Biography
Emma Goldman was a Russian-born anarchist writer, editor, and orator who emigrated to the United States in 1885 and became one of the most influential and most prosecuted radicals in American history. She founded and edited the magazine Mother Earth, lectured nationally on anarchism, free love, women's suffrage, birth control, and opposition to war and conscription, and was repeatedly arrested across more than three decades. In 1893 she served ten months on Blackwell's Island for telling the unemployed of New York to demand bread by force if necessary. In 1916 she was sentenced to fifteen days in the workhouse for publicly discussing contraception. After Congress declared war on Germany in April 1917, she and her longtime comrade Alexander Berkman organized the No-Conscription League, distributing tens of thousands of antiwar leaflets and holding mass rallies. Both were arrested on June 15, 1917 and tried in federal court in New York under the newly enacted Espionage Act for conspiring to obstruct the draft. Both were convicted, fined the maximum $10,000, and sentenced to two years in federal prison. Goldman served her sentence at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Released in September 1919, she was rearrested by the Bureau of Investigation under the Anarchist Exclusion Act and on December 21, 1919, deported with Berkman and 247 other immigrant radicals aboard the U.S. Army transport Buford — the so-called 'Soviet Ark' — to Russia. Disillusioned by the Bolshevik suppression of dissent, she left Russia in 1921 and lived the rest of her life in exile in Europe and Canada. She died in Toronto in 1940 and was permitted, in death, to be returned to the United States and buried in Chicago at Waldheim Cemetery near the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument.
From Kenyon Zimmer's Red Scare Deportees index (kenyonzimmer.com, compiled from INS deportation case files): Immigrated to the United States in 1885 and became an anarchist in the wake of the Haymarket Affair. Goldman soon emerged as one of the most prominent anarchist propagandists in the country, known for her lectures, writings, and advocacy on issues including syndicalism, free speech, birth control, and antimilitarism. Over the course of her career, she was arrested at least thirteen times for her political activities. In 1906 she founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth, which she published until its suppression in 1917. That year, she co-founded the No-Conscription League and, together with Alexander Berkman, was arrested in June under the Espionage Act for interfering with the military draft. Both were convicted, sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and fined $10,000. Upon her release, Goldman was deported to Soviet Russia aboard the Buford on December 21, 1919.
In Russia, Goldman and Berkman initially collaborated on collecting materials for a Museum of the Revolution. Following the suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion in 1921, both broke decisively with the Bolshevik regime. They left Russia in December 1921 and Goldman lived thereafter in Germany, France, England, and Canada, continuing anarchist activism and publicly condemning Soviet authoritarianism. In 1934 she was permitted to return briefly to the United States for a lecture tour. During the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Barcelona in 1936 and undertook speaking and organizing tours across Europe on behalf of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940.
Sender Garlin interviewed Goldman at New York’s Astor Hotel during the 1934 hotel strike. The interview documents her return for a lecture tour arranged by the Pond Bureau and her intention to return to southern France afterward. It records her opposition to war and criticism of the Soviet government in a hostile Communist account. Her presence in New York is established; this interview is not evidence of a new detention. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n030-feb-03-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
In chapter 34 of her memoir Living My Life, Emma Goldman recounts these distinct arrests during a lecture tour. These are her retrospective descriptions; the chapter does not independently give a full calendar date for each episode.
Goldman says she and Reitman were arrested in Seattle and released after payment of $1.50 for a broken hall lock. The payment does not establish a criminal fine imposed on each person.
Goldman reports that she and Dr. Ben L. Reitman chose jail rather than leaving Bellingham, spent the night in custody, and were later bailed out after a $5,000 bail order. Overnight custody is not converted into one complete day.
Goldman describes arrest at San Francisco’s Victory Theater, detention with Reitman, initial $16,000 bail each and a later $2,000 bail indictment. She says the court proceedings ended in acquittal. Arrest, admission and physical discharge dates are not specified here.
Source: Emma Goldman, Living My Life, volume 1, chapter 34. Existing dates, custody periods and totals from other records remain unchanged.
PBS’s timeline records separate arrests in August 1893, October 1906, January 1907, Portland in August 1915, and New York in February 1916. Its August 17, 1894 release is physical discharge; the fifteen-day April 1916 sentence does not establish actual custody endpoints. Goldman and Berkman pleaded not guilty on June 16, 1917. Their prison terms and later deportation were separate events.
PBS’s Emma Goldman timeline records her death in Toronto on May 14, 1940.
The contemporary account by Social Science League secretary Cassius V. Cook dates Goldman’s and Reitman’s San Francisco arrests to January 14, 1909, during the planned Victory Theater lecture series. It places Reitman’s arrest at the theater about 7 p.m. and Goldman’s arrest while approaching it about 8 p.m. Cook identifies attorneys King and Kirk as challenging the conspiracy charges and obtaining bail reductions, with C. T. Sprading supplying much of Goldman’s bail. He describes a later charge of holding meetings for unlawful purposes and a $500 bail requirement. A subsequent editorial in the delayed issue reports that Goldman, Reitman and Alexander Horr had been discharged by the local court after no offense was proved. The report supplies no exact final physical release day. This contemporary sequence differs in some details from Goldman’s later memoir, and concerns the San Francisco proceeding rather than their other arrests. Source: American Journal of Eugenics, volume II, nos. 10–11, January–February 1909, Cassius V. Cook’s January 22–23 letter, printed pages 250–251, and subsequent editorial, page 263.
The June 27, 1917 New York dispatch reports the ongoing anti-conscription conspiracy trial of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman before Judge Julius Mayer and identifies Assistant United States Attorney Harold A. Content. The report describes precautions after threatening letters; it precedes the verdict and does not establish another custody interval.
