Emma Goldman

Sometimes known as Red Emma, Emma Goldman was an activist, writer, public speaker and anarchist, best known for her contributions to anarchist philosophy and leftist organizing in the early 20th century.

Goldman was born in Imperial Russia in 1869 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1885. 

Radicalized after the Haymarket affair, Goldman was involved in worker rights and women’s rights, especially with regard to birth control. She was once arrested after a rally to distribute leaflets on contraception.

“Her power was in linking public and private issues and being incredibly eloquent and in her words. People felt that she expressed what they wanted to hear, needed to hear, might be afraid to hear, but appreciated her for that,” said Candace Falk, editor and director of the Emma Goldman Papers public history project. 

As the drumbeat to enter World War I grew in the United States, Goldman’s work opposing war and conscription moved to the forefront. She was tried and imprisoned for two years for her outspoken opposition of the draft. 

Goldman was later declared a “subversive alien” and was deported to the Soviet Union. Falk says J. Edgar Hoover helped facilitate and orchestrate her removal from the U.S. He even personally saw her off at the boat in 1919, she said.

“She was deported and imprisoned not because she did anything violent,” Falk said. “It was because she had ideas that were attractive and against the status quo as it was, and she had an audience of people who were both immigrants and American born.”

— Adam DeRose