Thanks for the excerpts from Zinn's history book. What truly brave
people. These were the people who dared to organize labor unions, at
the risk of having the company bully boys bash their heads in. Today
we watch working class men and women shrug when another union comes
under attack
Is it going to take grinding poverty to push us into organizing on our
own behalf?
Carl Jarvis
On 3/7/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm so grateful for this article. Volume 1 of Living My Life is on BARD and
I tried to read it with great difficulty. Then I attempted the version of
the book which is on Bookshare and got bogged down in documentation. Now
that I've been able to read a clear descripttion of Goldman's life, maybe
I'll try the BARD version again. The allusions to her in most novels and
articles that I've seen have always made me curious, but I knew that they
were providing an inaccurate picture.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of S. Kashdan
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2016 9:50 AM
To: Blind Democracy List
Subject: [blind-democracy] Meet Emma Goldman
Meet Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman Papers UC Berkeley
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/MeetEmmaGoldman/index.html
Meet Emma: Online Exhibit
"I Want Freedom, the Right to Self-Expression,
Everybody's Right to Beautiful Radiant Things"
Emma Goldman, undoubtedly one of the most notable and influential women in
modern American history, consistently promoted a wide range of
controversial
movements and principles, including anarchism, equality and independence
for
women, freedom of thought and expression, radical education, sexual freedom
and birth control, and union organization and the eight-hour day. Goldman's
advocacy of these causes, which many deemed subversive at the time, helped
set the historical context for some of today's most important political and
social debates.
Goldman's role in securing the right to freedom of speech in America is
especially significant. She herself was frequently harassed or arrested
when
lecturing--if her talks were not banned outright. She worked with the first
Free Speech League, which insisted that all Americans have a basic right to
express their ideas, no matter how radical or controversial those ideas
might seem. Directly out of this work came the founding of the American
Civil Liberties Union, setting in motion the beginnings of the modern free
speech movement in the United States.
Goldman's impassioned advocacy of politically unpopular ideas and causes
like free love, anarchism, and atheism earned her the title "Red Emma" and
led many of the powerful to fear and hate her. Attorney General Caffey
wrote
in 1917, "Emma Goldman is a woman of great ability and of personal
magnetism, and her persuasive powers make her an exceedingly dangerous
woman." But others stressed Goldman's role as an educator, one who in
nationwide lecture tours spread modern ideas and practices to a young and
provincial country. One newspaper editor described her as "8,000 years
ahead
of her time."
Now, over fifty years after her death, Emma Goldman's commitment to freedom
and equality, her political courage and personal resilience, continue to
inspire the public--and stir up controversy.
"Red Emma"
The notorious Emma Goldman, feared and revered, who dedicated her life to
the cause of freedom.
Early Life:
Portrait of an Anarchist as a Young Woman
Poverty, oppression, and the longing for deliverance marked Emma Goldman's
early years. Born into a poor Jewish family in a backward, anti-Semitic
country, Goldman struggled to escape, first through flights of imagination,
then through formal education, and finally by means of emigration.
On June 27, 1869, Emma Goldman's life began in Kovno, a small imperial
Russian city, now in Lithuania. Her family suffered from the anti-Semitism
of the times, living in Jewish ghettos and moving often in search of
opportunity. Brutalized by this life, Goldman's father directed his anger
against his family. His often violent assertion of authority over them led
young Emma, perhaps more acutely aware than he of the injustice of their
situation, to imagine instead directing violence outward against the
enemies
of the Jewish people, in the manner of Judith, the Biblical heroine with
whom she identified.
Goldman became interested in more modern ideas at twelve, after the family
moved to St. Petersburg. There she glimpsed the possibility of ending the
old order when Czar Alexander II was assassinated. Excited by the ideas of
the Russian Populists and Nihilists, Emma eagerly devoured Chernishevsky's
What Is to Be Done? and promptly replaced her childhood heroine Judith with
Chernishevsky's modern Vera, a political organizer and cooperative worker.
