History Behind: Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was a Russian-Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, where she spent most of her youth before moving to America around the age of twelve. Her environment in Lithuania would build the world views she later shared, having grown up in the aftermath of Czar Alexander II's assassination and where all dissent was punished.
While in America, she became a public speaker who spent her time making propaganda and organizing for the benefit of the causes she supported: women’s equality, workers’ rights, free universal education, and anarchism – a touchy topic later on in her life, especially in the wake of the first world war and the red scare. Her work would define the limits of dissent and the free space of the progressive era in America. Her work would garner thousands interested in both her work and her views, yet her imprisonment and ultimate deportation would come to an end with the enforcement of the Sedition Act.
Emma Goldman was an influential public speaker, likely one of the best of her time. Her views likely started when she was younger and living in the wake of an assassination, where even any minuscule dissent was viewed as treason. Moving to the US in 1881, she began working as a laborer in a garment factory. The unsavory working conditions would begin firing up more here, and only grow after the Haymarket Affair. She became involved with Alexander Berkman, a man who would later attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. She would become an accomplice in two more assassinations, though failed. After Berkman was arrested for the prior attempted assassination in 1892, Goldman would also find herself jailed for inciting a riot due to a speech she had delivered to a group of unemployed people. Once released, she would venture on lecture tours around Europe and the United States. She would quickly rise to national prominence, her style of speaking and topics left her with a varied audience.
Leon Czolgosz claimed to have been inspired by Goldman to assassinate President William McKinley, though Goldman denounced earlier acceptance of violence as success in protests. After Berkman was released, she started an anarchist magazine, “Mother Earth,” which would later become very influential. Her goal would be to Americanize and reanimate the anarchist movement. However, both she – dubbed “Red Emma” by hysteric Americans– and Berkman would be deported shortly after serving 2 years in prison for protesting the draft. She would continue to write, publishing a series of articles in the New York World describing conditions in Russia – later writing My Disillusionment with Russia – before her death in 1940 would mark the end.
Goldman stands as one of the strongest political protesters of the time, as her political speeches and writings built up the momentum to cause large rallies and protests at a time when it wasn’t accepted. In the time of conscription, she set up “No Conscription” leagues and organized rallies to protest the draft. A huge supporter of women’s suffrage, she heavily protested the ban on the use of birth control. Her speeches on this would plant the ideas to later further light the fire of the suffrage movement, not only on voting but rights as a whole. Later on, these ideas would be fought for, but as of then, it was a taboo topic. Her ability to have the courage to speak up on topics while knowing of the possible consequences, would give women the ability to expand those platforms seen later on in American history. Historians have written of her both positively and negatively, seeing the violence as the possible caveat to her “positive” platform. What historians do not deny is the impact her public speaking had on her audiences, both the skill and influence to cause riots and agitation make her a powerful speaker.
People have been fighting for expression since Adam’s Sedition Act and even before that. There have been powerful public speakers who gained their influence through both what they say, but mostly how they can say it. Frederick Douglass and Hoover are two extremely prominent figures of this theme, though there is a gap in time between them. Throughout time, public speaking has been a way to get your message across to large groups of people, with an influence that cannot be matched. History, through time, shows that to influence is to speak and say it well. To connect to who you speak with but to inspire them. Emma Goldman, in the larger figure of American History, is a pinpoint of where some ideas build up but also to how the point of time existed. The consistent theme of government power is also prevalent, even back to the federalists this can be related. This push and pull between more and less power for the government is what caused some of the unrest seen in this current time, as well as both in the present and past.
