sculptor Jo Davidson, and the stone includes the quote "Liberty will
not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty".
Philosophy
======================================================================
Goldman spoke and wrote extensively on a wide variety of issues. While
she rejected orthodoxy and fundamentalist thinking, she was an
important contributor to several fields of modern political
philosophy. She was influenced by many diverse thinkers and writers,
including Mikhail Bakunin, Henry David Thoreau, Peter Kropotkin, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Another
philosopher who influenced Goldman was Friedrich Nietzsche. In her
autobiography, she wrote: "Nietzsche was not a social theorist, but a
poet, a rebel, and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor
of purse; it was the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an
anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats."
Anarchism
===========
Anarchism was central to Goldman's view of the world, and she is
widely considered one of the most important figures in the history of
anarchism and libertarian socialism. First drawn to it during the
persecution of anarchists after the 1886 Haymarket affair, she wrote
and spoke regularly on behalf of anarchism. In the title essay of her
book 'Anarchism and Other Essays', she wrote:
Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind
from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from
the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint
of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free
grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social
wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access
to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according
to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.
Goldman's anarchism was intensely personal. She believed it was
necessary for anarchist thinkers to live their beliefs, demonstrating
their convictions with every action and word. "I don't care if a man's
theory for tomorrow is correct," she once wrote. "I care if his spirit
of today is correct." Anarchism and free association were to her
logical responses to the confines of government control and
capitalism. "It seems to me that 'these' are the new forms of life,"
she wrote, "and that they will take the place of the old, not by
preaching or voting, but by living them." At the same time, she
believed that the movement on behalf of human liberty must be staffed
by liberated humans. While dancing among fellow anarchists one
evening, she was chided by an associate for her carefree demeanor. In
her autobiography, Goldman wrote:
I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause
constantly thrown in my face. I did not believe that a Cause which
stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom
from conventions and prejudice, should demand denial of life and joy.
I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to behave as a nun and
that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant
that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to
self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."
Tactical uses of violence
===========================
In her political youth, Goldman held targeted violence to be a
legitimate means of revolutionary struggle. At that time, she believed
that the use of violence, while distasteful, could be justified in
relation to the social benefits it might accrue. She advocated
propaganda of the deed--'attentat', or violence carried out to
encourage the masses to revolt. She supported her partner Alexander
Berkman's attempt to kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick, and even
begged him to allow her to participate. She believed that Frick's
actions during the Homestead strike were reprehensible and that his
murder would produce a positive result for working people. She later
wrote in her autobiography, "Yes, the end in this case justified the
means." While she never gave explicit approval of Leon Czolgosz's
assassination of U.S. President William McKinley, she defended his
ideals and believed actions like his were a natural consequence of
repressive institutions. As she wrote in "The Psychology of Political
Violence" that "the accumulated forces in our social and economic
life, culminating in an act of violence, are similar to the terrors of
the atmosphere, manifested in storm and lightning."
Her experiences in Russia led her to qualify her earlier belief that
revolutionary ends might justify violent means. In the afterword to
'My Disillusionment in Russia', she wrote: "There is no greater
fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while
methods and tactics are another. ... The means employed become,
through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the
final purpose ... ." In the same chapter, Goldman affirmed that
"Revolution is indeed a violent process," and noted that violence was
the "tragic inevitability of revolutionary upheavals". Some
misinterpreted her comments on the Bolshevik terror as a rejection of
all militant force, but Goldman corrected this in the preface to the
first U.S. edition of 'My Disillusionment in Russia':
The argument that destruction and terror are part of revolution I do
not dispute. I know that in the past every great political and social
change necessitated violence. ... Black slavery might still be a
legalized institution in the United States but for the militant spirit
of the John Browns. I have never denied that violence is inevitable,
nor do I gainsay it now. Yet it is one thing to employ violence in
combat, as a means of defense. It is quite another thing to make a
principle of terrorism, to institutionalize it, to assign it the most
vital place in the social struggle. Such terrorism begets
counter-revolution and in turn itself becomes counter-revolutionary.