Soon after, Goldman left Russia to seek what she hoped would be a modern
education in a German Gymnasium. But Emma rejected the rote learning and
authoritarian teaching methods she encountered in her school, and she
fought
with her German relatives. Nevertheless, Goldman developed an enduring
appreciation of literature, opera, and classical music, which helped
alleviate the pain she met in life.
Returning to Russia, Goldman soon found herself thinking of America. Her
father put her to work in a corset factory and began pressuring her into an
arranged marriage. Rejecting his demands, the sixteen-year-old Emma set
sail
in 1885 for America in the company of her older half-sister, Helena.
Emma in Her Twenties
Life and Conflict in the New World
"Helena and I stood pressed to each other, enraptured by the sight of the
harbour and the Statue of Liberty suddenly emerging from the mist. Ah,
there
she was, the symbol of hope, of freedom, of opportunity! She held her torch
to light the way to the free country, the asylum for the oppressed of all
lands. We, too, Helena and I, would find a place in the generous heart of
America. Our spirits were high, our eyes filled with tears."
--Emma Goldman, remembering her arrival in America
Goldman's romantic hopes were soon shattered by the dismal realities of
working-class life. Settling first in Rochester, New York, she found
factory
work harder than in Russia, and joined in the growing militance against the
inequality and inhuman working conditions that characterized
industrializing
America.
The decisive moment came in 1886. Labor and radical activists held a mass
rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square on the evening of May 4 to protest the
police's brutal suppression of a strike at the McCormick Harvester Company
against a union lock out the previous day. Towards the end of an otherwise
peaceful demonstration, a bomb was thrown at police after they attempted to
stop the meeting, injuring people in the crowd and killing a police
officer.
In the chaos that followed an unknown number of demonstrators were killed
by
the police, and another six police officers were fatally injured (primarily
by their own gunfire), and died during the ensuing weeks, their condition
avidly followed by the public. Afterwards, the police and the press blamed
Chicago's anarchist leaders, and in this climate of hysteria a jury
condemned them despite a dearth of evidence. Seven were sentenced to death,
one was given fifteen years. Of those who received the death penalty two
had
their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, and another committed
suicide
the night before the execution. The remaining four were executed on the
11th
of November 1887.
Convinced of the defendants' innocence, the outraged Goldman became active
in the anarchist cause.
With the crystallization of Goldman's political thought came changes in her
personal life. Refusing to be trapped in the unhappy marriage of her
earliest years in America, Emma risked the stigma of divorce, leaving her
husband in Rochester and heading for a new life in New York. It wasn't long
before the young idealist became a prominent member of the city's anarchist
community. Johann Most, the great anarchist orator, recognized Goldman's
eloquence and commitment, and organized her first speaking tour. Amidst the
newfound excitement of political activism, she fell in love with Alexander
Berkman, a fellow Russian emigre. Together, they vowed to dedicate their
lives to anarchism.
In 1892, when Henry Clay Frick of the Carnegie Steel Company provoked a
bloody confrontation with workers at the company's plant in Homestead,
Pennsylvania (June 30-July 6), Berkman and Goldman decided to retaliate. On
July 23, Berkman went to Frick's office in downtown Pittsburgh and shot
Frick, but failed to kill him. Berkman was convicted and sentenced to
twenty-two years in prison. Though Goldman was involved in the plot, she
escaped the indictment because of insufficient evidence.
When President William McKinley was shot in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, the
police immediately tried to implicate Goldman, noting that Czolgosz had
recently attended one of her lectures in Cleveland. Consequently Goldman
and
other anarchists were arrested.
Eventually, though, disappointed by the lack of evidence against her, the
authorities were forced to order Goldman's release. Goldman temporarily
withdrew from public life to avoid harassment. When she re-emerged she
entered one of her most politically active periods, speaking around the
country, writing on a wide range of topics, and editing her free-spirited
journal, Mother Earth from 1906 to 1917.
Many, however, remained convinced that she was a dangerous killer, thanks
in
large part to the anti- anarchist agitation of the press.
