Emma Goldman (1869-1940) grew up in Jewish Kovno and St Petersburg. Her formal education was limited, but she read widely and in St Petersburg she associated with a radical student circle. In the late 1880s she immigrated to the U.S and settled in Rochester NY. There and later in New Haven Conn, she worked in clothing factories, mixing with socialist and anarchist fellow workers.
Goldman addressing the workers
Although anarchists were more often the victims of violence than its offenders, the stereotype of the long-haired, wild-eyed anarchist assassin emerged in the 1880s and was firmly established in the public mind. Anarchists, many of them German immigrants, were prominent figures in Chicago’s labour movement. There was a peaceful rally against the Chicago Harvesting Machine Co in May 1886, After Harrison and most of the demonstrators had departed, a contingent of police arrived and demanded that the crowd disperse. At that point a bomb exploded among the police, killing one, and the police responded with gunfire. In the ensuing melee, 6 workers were killed and many more injured.
The Chicago Haymarket Affair created general hysteria against immigrants and labour leaders, and led to renewed suppression by police. Although the identity of the bomb thrower was never found, 8 anarchist leaders were arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy. 4 Chicago Eight members were hanged in Nov 1887; 1 committed suicide in his cell; and 3 were given long sentences. Only later, in criticising the unjust trial, did Illinois Gov John Altgeld pardon the 3 surviving Haymarket prisoners in 1893.
In NY Goldman formed a close association with Alexander Berkman (1870–1936) who’d been gaoled for trying to assassinate Henry Clay Frick during the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike Massacre. In 1893 she herself was gaoled in New York for inciting a riot when some unemployed workers reacted to a fiery speech she had delivered. Released 2 years later, Goldman embarked on lecture tours of Europe and U.S. By then she’d repudiated her earlier tolerance of violence as an acceptable means of achieving social ends.
Goldman and Berkman
In 1906 Berkman was freed, and he and Goldman reunited. In that year she founded Mother Earth, a periodical she edited until its suppression in WW1. Goldman was a follower of the brilliant Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), writing essays on anarchist theory and practice in Mother Earth that honoured Kropotkin’s writings. Her campaigns were often controversial eg pro contraception. So it was unsurprising that her American naturalisation was revoked by legal steps in 1908. 2 years later she published Anarchism and Other Essays.
Mother Earth periodical
published until WW1
But this did come as a surprise to me. Goldman also lectured on the contemporary dramatic works of Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, George Bernard Shaw etc. She was influential in introducing many European playwrights to American audiences; her lectures on their work were published in 1914 as The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Yet she was gaoled in 1916 for the conception issue.
When WW1 broke out in Europe, Goldman opposed US involvement, and later she lobbied against military conscription. She believed it was an imperialist war that was sacrificing ordinary people as cannon fodder. In July 1917 she was sentenced to 2 years prison for her anti-war activities, including time in The Penitentiary Hospital NY.
By the time of her release in Sept 1919, the U.S was caught up in hysteria over the rumoured network of communist operatives, and her ideas earned Goldman the enmity of powerful political and economic authorities. J Edgar Hoover turned the deportation of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman into a personal crusade, branding them as two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country. Red Emma was declared a subversive alien and in Dec, along with Berkman and 247 others, was deported to the Soviet Union. 2 years after leaving Russia, she recorded her experiences in My Disillusionment in Russia (1923).
Congress had long passed a law barring all foreign anarchists from entering or remaining in the country. In the repressive mood that followed WW1, anarchism in the US was further suppressed. And in an awful trial in 1920, two immigrant Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of killing a payroll clerk and a guard in Mass. Despite worldwide protests that raised serious questions about the guilt of the defendants, including by Goldman, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927.
She remained active, living at various times in Sweden, Germany, England, France etc, continuing to lecture and writing her autobiography, Living My Life (1931). In 1940 she worked for the anti-Fascist cause in the Spanish Civil War, then suffered a stroke in 1940 and died in Toronto aged 70.
In 1990 the Emma Goldman Papers Project created an exhibit that commemorated the life of this heroine decades after her death. Starting in San Francisco, the exhibit toured across the U.S and the world. Historical photographs, personal letters and government documents traced Goldman's political and personal evolution. Included were correspondence from Goldman to birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, the warrant for Goldman's deportation, newspaper articles and horrible editorial cartoons.
by Vivian Gornick, 2013
Goldman’s early experiences in Russia and as a struggling immigrant to the U.S laid the ground work for her own later analyses of workers’ problems. Though Goldman was already my family’s Russian, Jewish, feminist, immigrant hero, I'd recommend reading Vivian Gornick’s book.
16 comments:
Boa tarde. Parabéns pelo seu excelente trabalho de pesquisa. Não conhecia essa história. Bom final de semana minha querida amiga.
