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Goldman’s lectures, but there was no direct connection
between the two, and the charges against her were dropped.
In 1906 Goldman founded Mother Earth, an anarchist jour-
nal. When Alexander Berkman was released from prison later
that year, she made him its editor.Mother Earthdenounced
governments, organized religion, and private property. By this
time Goldman had become a celebrity.“She was considered a
monster, an exponent of free love and bombs," recalled
Margaret Anderson, editor of a literary magazine.
Now Goldman campaigned for freedom of speech and
lectured in support of birth control. In 1915, after Margaret
Sanger was arrested for disseminating information on birth
control, Goldman did the same in public speeches. She was
arrested and spent two weeks in jail.
Goldman regarded the Great War—and especially
American entry in it—as a calamity beyond measure. In 1917
Goldman and Berkman were convicted of conspiring to per-
suade men not to register for the draft. They served two
years in federal prison. In 1919 they were deported to Russia.
Two years later, disillusioned with the Bolsheviks, Goldman
left the Soviet Union.
“Red Emma” Goldman was not a typical American, but
she was in many ways a typical American immigrant. She
learned English and quickly became familiar with American
ways. She worked hard and developed valuable skills.
Gradually she moved up the economic ladder. And while she
was critical of the United States, she was a typical immigrant
also in insisting that she was an American patriot.“The kind of
patriotism we represent,” she said during her trial in 1917,“is
the kind of patriotism which loves America with open eyes.”I
n January 1886 a sixteen-year-old Jewish girl named Emma
Goldman arrived in New York City from St. Petersburg,
Russia, where her parents ran a grocery store. As soon as
immigration officials had approved her entry into the United
States, she hurried on to Rochester, New York, where her half-
sister lived. Like most immigrants she expected the United
States to be a kind of paradise on earth.
After moving in with her half-sister’s family, Emma got a
job in a factory sewing coats and earning $2.50 a week. She
paid her sister $1.50 a week for room and board and spent sixty
cents a week to get to her job. But when she asked her
employer for more money he told her to “look for work else-
where. ” She found a job at another factory that paid $4 a week.
In 1887 she married Jacob Kirshner, another Russian
immigrant, but they soon divorced. In 1889 she took up with a
group of radicals, most of them either socialists or anarchists.
By this time Goldman was herself an ardent anarchist, con-
vinced by her experiences that allgovernments repressed
individual freedom and should be abolished.
In New York Emma fell in love with another Russian-born
radical, Alexander Berkman. They started a kind of commune.
Emma worked at home sewing shirts. Alexander found a job
making cigars. They never married.
The couple moved to New Haven, where Emma started
a cooperative dressmaking shop. Then they moved to
Springfield, Massachusetts, where, with Berkman’s cousin, an
artist, they opened a photography studio. When this business
failed, they opened an ice cream parlor.
Nearly all immigrants of that period retained their
faith in the promise of American life even after they dis-
covered that the streets were not paved with gold. But
Emma was so disappointed that she became a radical.
In 1892 when she and Berkman learned of the bloody
battle between Pinkertons and strikers during the
Homestead steel strike, they closed the ice cream parlor and
plotted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, the archvillain of the
Homestead drama. Berkman went to Pittsburgh, where, pos-
ing as a representative of an agency that provided strike-
breakers, he got into Frick’s office. Pulling a pistol, Berkman
aimed for Frick’s head but the shot went wide and hit Frick in
the shoulder. Berkman then stabbed Frick, but still the
Homestead boss survived. Convicted of the attempt on
Frick’s life, Berkman was imprisoned for fourteen years.
The next year Goldman was herself arrested and sen-
tenced to a year in jail for making an “incendiary” speech urg-
ing unemployed workers to distrust politicians. Upon her
release, Goldman went to Vienna, where she trained as a
nurse. When she returned to America, she worked as a mid-
wife among the New York poor, an experience that made her
an outspoken advocate of birth control. She also helped orga-
nize a theatrical group, managed a touring group of Russian
actors, and lectured on theatrical topics. In 1901, Goldman
was arrested on charges of inspiring Leon Czolgosz to assassi-
nate President McKinley. Czolgosz had attended one of
AMERICAN LIVES
Emma Goldman
A “mug shot” of Emma Goldman, 1901. She was arrested so often
that she took to carrying a book with her everywhere so that she
would have something to read in jail if she were arrested.Questions for Discussion
■Why did most immigrants, on learning of the gap between
the promise of America and its reality, not become radicals?
■Was Goldman a radical by birth or by acculturation?