Parsons' Appeal to the People of America
Following the Haymarket bombing incident, Albert Parsons and several other
anarchist leaders were arrested. Parsons, convinced of his innocence, had
turned himself in on the day of the trial; the others had been arrested
earlier. Despite the absence of evidence linking them to the bombing, they
were convicted, and the trial became a cause celebre for the American Left.
Emma Goldman admired their passionate commitment and believed they were
innocent. The guilty verdict and the stirring defiance of the jailed
leaders
had an important influence on Goldman and inspired her initial interest in
the American anarchist movement.
Protest demonstrations flared across America and Europe. On November 11,
1887, Albert Parsons and three other anarchists were executed. The
inscription on the four men's tomb echoed the final words of one of the
victims: "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the
voices you are throttling today."
In 1893, Illinois Governor Peter Altgeld, convinced of the Haymarket
defendants' innocence after a lengthy review of the trial, pardoned the
anarchists who had received long prison sentences for their alleged role in
the Haymarket bombing.
Goldman Demonized in Response to McKinley Assassination
On September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz assassinated President McKinley.
Although Emma Goldman did not know Czolgosz, police and the press blamed
her
for the President's death because Czolgosz had attended a speech of hers
earlier in the year. This article, with its frightening illustration, is
representative of the way in which the nation's press fueled the negative
characterization of anarchists. Such notoriety forced Goldman to retreat
somewhat from the public spotlight and to adopt the name "Miss E.G. Smith,"
which she would use intermittently over the next few years. Her strength of
will, though, is reflected in her return to public lecturing in 1902.
Emma Goldman and Free Speech
Freedom of expression was a cause Emma Goldman championed throughout her
adult life. She was outraged that in the United States, "a country which
guaranteed free speech, officers armed with long clubs should invade an
orderly assembly." As an anarchist orator, Emma faced constant threats from
police and vigilantes determined to suppress her talks. Undeterred, Goldman
continued to assert her right to speak, though she paid dearly for her
principles. Arrested and tried in 1893 for urging a crowd of hungry,
unemployed workers to rely on street demonstrations rather than on the
electoral process to obtain relief, Goldman based her defense squarely on
the right of free speech--and lost. She spent ten months in jail, a
reminder
that in nineteenth century America the right of free speech was still a
dream, not a reality.
Following the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, tolerance for
free speech declined even further. Repression culminated in the passage of
the draconian Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918, which resulted
in long prison terms for those who protested United States entry into the
First World War. At the same time, liberal and radical Americans became
more
vocal in their opposition to the abridgement of first amendment rights. The
government's attempts to suppress Goldman's unconventional views actually
led many who disagreed with her to support nonetheless her right to express
her ideas freely.
It was in this context that Goldman began lecturing regularly on freedom of
speech and, in 1903, worked with the newly formed Free Speech League. The
extremity of the situation sometimes led to amusing results. Once,
expecting
the police to disrupt a lecture in Philadelphia, Emma chained herself to a
podium in order to make it physically impossible for the police to remove
her before she finished speaking. But as fate would have it, this time the
police did not appear.
Goldman's insistence on freedom of speech had a profound influence on Roger
Baldwin, a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. Baldwin heard
Goldman speak in 1908 at a working class meeting hall in St. Louis, and
what
he heard led him to dedicate his life to the cause of freedom. He later
told
Goldman in a letter, "You always remain one of the chief inspirations of my
life, for you aroused in me a sense of what freedom really means." In his
old age, Baldwin said, "Emma Goldman opened up not only an entirely new
literature to me, but new people as well, some who called themselves
anarchists, some libertarians, some freedom lovers... bound together by one
principle--freedom from coercion."
The ultimate irony of Emma Goldman's crusade for free speech in America is
that she was deported to Russia for exercising her right to speak against
United States' involvement in World War I. Undaunted, Goldman risked
further
political isolation by becoming one of the Left's most vocal and eloquent
critics of political repression in the Soviet Union.