I am glad Goldman stopped tolerating violence, even though violence was used against workers all the time. What a nasty world they lived in.
Luiz
it is a fascinating, if rather tragic history of the working class, from the end of the 19th century and on. But after the horrors of WW1, we might have expected the nation (in this case the USA) to thank surviving men for their heroic contribution. But no! Working men had a terrible time, and the activists who tried to help them got into even more trouble themselves.
In the Great Depression of the late 1920s, the situation was even worse. I imagine this was true all over the world.
Student
the violence was horrible, as we saw in some of the protest marches above. Hungry workers were beaten to a pulp, gaoled for years, executed on court orders or deported out of the US. So it took a while for Emma Goldman to realise that violence was evil from whichever side it came.
Boa tarde. Obrigado pela explicação. Desejo que a você e sua família, um sábado com muita saúde e paz.
Luiz
Often history blogs open whole new areas of interest, yes. I know a lot of Russian history, but I started reading about Algiers in a blog this morning :)
If only average Americans now would fear the rise of the far right as they then feared the rise of the 'far' left. The far right will do far more damage and we have already seen it happen.
Andrew
Right! So now we have to ask why the USA was paranoid about left wing destruction of the true American way of life from the late 19th century until the end of the inter-war era. My best guess is that the more Russians, Germans, Jews, Catholics, workers, ex-slaves and other non-English speaking migrants arrived in the country, the more fearful white Protestants became.
Firstly they dealt with the fear informally. From 1914 on, migration was mostly shaped by locally determined quotas. Then formally with The Immigration Act of 1924; it limited the number of immigrants allowed in via strict legislation.
My Guess is that suppression of workers even after they had fought in the trenches, was one of the reasons for the uptake of extremes of politics on either side . This certainly happened to a minor degree in Australia . I believe the cutting of the ribbon to open the harbor bridge by De Groote rather than by Jack Lang the premier was an example of this activism. There was also violent suppression of camps of unemployed around cities and towns again by the far right. I fear it is all happening again with a resultant election of far right "Deplorables" who have convinced unhappy members of society they have the answers . I am really hoping that more of the population will be wise to these tactics and see these people for what they are . Con Artists with evil intent .
mem
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." (1883) The poor and oppressed urgently wanted to leave Europe, and the U.S desperately needed workers. It should have been a dream match. Alas from 1900-15, 15+ million immigrants flooded into the US, particularly from non-English speaking country.
What I do NOT understand was why men were suppressed, after the survivors crawled out of the war trenches. Both the US and Australia should have been giving these men heroic thanks (as well as housing, hospital care and jobs). And the entire New World should have been giving homes and jobs to Europeans whose communities had been destroyed during the war. Emma Goldman and her colleagues were very brave, but they were doomed to have their own lives ruined.
well there was the soldier settlement blocks where the squatters were deprived of their land and it was handed to would be farmers who often had no experience and it often didn't end well for anybody . There was also the state savings bank housing scheme where people could choose from a catalogue of homes and pay a very low price for a house and land package in the burgeoning suburbs and then there were opportunities to go to university for some who would never have gone in any other way . But yes the miners strikes in England , the suppression and insistence on paying back debt that had been built up to equip the Australian army to defend the empire and was owed to the Bank of England was a failure to defend and reward the true heroes of that dreadful conflagration .Jack Lang came out of pretty well but the other politicians and lackies of the crown not so well in my opinion . The late Gerald Stone wrote a very readable history of this time . It called "1932"
mem
you have mentioned some of the very clear ambiguities in post WW1 Australia, and I am assuming this reflected the conflicting views of Australia entering the war in Europe. For example, Australian voters were asked in Oct 1916 and in Dec 1917 to vote on conscription and in both referenda, conscription was rejected.
Immigration to Australia was also ambiguous. It ceased during the war, but after the war, parliamentarians debated about how to actively increase population without changing the White Australia policy or compromising working pay and conditions. So who was unacceptable here - immigrants of enemy origin, southern and eastern Europeans, and people in radical political movements!!!
Thanks. Your explanation gives some clarity of thought.
Andrew
I think Americans have a lot more thinking to do about their early 20th century history - immigration, oppression of workers, oppression of Jews/Russians/Germans, support for women, World War One, police and court injustice, citizenship and deportations etc. I won't even bother mentioning the appalling J Edgar Hoover.
Australian historians have a lot to explain, as well :(
Hi Hels - an interesting woman - I must come back and re-read ... very informative post and history ... all the best - Hilary
Hilary
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, I didn't have a lot of feminist role models to follow, but thank goodness my grandparents and parents were very impressed with Emma Goldman. She was multi-lingual, very literate, endlessly committed to working class politics, a great traveller and lecturer, talented editor and a dedicated anti-Fascist. The worst problem was that she was a major risk taker :(
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