1869-1940
Freethinker, Anarchist, Social Critic

Anarchist Background.

Emma Goldman was born in Kovno, Russia; she immigrated to the United States in 1885. After working in Rochester, New York, for a few months, she moved to New Haven, Connecticut. There she became acquainted with political radicals, and she was deeply impressed by the anarchists involved in the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square bombing. By 1889 Goldman was a confirmed anarchist, and she moved to New York City at a time, as she recalled in her memoirs, when her "entire possessions consisted of five dollars and a small handbag." In partnership with another Russian immigrant, Alexander Berkman, whom she called Sasha, Goldman helped plan the attempted assassination in 1892 of Henry Clay Frick, an associate of Andrew Carnegie whom labor activists held responsible for a pitched battle between striking steelworkers and Pinkerton detectives at Homestead, Pennsylvania. For her role in the failed attempt...