Early Warning of Growing Threats to Free Speech
This letter, published in an anarchist periodical, reflects Goldman's early
efforts to publicize the continued police suppression of her lectures, and
draw the ominous implications for first amendment rights in America.
Roger Baldwin, a Founder of the A.C.L.U.
Roger Baldwin was one of the most prominent advocates of civil liberties in
twentieth-century America. Baldwin was a friend of Emma Goldman, and he
credited her work on behalf of free speech as the inspiration for his own
lifelong battle to assert and protect the right of political freedom in the
United States.
Ben Reitman, Goldman's "Great, Grand Passion"
Ben Reitman was Emma Goldman's lover and manager between 1908 and 1916. A
Chicagoan, Reitman was for much of his life an almost compulsive hobo. As a
youth he tramped through Asia and Europe and around America several times.
He settled down long enough to acquire an M.D. degree in Chicago in 1904.
Later in his life he continued to go on periodic tramps. Besides using his
medical knowledge to minister to the poor, he treated their social ills by
organizing a mass demonstration of unemployed workers--for which he was
arrested and tried in 1907.
His relationship with Emma Goldman began in March 1908 when Goldman was
unable to secure a place to speak. Reitman offered her his "hobo hall."
Instantly attracted to each other, this encounter blossomed into the most
intense relationship of Goldman's life.
Reitman soon offered to accompany Goldman on her lecture tours. As road
manager, his skills of arranging and publicizing meetings, renting halls
and
promoting and selling anarchist literature contributed to the success of
Goldman's repeated cross-country lecture tours.
Reitman aroused in Emma Goldman a sexual and emotional passion that she was
never to experience in her life again. In 1909 she revelled in their love:
"You came to me like a stroke of lightning, kindling my soul and my body
with mad passion, as I have never known before."
Free Love Advocate Confronts Issues of Jealousy and Doubt
Throughout their ten-year love affair, Emma Goldman and Ben Reitman
sustained their relationship on the road through passionate letters.
Goldman, who publicly advocated free love and total independence, struggled
herself with dark feelings of jealousy and a longing for security. Though
she acted as a harbinger of hope and affirmed the anarchist vision of
social
harmony, privately she wondered whether her own failure to live out her
ideal made her unworthy of delivering such a lofty message. "I stand
condemned before the bar of my own reason," she would write once.
On August 15, 1909, Goldman wrote this letter to "My Beloved Hobo."
Characteristically Diverse Goldman Lecture Series
Emma Goldman gradually expanded her lecture topics from straightforward
expositions of anarchist theory to include applications of this theory to
contemporary social and political issues. Among these were socialism, birth
control, women's emancipation, free speech, and free love.
Atrocities Against Free Speech in the Name of Patriotism
Emma Goldman played a supportive role in the largest free speech movement
in
pre-World War I America: the battle of the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) to secure constitutional liberties for their organization on the West
Coast. In an effort to suppress the IWW, many cities passed ordinances
denying IWW leaders the right to speak. The IWW began defying these
ordinances by sending large contingents to the endangered cities to
exercise
their constitutional right to free speech. In Missoula, Spokane, and
Fresno,
hundreds of IWW members were thrown in jail for this offense.
One of the most dramatic confrontations over free speech occurred in 1912
in
San Diego. Within one week, San Diego authorities jailed 150 members of the
IWW (also known as the Wobblies). Private vigilante groups terrorized IWW
members and drove them out of town. As tensions mounted in San Diego, a
vigilante group killed a Wobbly in Los Angeles. Outraged by the turn of
events, Emma Goldman and Ben Reitman decided to join the San Diego free
speech fight. They had barely arrived in the city when Reitman was abducted
from their hotel by a group of vigilantes. He was taken into the
countryside, stripped, beaten, covered with hot tar and sagebrush, forced
to
sing "The Star Spangled Banner," then, with a cigar, the letters IWW were
singed onto his buttocks.