Goldman saw the militarization of Soviet society not as a result of
armed resistance per se, but of the statist vision of the Bolsheviks,
writing that "an insignificant minority bent on creating an absolute
State is necessarily driven to oppression and terrorism."
Capitalism and labor
======================
Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was
incompatible with human liberty. "The only demand that property
recognizes," she wrote in 'Anarchism and Other Essays', "is its own
gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power;
the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to
outrage, to degrade." She also argued that capitalism dehumanized
workers, "turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with
less will and decision than his master of steel and iron." Originally
opposed to anything less than complete revolution, Goldman was
challenged during one talk by an elderly worker in the front row. In
her autobiography, she wrote:
He said that he understood my impatience with such small demands as a
few hours less a day, or a few dollars more a week.... But what were
men of his age to do? They were not likely to live to see the ultimate
overthrow of the capitalist system. Were they also to forgo the
release of perhaps two hours a day from the hated work? That was all
they could hope to see realized in their lifetime.
State
=======
Goldman viewed the state as essentially and inevitably a tool of
control and domination. As a result of her anti-state views, Goldman
believed that voting was useless at best and dangerous at worst.
Voting, she wrote, provided an illusion of participation while masking
the true structures of decision-making. Instead, Goldman advocated
targeted resistance in the form of strikes, protests, and "direct
action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code".
She maintained an anti-voting position even when many
anarcho-syndicalists in 1930s Spain voted for the formation of a
liberal republic. Goldman wrote that any power anarchists wielded as a
voting bloc should instead be used to strike across the country.
Goldman disagreed with the movement for women's suffrage, which
demanded the right of women to vote. In her essay "Woman Suffrage",
she ridicules the idea that women's involvement would infuse the
democratic state with a more just orientation: "As if women have not
sold their votes, as if women politicians cannot be bought!" She
agreed with the suffragists' assertion that women are equal to men but
disagreed that their participation alone would make the state more
just. "To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying
something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her
with supernatural powers." Goldman was also critical of Zionism, which
she saw as another failed experiment in state control.
Goldman was a passionate critic of the prison system, critiquing both
the treatment of prisoners and the social causes of crime. Goldman
viewed crime as a natural outgrowth of an unjust economic system, and
in her essay "Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure", she quoted
liberally from the 19th-century authors Fyodor Dostoevsky and Oscar
Wilde on prisons, and wrote:
Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an
emaciated, deformed, will-less, shipwrecked crew of humanity, with the
Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their natural
inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and inhumanity to greet
them, these victims soon sink back into crime as the only possibility
of existence.
Goldman was a committed war resister and was particularly opposed to
the draft, viewing it as one of the worst of the state's forms of
coercion, and was one of the founders of the No-Conscription League
for which she was ultimately arrested and imprisoned in 1917 before
being deported in 1919.
Goldman was routinely surveilled, arrested, and imprisoned for her
speech and organizing activities in support of workers and various
strikes, access to birth control, and in opposition to World War I. As
a result, she became active in the early 20th century free speech
movement, seeing freedom of expression as a fundamental necessity for
achieving social change. Her outspoken championship of her ideals, in
the face of persistent arrests, inspired Roger Baldwin, one of the
founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. Goldman's and
Reitman's experiences with vigilantism in the San Diego free speech
fight in 1912 is an example of their persistence in the fight for free
speech despite risking their safety.
Feminism and sexuality
========================
Although she was hostile to the suffragist goals of first-wave
feminism, Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women, and
is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism, which challenges
patriarchy as a hierarchy to be resisted alongside state power and
class divisions. In 1897, she wrote: "I demand the independence of
woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love
whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for
both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in
motherhood."
A nurse by training, Goldman was an early advocate for educating women
concerning contraception. Like many feminists of her time, she saw
abortion as a tragic consequence of social conditions, and birth
control as a positive alternative. Goldman was also an advocate of
free love, and a strong critic of marriage. She saw early feminists as
confined in their scope and bounded by social forces of Puritanism and
capitalism. She wrote: "We are in need of unhampered growth out of old
traditions and habits. The movement for women's emancipation has so
far made but the first step in that direction."
