A forceful voice for the nascent anarchist movement in the United States, Goldman founded the magazine Mother Earth and crisscrossed the United States lecturing about anarchy and supporting anarchists, immigrant and labor groups, women, and others oppressed by the government and institutionalized capitalism.
In 1885, Emma Goldman, having rejected her brutal father, the prospect of domestic life, and state-sanctioned oppression of radicals and Jews, emigrated from Russia to the United States. In the immigrant communities of New York, she experienced sweatshop life, worker oppression, and an unhappy marriage. Inspired by the persecution of eight anarchists involved in the Haymarket riot of 1886, Goldman joined the American anarchist movement that in its early stages attracted European, Russian, and Jewish immigrants.
Emma Goldman riding a public streetcar in 1917.
Notoriety
Although Goldman’s own philosophy of anarchy shifted over time, her enduring tenet was individual freedom of expression. Despite numerous struggles in America, Goldman embraced the country’s essential belief in the individual. She was deported in 1919 for her antiwar efforts, but President
Chalberg, John C. Emma Goldman: American Individualist. Edited by Mark C. Carnes. 2d ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. Goldman, Emma. Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader. Edited by Alix Kates Shulman. 3d ed. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus-Humanity Books, 1996.
Birth control movement
Deportation
Former Soviet Union immigrants
Immigration Act of 1903
Jewish immigrants
Labor unions
Red Scare
Sacco and Vanzetti trial
“Undesirable aliens”
Women’s movements