Prominent Chinese Writer Inspired by Emma Goldman
Born in Chengtu, Szechwan, in 1904 with the name Li Fei-Kan. Inspired by
the
popular anarchist literature during the May Fourth Movement (May 4, 1919),
he adopted as his pen name, Ba Jin, using parts of the namesBakunin and
Kropotkin. At the same time, the Chinese translations of Emma Goldman's
essays inspired the fifteen-year-old Ba Jin to write to Goldman as his
"spiritual mother" for advice on how to reconcile being a child of an old
feudal family with his sympathy for the suffering of the masses. Goldman
reassured him that though "we cannot choose the place where we are born...
we decide ourselves the life we live afterwards. I see you have honesty and
enthusiasm, which every young rebel should have..."
Among Ba Jin's most important novels is Chia (Family), a moving and
courageous critique of China's patriarchal feudal family structure,
published in 1931 as the first volume of an autobiographical trilogy. Ba
Jin
was one of the most respected leaders of the Union of Chinese Writers.
Ba Jin Dedicates His Book The General To Emma Goldman
Similar letters collected by The Emma Goldman Papers document the
importance
of international support and the inspiration that individuals of different
cultures and generations can draw from one another in sustaining activism
for social justice. Goldman's example of lifelong devotion to the
principles
of freedom of speech, anarchism, and women's independence inspired
activists
in Japan, China, the Soviet Union, India, Europe, Canada, and Latin
America.
Birth Control Pioneer
Standard histories of the birth control movement often overlook Emma
Goldman's pioneering role. Goldman was in fact Margaret Sanger's mentor;
she
brought the young Sanger into the campaign against the 1873 Comstock Law
which prohibited the distribution of birth control literature, thus forging
an indelible link between free speech and reproductive rights. Unlike
Sanger, who was later to advocate a single issue strategy for achieving the
right to distribute birth control information, Goldman always insisted that
birth control be viewed in the context of the broad social, economic, and
political forces that led to its suppression.
Goldman first became convinced that birth control was essential to women's
sexual and economic freedom when she worked as a nurse and midwife among
poor immigrant workers on the Lower East Side in the 1890s. She tested her
ideas about reproductive rights while attending a Parisian "Neo-Malthusian"
congress in 1900 and then began to take direct action, smuggling
contraceptive devices into the United States on her return. By 1915, she
was
working with Sanger in a mass movement for birth control, lecturing
frequently on "the right of the child not to be born" and demanding that
women's bodies be freed from the coercion of government. In one letter to
Sanger written that year, Goldman remarked, "Not one of my lectures brings
out such crowds as the one on the birth strike." Of all the literature she
sold at her talks, Sanger's magazine, The Woman Rebel, sold the best.
At least twice, Goldman was arrested and charged with violating the
Comstock
Law. She managed to turn one trial in 1916 into a national forum on birth
control, successfully attracting the support of many writers, artists,
intellectuals, and progressives for her cause.
Reproductive Rights and Free Speech: Goldman Goes to Jail
As the mass movement for birth control grew, Goldman responded by lecturing
to successively larger audiences on the subject. Often, by the time the
authorities realized that birth control information had been disseminated
at
her public talks, she was already well into lecturing on another topic. It
was not unusual for her to be arrested several days later, as she was about
to speak on Atheism or Ibsen, for a birth control offense committed days
before. Although Goldman did serve time, it was Ben Reitman, her lover and
manager, whose six-month sentence for public advocacy of birth control was
the longest jail sentence served by any birth control activist in the
United
States before 1920.
Goldman Counsels Birth Control Advocate Margaret Sanger
In 1914, Margaret Sanger was arrested for publishing information about
birth
control in her magazine Woman Rebel. While awaiting trial, she fled to
Europe for a year. Upon her return, Goldman learned that Sanger was under
pressure to plead guilty as a means of securing a lighter sentence. Goldman
advised Sanger against plea bargaining and encouraged her to approach the
trial as an occasion to mobilize support for the birth control movement.
Margaret Sanger became America's most influential advocate of birth control
in the 1910s. Emma Goldman had championed the cause years earlier as part
of
a broad social and political critique and had mentored the young Sanger.
