Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was a tireless radical activist, fighting for workers’ rights, women’s equality, reproductive rights, universal education for all, free love, and most famously, anarchism. Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (today Kaunus, Lithuania) into a working-class family with a temperamental father, Goldman grew up in Königsberg and later in St. Petersburg, where she was exposed to radical Russian political writings. In 1885, Goldman left for America with her sister, settling in Rochester, New York. Incensed by the perceived injustices of the court punishments meted out to anarchists for the Haymarket Square bombing, Goldman was soon captivated by anarchism. In 1889, she moved to New York City to join Alexander Berkman as a leading anarchist activist, speaker, and writer. In 1917, “Red Emma” was sentenced to prison and then exiled to the Soviet Union in 1919. Initially supportive of the October Revolution, Goldman became a sworn opponent of the Soviet Union after witnessing Bolshevik oppression. She spent the remainder of her life in exile advocating for anarchism and against oppressive political ideologies of all sorts; she lived in Canada, England, France, Germany, Sweden, and during the Spanish Civil War, Spain. She was infamously referred to in her lifetime by the U.S. government as “the most dangerous woman in America.” In the late twentieth century, the women’s movement in America rediscovered Goldman and extolled her significant contributions to political thought, sexual liberty, reproductive rights, and freedom of expression.