| Emma Goldman was born a Jew in Lithuania, and worked as a teenager in a St. Petersburg glove factory, which exposed her to the ferment of politics. She emigrated to America at the age of seventeen, with her sixteen-year-old sister, in 1886, and initially worked in a sweatshop. She quickly gained notoriety as “Red Emma,” and traveled the country speaking on topics from free love to prison reform. |  |
| After
the Haymarket riot of 1886, where eight labor leaders were unfairly convicted
for inciting the riot, and four were hanged, she became an anarchist, arguing
for the replacement of authoritarian government by the free association
of individuals. She was not opposed to violence in support of her aims,
and in 1893 was jailed for inciting a riot when she told a crowd of unemployed
workers to steal bread if they did not have the money to buy it. After
a stint in prison and a visit to Europe, she returned to New York in 1895,
arguing in the US and in Europe for free speech, civil rights, and women’s
rights. In 1906 she founded the radical monthly magazine Mother Earth.
She opposed US involvement in World War One and worked against the draft. Like many others, she was villified for that stand, and in 1917 was sentenced to five years in prison for her opposition. In 1919, during the post-war Red Scare, her citizenship was revoked, she was declared an illegal alien and, along with 200 others, was deported to the Soviet Union. She became critical of the Russian Revolution, and published her feelings in My Disillusionment in Russia in 1923. Unable to return to America, she traveled throughout Europe giving lectures. She worked for the anti-fascist cause in Spain’s civil war, and was lecturing on its behalf at the time of her death. She died in Toronto, Canada, her home at the time, and although the authorities would not allow her to enter the United States while alive, they did allow her remains to be buried here. She is interred in the German Waldheim section of Forest Home Cemetery. Her monument bears a bas-relief sculpted by Jo Davidson, and the quotation, “Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty.” The four martyrs of the Haymarket riots are commemorated by a monument in the German Waldheim section of the cemetery, and so many radicals and socialists chose to be buried nearby that the area has come to be known as “Dissenters Row.” Among them are Voltairine de Cleyre, Lucy Parsons, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. For specific travel information about these sites, check the "Travel Resources" page. |