Gradually, however, as Sanger adopted a single issue approach to winning
the
right to reproductive freedom, she disassociated herself from anarchists
like Emma Goldman. This strategy succeeded, but broke the friendship and
the
relationship of close mutual support that bound the two women activists.
War Resistance, Anti-Militarism, and Deportation, 1917-1919
Though she was not a pacifist, Emma Goldman insisted on the anarchist
principle that the state has no right to make war. She believed that most
modern wars were fought on behalf of capitalists at the expense of the
working class, and that the draft was a form of illegitimate coercion.
As the United States appeared to be drifting toward war in late 1916,
Goldman threw her energy into opposing the government's military
preparations, using her magazine, Mother Earth, as a forum. Goldman was not
alone in this cause: the anti-war effort was the product of a broad
coalition of liberals, socialists, anarchists, and progressive unionists.
Ultimately, however, the federal government crushed this movement and
repressed its elements in an almost hysterical patriotic pro-war and
anti-radical crusade orchestrated by President Woodrow Wilson. Mother Earth
was banned, along with other periodicals opposing the war. Hundreds of
foreign-born radicals were deported.
Although Goldman knew federal government officials had been looking for
grounds to deport her for years, she pressed on with her anti-war
activities. Within weeks of America's entry into World War I, she helped
launch the No- Conscription League to encourage conscientious objectors and
spoke repeatedly against the draft, attracting eight thousand people to one
meeting. Predictably, the government responded, arresting Emma Goldman and
her comrade Alexander Berkman on June 15, 1917. Charged with conspiring
against the draft, they were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison
with the possibility of deportation at the end of their term.
After an unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court, Goldman began serving
her
term at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. On September 27,
1919, Emma was released, only to be re-arrested shortly afterward by the
young J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Justice Department's General
Intelligence
Division. Hoover advanced his career by implementing to the fullest extent
possible the government's plan to deport all foreign-born radicals. Writing
the briefs and presenting the case against Goldman himself, Hoover
persuaded
the courts to deny Goldman's citizenship claims and to deport her.
On December 21, 1919, Goldman, Berkman, and over two hundred other foreign-
born radicals were herded aboard the Buford and, accompanied by a fearsome
block of nearly one hundred guards, set sail for the Soviet Union.
In late 1919, following a period of labor turbulence and several bombing
incidents, post-World War I anti-radical hysteria reached fever pitch. In
November 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched a series of
raids targeting the most vulnerable radical and progressive organizations.
By early 1920, more than five thousand people were arrested in what became
known as the "Palmer Raids." Goldman's Mother Earth office was among the
first to be ransacked in 1917. Rumor has it that J. Edgar Hoover used her
confiscated library and manuscripts to educate himself on the radical Left.
Apparently, most of the material was later destroyed.
Goldman's Last Impassioned Plea
In this, one of the most eloquent statements of her life, Emma Goldman
castigated the "star chamber" proceedings of the American judiciary. Emma
also lamented the increasingly repressive climate in the United States
which
she believed made the country indistinguishable from Czarist Russia. She
attributed this repression and intolerance to an alliance of powerful
industrialists and officials of state and federal governments.
Goldman's statement included a scathing critique of the Anti-Anarchist
laws,
asserting that "the free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a
people
is the greatest and only safety in a sane society."
J. Edgar Hoover Recommends Goldman and Berkman Deportation
J. Edgar Hoover turned the deportation of Emma Goldman and Alexander
Berkman
into a personal crusade. In this letter he brands them as "beyond doubt,
two
of the most dangerous anarchists in this country." As special assistant to
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, Hoover amassed evidence against
Goldman
and Berkman and presented the case against them at their deportation
hearing. Hoover was also present at 5:00 a.m. on the morning of December
21,
1919, when theBuford set sail for Russia carrying Goldman, Berkman, and the
other deportees. Hoover and the FBI monitored Goldman's activities closely
for the remainder of her life in exile from the United States.
