Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman 1869-1940, American anarchist, b. Lithuania. She emigrated to Rochester, N.Y., in 1886 and worked there in clothing factories. After 1889 she was active in the anarchist movement, and her speeches attracted attention throughout the United States. In 1893, Goldman was imprisoned for inciting to riot. From 1906 she was associated with Alexander Berkman in publishing the anarchist paper Mother Earth. In 1916 she was imprisoned for publicly advocating birth control, and in 1917 for obstructing the draft. With Berkman, Goldman was deported in 1919 to Russia but left that country in 1921 because of her disagreement with the Bolshevik government. In 1926 she married James Colton, a Welshman. She was permitted to reenter the United States for a lecture tour in 1934 on condition that she refrain from public discussion of politics. She took an active part in the Spanish civil war in 1936. She died in Toronto.

Bibliography: See her Living My Life (1931). Other writings include Anarchism and Other Essays (1911), Social Significance of Modern Drama (1914), and My Disillusionment in Russia (1923). See biographies by R. Drinnon (1961) and A. Shulman (1971).

Goldman, Emma (1869–1940), anarchist, social activist, free‐speech advocate, spokesperson for women's freedom.Born in a Jewish ghetto in present‐day Lithuania, Goldman moved with her family to Prussia and in 1881 to St. Petersburg, Russia. Fleeing provincialism and anti‐Semitism, she migrated to the United States in 1885 with a half‐sister, and settled in Rochester, New York, where she worked in a clothing factory. Her marriage to Jacob Kersner in 1887 ended in divorce. The Haymarket affair, coupled with harsh industrial conditions and violence against striking workers by government and business propelled her toward anarchism and support of the eight‐hour‐day movement. Moving to New York City in 1889, she encountered such émigré radicals as Johann Most and Alexander Berkman. Goldman's involvement with Berkman's attempted assassination of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick and her alleged link to the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley (by an anarchist who claimed to have been inspired by her speeches) resulted in her public demonization by the press.

She reclaimed her voice in 1906 by founding a literary and political magazine, Mother Earth, and through her lively cross‐country tours lecturing on anarchism, feminism, sexual radicalism, birth control, and new literary trends, especially modern drama. Liberals and radicals formed free‐speech clubs to protest the suppression of Goldman's talks and Roger Baldwin attributed his founding of the American Civil Liberties Union to Goldman. Goldman had been a mentor to Margaret Sanger and in 1916 was arrested for advocating birth control. Along with Berkman, she was tried, convicted, and imprisoned in 1917 for protesting wartime conscription, and in 1919, amid the post–World War I Red Scare, she and Berkman were deported with several hundred other alien radicals to Russia. In My Disillusionment in Russia (1923, full text 1925), she exposed the hypocrisy of Russia's Bolshevik regime and protested its suppression of dissent. Criticized and isolated by the Left and the Right, Goldman found refuge in southern France while frequently visiting England and Canada. Her compelling biography, My Life (1931), precipitated a final visit to the United States in 1934. Bereaved by the suicide of Berkman, her longtime comrade, in 1936, Goldman plunged into propaganda work for the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Civil War, basing herself in London and Barcelona (1936–1938). She died in Canada, championing the cause of Spanish refugees and maintaining her lifelong commitment to free expression.
See also Birth Control and Family Planning; Gilded Age; Homestead Lockout; Labor Movements; Progressive Era; Radicalism; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Alice Wexler , Emma Goldman in America, 1984.
Candace Falk et al., eds., The Emma Goldman Papers: A Microfilm Edition, 69 reels, 1991.
Candace Falk et al., eds., Emma Goldman: A Guide to Her Life and Documentary Sources, 1995.

Candace Falk