Goldman was an outspoken critic of prejudice against homosexual and
genderqueer people. Her belief that social liberation should extend to
gay men and lesbians was virtually unheard of at the time, even among
anarchists. As German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld wrote, "she was the
first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up
the defense of homosexual love before the general public." In numerous
speeches and letters, she defended the right of gay men and lesbians
to love as they pleased and condemned the fear and stigma associated
with homosexuality. As Goldman wrote in a letter to Hirschfeld, "It is
a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught
in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is
so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of
gender and their great significance in life."
Atheism
=========
A committed atheist, Goldman viewed religion as another instrument of
control and domination. Her essay "The Philosophy of Atheism" quoted
Bakunin at length on the subject and added:
Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils,
heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into
obedience, meekness and contentment.... The philosophy of Atheism
expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy
of theism, if we can call it a philosophy, is static and fixed.
In essays like "The Hypocrisy of Puritanism" and a speech entitled
"The Failure of Christianity", Goldman made more than a few enemies
among religious communities by attacking their moralistic attitudes
and efforts to control human behavior. She blamed Christianity for
"the perpetuation of a slave society", arguing that it dictated
individuals' actions on Earth and offered poor people a false promise
of a plentiful future in heaven.
Legacy
======================================================================
Goldman was well known during her life, described as--among other
things--"the most dangerous woman in America". After her death and
through the middle part of the 20th century, her fame faded. Scholars
and historians of anarchism viewed her as a great speaker and activist
but did not regard her as a philosophical or theoretical thinker on
par with, for example, Kropotkin.
In 1970, Dover Press reissued Goldman's autobiography, 'Living My
Life', and in 1972, feminist writer Alix Kates Shulman issued a
collection of Goldman's writing and speeches, 'Red Emma Speaks'. These
works brought Goldman's life and writings to a larger audience, and
she was in particular lionized by the women's movement of the late
20th century. In 1973, Shulman was asked by a printer friend for a
quotation by Goldman for use on a T-shirt. She sent him the selection
from 'Living My Life' about "the right to self-expression, everybody's
right to beautiful, radiant things", recounting that she had been
admonished "that it did not behoove an agitator to dance". The printer
created a statement based on these sentiments that has become one of
the most famous quotations attributed to Goldman even though she
probably never said or wrote it as such: "If I can't dance I don't
want to be in your revolution." Variations of this saying have
appeared on thousands of T-shirts, buttons, posters, bumper stickers,
coffee mugs, hats, and other items.
The women's movement of the 1970s that "rediscovered" Goldman was
accompanied by a resurgent anarchist movement, beginning in the late
1960s, which also reinvigorated scholarly attention to earlier
anarchists. The growth of feminism also initiated some reevaluation of
Goldman's philosophical work, with scholars pointing out the
significance of Goldman's contributions to anarchist thought in her
time. Goldman's belief in the value of aesthetics, for example, can be
seen in the later influences of anarchism and the arts. Similarly,
Goldman is now given credit for significantly influencing and
broadening the scope of activism on issues of sexual liberty,
reproductive rights, and freedom of expression.
Goldman has been honored by a number of organizations named in her
memory. The Emma Goldman Clinic, a women's health center located in
Iowa City, Iowa, selected Goldman as a namesake "in recognition of her
challenging spirit." Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse, an infoshop in
Baltimore, Maryland adopted her name out of their belief "in the ideas
and ideals that she fought for her entire life: free speech, sexual
and racial equality and independence, the right to organize in our
jobs and in our own lives, ideas and ideals that we continue to fight
for, even today".
In popular culture
======================================================================
Goldman has been depicted in numerous works of fiction.