Emma Goldman in Exile
With the exception of a brief ninety-day lecture tour in 1934, Emma Goldman
spent the remaining twenty-one years of her life (1919 to 1940) in exile
from the United States. During this period she lived in Russia, Sweden,
Germany, France, England, and Canada, never finding a political "home"
outside the United States.
In no country did Emma Goldman feel more estranged than in her native
Russia. She was shocked by the ruthless authoritarianism of the Bolshevik
regime, its severe repression of anarchists, and its disregard for
individual freedom. But she continued to defend the revolution, which she
distinguished from the subsequent Bolshevik regime. She argued forcefully
in
My Disillusionment in Russia (1923) that the emergence of the Bolshevik
party-state actually crushed the revolution. Notwithstanding the prescience
of this critique, the persistence and stridency of her anti-Bolshevism
alienated her from many European and American leftists.
Perhaps in part to counter this estrangement and the loneliness of her
exile
years, Emma maintained a lively correspondence with a large number of
Americans and Europeans, and was active in the American expatriate
community
in France. In the 1920s and 1930s, while struggling to survive economically
and frustrated by the restrictions her status as an exile imposed on her
political activities, Emma engaged in a variety of literary projects. The
most important and enduring product of this period of writing and
reflection
is her moving one thousand-page autobiography, Living My Life (1931). Her
letters and papers--many of which come from this period--complement this
monumental work by showing the full spectrum of Goldman's interests and
associations.
Goldman and Berkman Pose Questions to Lenin
In 1989, Glasnost opened archival exchanges of material that illustrated
internal debates within the Soviet Union. This release from the former
Central Party Archives shows the questions presented to Lenin in 1920 by
Goldman and Berkman about the suppression of dissent and persecution of
anarchists. He recorded their names, (which appear handwritten in the
margins), as he listened to their concerns. The inadequacy of Lenin's
response as well as growing repression in Russia, and the slaughter of the
Kronstadt rebels in 1921 prompted the two anarchists to leave Russia and
try
to stir up outside pressure to influence the situation there, while
continuing to support the early vision of the revolution.
Goldman in Exile
During her exile, Emma Goldman continued to apply her principles of free
speech not just to the United States, but to the Soviet Union as well.
Angered by the suppression of anti-Bolshevik dissent in Russia, Goldman
registered her protest with Lenin himself and left the country within two
years hoping to alert the world to the injustice she had witnessed. Her
courageous position left her vulnerable to criticism from the Left as well
as from the Right and isolated her even further.
In 1924, she moved to London. Despite her association with a wide circle of
left-wing and liberal British intellectuals, Goldman felt lonely in England
and frequently complained about the stolidity and reserve of the British.
"Even the best English paralyze me," she wrote Berkman.
Before she could leave England, however, she had to ensure that she would
have right of residency somewhere. Despite her political objections to the
institution of marriage, she engaged in the legal formality of marriage to
an elderly coal miner from Wales named James Colton to secure the mobility
and privilege of British citizenship.
Goldman Returns to the United States for Only 90 Days
During her exile, Emma Goldman and her attorneys appealed repeatedly to
Washington for permission to re-enter the United States. Goldman hoped to
return since her friends and family were there and because she believed she
could be more effective politically in the United States.
The Roosevelt administration was the first to respond positively to her
appeals, but even the liberal New Dealers would only allow her to return
for
a ninety-day visit, during which she was ordered to confine her lectures to
topics involving literature and drama. Goldman's 1934 speaking tour was
well
received by the American Left--but not by the FBI, which, under Hoover's
orders, trailed her. She spoke on the "drama" of world events, fascism,
Stalinism, and Hitlerism.
Her return to New York was front-page news in all the city's major
newspapers. On March 17, 1934, she spoke to a large audience in Rochester,
New York, where she had spent her first three years in the United States
(1886 to 1889). She enjoyed taking quick swipes and engaging the audience
with her flamboyant and audacious speaking style.
