Goldman, Emma 1869-1940

GOLDMAN, EMMA 1869-1940

Freethinker, anarchist, social critic

Anarchist Background

Emma Goldman was born in Kovno, Russia; she immigrated to the United States in 1885. After working in Rochester, New York, for a few months, she moved to New Haven, Connecticut. There she became acquainted with political radicals, and she was deeply impressed by the anarchists involved in the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square bombing. By 1889 Goldman was a confirmed anarchist, and she moved to New York City at a time, as she recalled in her memoirs, when her "entire possessions consisted of five dollars and a small handbag." In partnership with another Russian immigrant, Alexander Berkman, whom she called Sasha, Goldman helped plan the attempted assassination in 1892 of Henry Clay Frick, an associate of Andrew Carnegie whom labor activists held responsible for a pitched battle between striking steelworkers and Pinkerton detectives at Home-stead, Pennsylvania. For her role in the failed attempt she served a year in jail. By 1901 Goldman had a reputation as a violent political revolutionary. When President William McKinley was assassinated, Goldman was implicated when the gunman, Leon Czolgosz, told police that he had been inspired by Goldman.

Social Views

Goldman's anarchism was part of a broad critique of American society, and her views on sex, marriage, and family life were every bit as controversial as her political beliefs. In 1906 she began to edit the journal Mother Earth, in which she proclaimed her desire to abolish all government, and with it the oppressive Victorian restrictions on personal freedom. Goldman was an early advocate of birth control, which in the 1900s one could not discuss in print without being censored. She hated the institution of marriage, saying that it enslaved women, and she encouraged women to express themselves freely sexually. An effective and frequent public speaker, Goldman routinely scandalized America during the 1900s. In 1917 she was arrested for interfering with the military draft, and after two years in prison she was deported to Russia. She disliked the Soviet Union and spent the rest of her life living in several countries.

Source:

Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Knopf, 1931).