In the historical novel 'Anarchists in Love' (2013, Douglas &
McIntyre), author Robert Hough re-imagines the lives of Emma Goldman
and Alexander "Sasha" Berkman when she lived in New York City from
1890, exploring how their documented torrid relationship seeded the
anarchist movement in the US, culminating in the attempted
assassination of wealthy industrialist Henry C. Frick.
The character of Goldman appeared in Warren Beatty's 1981 film 'Reds',
in which she was portrayed by Maureen Stapleton, who won an Academy
Award for her performance.
Goldman is a character in the Broadway musicals 'Tintypes', 'Ragtime',
and 'Assassins'. Plays depicting Goldman's life include: Howard Zinn's
play, 'Emma'; Martin Duberman's 'Mother Earth'; Jessica Litwak's
'Love, Anarchy, and Other Affairs' (about Goldman's arrest in
connection with McKinley's assassination); Lynn Rogoff's 'Love Ben,
Love Emma' (about Goldman's relationship with Reitman); Carol Bolt's
'Red Emma'; and Alexis Roblan's 'Red Emma and the Mad Monk'.
Ethel Mannin's 1941 novel 'Red Rose' is based on Goldman's life. Lisa
Norton portrays Goldman in three episodes of the period detective
series 'Murdoch Mysteries'.
Works
======================================================================
Goldman was a prolific writer, penning countless pamphlets and
articles on a diverse range of subjects. She authored six books,
including an autobiography, 'Living My Life', and a biography of
fellow anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre.
Books
=======
* 'Anarchism and Other Essays'. New York: Mother Earth Publishing
Association, 1910.
* 'The Social Significance of the Modern Drama'. Boston: Gorham Press,
1914.
* 'My Disillusionment in Russia'. Garden City, New York: Doubleday,
Page and Co., 1923.
* 'My Further Disillusionment in Russia'. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, Page and Co., 1924.
* 'Living My Life'. New York: Knopf, 1931.
* 'Voltairine de Cleyre'. Berkeley Heights, New Jersey: Oriole Press,
1932.
Edited collections
====================
* Alix Kates Shulman, ed., 'Red Emma Speaks: Selected Writings and
Speeches'. New York: Random House, 1972. .
* 'Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 1
- Made for America, 1890-1901'. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2003. .
* 'Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 2
- Making Speech Free, 1902-1909'. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004. .
* 'Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 3
- Light and Shadows, 1910-1916'. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2012. .
* 'Red Emma speaks : an Emma Goldman reader', compiled and edited by
Alix Kates Shulman. New York : Schocken Books, 1983.
See also
======================================================================
* 'Emma Goldman: The Anarchist Guest'
* 'Emma' or 'Emma: A Play in Two Acts about Emma Goldman, American
Anarchist', a play by Howard Zinn
* Birth control movement in the United States
* John R. Coryell
* List of peace activists
* List of women's rights activists
Further reading
======================================================================
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*
* Rudahl, Sharon. 'A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma
Goldman', New York: The New Press, 2007
* Shulman, Alix Kates, 'To the barricades : the anarchist life of Emma
Goldman'. New York : Crowell, 1971
*
*
External links
======================================================================
Digital collections
*
*
*
* PBS [
https://www.pbs.org/video/emma-goldman-ajsyzd/ American
Experience: Emma Goldman]
*
* [
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/authors/emma-goldman Works by Emma
Goldman] at the Anarchist Library
* [
https://www.revoltlib.com/people/emma-goldman/view.php Works of
Emma Goldman, online]
Physical collections
*
* [
https://jwa.org/womenofvalor/goldman Emma Goldman "Women of Valor"
exhibit] at the Jewish Women's Archive
* [
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/ Emma Goldman Papers Project]
at University of California, Berkeley
* [
http://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00520 Emma Goldman Papers] at the
International Institute of Social History
*
[
https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/8/resources/7287
Emma Goldman Papers]. [
http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles Schlesinger
Library] , Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
* [
https://repository.duke.edu/dc/goldmanemma Emma Goldman Papers,
1909-1941]. Rubenstein Library, Duke University
* [
https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/2/resources/1050 Emma
Goldman papers] at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special
Collections
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