For Emma Goldman, deportation and exile were harsh punishments. Friends
reported that just before and immediately after her tour, Goldman often sat
at the Canadian border, looking longingly across to the United States,
tears
streaming down her face.
Emma Goldman and the Spanish Revolution and Civil War
Goldman was sixty-seven years old when the Spanish Revolution and Civil War
erupted in July of 1936. It was less than a month after the tragic suicide
of Alexander Berkman, her closest comrade and "chum of a life-time." The
promise of an anarchist revolution in Spain revived Goldman's broken
spirit.
Despite her advanced age, Emma hurled herself into the Spanish cause with
an
enthusiasm reminiscent of her early activist years in America.
Goldman thought the Spanish Revolution and Civil War was not only crucial
to
the international struggle against fascism, but also a great moment in the
history of Spain and the world. It was in her view the only peasant and
working-class revolution ever to be inspired by anarchist ideals. Building
on more than a half-century of agitation and organization, the Spanish
anarchists by the mid-1930s had won popular support in parts of Spain--with
Catalonia their strongest base. When Emma visited collectivized towns and
farms in Aragon in 1936 and the Levante in 1937, she was electrified by
what
seemed to her to be the beginnings of a Spanish anarchist revolution.
In 1936, the Spanish comrades asked Goldman to direct their English
propaganda campaign, designating her the London representative of the
National Confederation of Labor and the Iberian Anarchist Federation
(CNT-FAI). She worked tirelessly, writing hundreds of letters to supporters
and editors in the English-speaking world. Dismayed but not vanquished by
Franco's triumph in early 1939, Goldman moved to Canada, where she devoted
the last year of her life to securing political asylum and financial
support
for the women and children refugees of the Spanish war and to publicizing
legislative dangers to free speech in Canada.
Emma Goldman died in Toronto on May 14, 1940. After her death, the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed Goldman's body to be
re-admitted to the United States. She was buried in Chicago's Waldheim
Cemetery, near the Haymarket anarchists who so inspired her.
Tribute to Emma Goldman From Mujeres Libres
Goldman Solicits Support for the Spanish Anarchists
During the Spanish Revolution and civil war, Emma Goldman helped lead the
international campaign to support the Loyalists in their battle against
General Franco and the Spanish rebels. The factional struggles between
liberals, communists, and anarchists in the Loyalist coalition frustrated
Goldman. She was particularly discouraged by the compromises that the
Spanish anarchists were forced to make as part of their participation in
the
popular front against the rebels, who were supported by Germany and Italy.
Honoring the Memory of "The Outstanding Woman of Our Time"
Goldman spent her last years in Canada, close enough to be visited by old
friends and comrades in the United States. A ceaseless activist, she took
on
the task of publicizing the dangers of the War Measures Act to freedom of
speech in Canada.
In February 1940 Goldman suffered a stroke which left her unable to speak.
By May 14, 1940, the great orator and activist was dead.
A memorial meeting held at Town Hall in New York followed her funeral in
Chicago. Here, some of the most prominent reformers and radicals of the age
paid tribute to Emma Goldman and her life's work, proclaiming her an
inspiration to future generations of progressive activists.
Goldman Buried Next to the Haymarket Martyrs
Thousands of mourners flocked to see Emma Goldman's flower-laden casket
draped with the flag of the Spanish CNT-FAI (the Spanish Anarchist
Federation and Trade Union). Tributes poured in from every corner of the
world. At the funeral, Goldman's lawyer and friend, Harry Weinberger,
welcomed her back to America, "where you wanted to end your days with
friends and comrades. We had hoped to welcome you back in life--but we
welcome you back in death. You will live forever in the hearts of your
friends and the story of your life will live as long as the stories are
told
of women and men of courage and idealism."
So many years passed before funds could be raised for Goldman's tombstone
that it recorded the date of her birth and the year of her death
inaccurately. Her spirit was captured, nevertheless, by a bas relief of
Emma's face by the sculptor Jo Davidson, with her own proclamation,
"Liberty
will not descend to a People. A People must raise themselves to Liberty."
