![]() ![]() ![]() At the age of 17, she learned about the labor struggles in Chicago, Illinois, where workers were demanding an eight-hour day. Goldman was abruptly married off to a young man whom she did not love and who was unable to consummate the marriage. The Goldmans immigrated to Rochester, New York, and lived in an area of Jewish immigrants. Her tyrannical father began trying to marry her off at the age of 15, a fate Goldman strongly resented and resisted. In 1901, when a young anarchist shot President William McKinley, Goldman startled her admirers by offering-from jail-to nurse the dying president.īorn in Lithuania in 1869, Goldman came from a Jewish family who lived in a ghetto and, at the age of 13, took a factory job to help support her family. Goldman was arrested again and again for her dangerous ideas and even more dangerous speeches and upon every one of her releases she returned to the speaking circuit, firing the passions of her eager audiences. While in jail, she worked as a practical nurse and upon her release in 1895, she went to Vienna, Austria, where she studied midwifery and nursing. The police dragged Goldman off the protest stage and sent her to the prison on Blackwell's Island for two years. In 1893, a terrible year of economic crisis during which urban children were dying of hunger, she addressed an enormous demonstration in New York City's Union Square, urging her listeners to invade food stores and take what they needed to feed their families 2(pxiii) in a vivid example of the anarchist principle of direct action. Everywhere she attracted enormous crowds who became spellbound by her rhetoric. ![]() A labor organizer and anarchist leader, she crisscrossed the county lecturing on anarchism, economics, drama, birth control, free love, and women's emancipation. Goldman was probably the most accomplished, magnetic speaker of her time in the United States. Edgar Hoover called her “one of the most dangerous women in America.” Goldman retorted that “I consider it an honor to be the first political agitator to be deported from the United States.” 1(p31) WHEN EMMA GOLDMAN WAS deported from the United States in 1919, J. ![]()
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