Emma Goldman 1869-1940
J. Edgar Hoover called her “one of the most dangerous women in America.” She was also known as: “Red Emma,” “A Modern Joan of Arc,” “The Mother of Anarchy,” and “The Mother of Non-Monogamy.” Emma Goldman was an anarchist, organizer, agitator, author, and free spirit. She advocated for free speech, free love, free thought, women’s equality, birth control, workers’ rights, free universal education, homosexuality and racial equality.
A life-long anarchist, Goldman was known to be a powerful speaker, described as having a magnetic power and eloquence. Some said that she seemed to be possessed when addressing a crowd, but she was not without humor – in 1934, when asked what she thought of Italy, she said “Beautiful country, minus Mussolini.”
Born to orthodox Jewish parents in Russia, Goldman briefly attended school in Germany, later returning to her family in St. Petersburg. She worked in a factory where she was sexually assaulted as a teen. In 1885, her father arranged a marriage for Goldman, but she protested, threatening to drown herself. Her parents acquiesced and allowed her to go to America to live with her sister in Rochester, New York. Goldman said when she arrived in the U.S., she cast off the old world “like a well-worn garment.”
In 1886, Goldman breathlessly followed newspaper accounts of the Haymarket trial in Chicago where eight men were accused of conspiracy to murder. She said that when the men were unjustly convicted and later hanged, it was her political awakening. She dedicated the rest of her life to the martyrs’ cause, anarchy, which she defined as “…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.”
After a brief, unhappy marriage, Goldman moved to New York City in 1889 where she met Alexander Berkman who would become a life-long companion/friend. She began lecturing and organizing for worker’s rights. Goldman and Berkman had an open relationship, believing in free-love, and Emma went on to have several relationships with both men and women.
In 1891, she helped plan New York City’s first May Day celebration honoring the Haymarket martyrs. In 1892, Berkman (with Goldman’s support) tried to assassinate Henry Frick, the manager at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel plant, hoping to trigger a workers’ revolt. Berkman failed and was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman continued the fight and during the Economic Panic of 1893, when unemployment surged to over 20%, Goldman told a crowd, “…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.” She was then arrested for inciting a riot and sentenced to one year in the penitentiary.
Once released, Goldman went back to public speaking. In 1901, she gave a speech, “The Modern Phase of Anarchy.” In the crowd was Leon Czolgosz, an impressionable radical, who said that Goldman’s words “set him on fire.” Four months later, he assassinated President McKinley. Emma was blamed and interrogated but eventually released for lack of evidence. She said, “As an anarchist, I am opposed to violence, but if people want to do away with assassins, they must first do away with the conditions which produce murderers.”
Goldman decided to publish a monthly magazine, Mother Earth, devoted to social science and literature in 1906. That same year, Berkman was released from prison, but their romantic relationship suffered from the separation, and they became strictly friends.
Ben Reitman, the “Hobo Doctor,” and Goldman began a professional and personal relationship in 1908. They traveled the country on a speaking tour, presenting speeches not only to workers in halls, but to “respectable society” in private homes. The authorities followed them closely wherever they went and in 1916 they were arrested under the Comstock Act for promoting birth control. Goldman was sentenced to 15 days and Reitman to six months. Their personal relationship also ended around this time.
During WWI, J. Edgar Hoover targeted foreign born individuals and “intellectual perverts.” He particularly focused on Goldman and Berkman. The offices of Mother Earth were raided and Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to 22 months for protesting the draft. Soon after being released in 1919, Goldman’s citizenship was revoked and she was deported with other radicals, including Berkman, under the Sedition Act.
Goldman found her way to Russia but was devastated by what she saw there. She wrote the book, My Disillusionment in Russia which alienated her from her comrades in the U.S. who were hoping that the Russian Revolution would be the path to a better world for workers. She fled Russia and floated around Europe without a home country until a Welsh miner offered to marry her so that she could get a British passport. Friends provided her with a cottage in the French Riviera to write her autobiography. She was permitted to return to the U.S. for 90 days in 1934 to promote her book (she was forbidden from talking about current politics but got around the restriction by talking about the “history” of politics). Goldman was trailed by the FBI the entire time.
Goldman’s hopes of an anarchistic society were briefly realized in Spain in 1936-1939. She was celebrated by a crowd of over 10,000 workers, honoring her as their “spiritual mother.” Unfortunately, the success was short-lived and in 1939 the worker collectives failed. Goldman said, “It’s as though you had wanted a child all your life…only to die soon after it was born…”
On Feb. 17, 1940, Goldman suffered a stroke while playing cards with friends. The stroke left her unable to talk. A friend said, “No government could stop her from speaking, but a stroke did.” She died that May 14.
Goldman is often credited with saying, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” She never said those exact words, but in her autobiography, she wrote of a time when a fellow anarchist chided her for dancing at a party with abandon. She replied that she did not think dedication to their cause should “demand the denial of life and joy.” She also said, “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things. Anarchism meant that to me…”
Goldman requested to be buried near the Haymarket martyrs. Her headstone in Forest Home is very close to the monument. The dates on her headstone are inaccurate, but the words are inspiring: “Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty.”
References: Living My Life, Anarchism and Other Essays, Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life, PBS: American Experience: Emma Goldman, Jewish Women’s Archive, Women & the American Story: Life Story: Emma Goldman, Emma Goldman: A Thoroughly Modern Anarchist. Emma Goldman Interview 1934.