EMMA GOLDMAN, 1869-1940

Emma Goldman, anarchist, writer, lecturer and agitator for free speech and radical causes, was born in Kovno, Russia (1869) and emigrated to the United States in 1885. She lived first in Rochester, New York, where she married, divorced and remarried Jacob Kershner . In 1889 she settled alone in New York City, where she met Johann Most, editor of Freiheit, and Alexander Berkman. She joined the anarchist movement and soon became a public speaker for the cause. While editor of Mother Earth, 1906-17, she published anarchist pamphlets and books, including her own Anarchism and Other Essays (1911). EG also lectured on the radical drama of Ibsen, Shaw and Strindberg and wrote The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914). In 1917 EG and Alexander Berkman were arrested for conspiracy to obstruct draft registration . They were found guilty and sentenced to prison (1918-19). Three months after their release in 1919 they were deported to Russia. EG's sojourn in Russia (1920-21), which led to the publication of My Disillusionment in Russia, (1923), was followed by short stays in Sweden, Germany, and England, where in 1925 she married James Colton to obtain British citizenship.

In 1926 EG traveled to Canada to lecture in English and Yiddish on drama and politics. In October her meeting with Leon Malmed, a long-time anarchist associate from Albany, N.Y., led to a passionate affair. After speaking at meetings across Canada she returned to France in 1928 to write her autobiography, Living My Life,(1931). EG returned to Canada in 1933 and in 1934 was given permission to enter the United States for a 90-day visit and lecture tour. Upon her return Europe EG became an active supporter of the Spanish Republican cause, visited Spain in 1936, 1937 and 1938, and attempted to raise money and arouse support in England. On a fund-raising visit to Canada in 1939, she suffered a stroke. She died in May 1940 and was buried in Chicago 's Waldheim Cemetery near the graves of the "Haymarket martyrs."

For further biographical information, see the article in Notable American Women (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), which includes a list of additional sources. See also To the Barricades: The Anarchist Life of Emma Goldman, by Alix Shulman (New York, 1971), which includes a selected biography. Other EG papers are listed in Women's History Sources, (New York, 1979). The material in this collection was not available for inclusion in any of the aforementioned publications.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the Rockefeller Foundation have funded The Emma Goldman Papers Project of the Institute for the Study of Social Change, Berkeley, California, which proposes "...to microfilm all her correspondence and printed material except books available ( Mother Earth, The Social Significance of the Modern Drama, and Anarchism and Other Essays )..."*

Leon Malmed, the collector of these papers and the friend and lover of EG, was born Leon Bass in Russia (1881) and emigrated to the United States in about 1895. His name, due to an error on the part of an immigration officer, was recorded Malmed or Malmet, the name of the half-brother who came to meet him. LM went to work in New York City as a cigarmaker. In 1904 he married Millie Mott (born ca. 1882), a Russian emigrant who worked in a brush factory. Although not a radical herself, she attended meetings with a friend and there met LM. After their marriage the Malmeds moved to Albany, where LM continued to work as a cigarmaker until the factory was closed permanently by a strike. By 1907 LM had opened a delicatessen, which he ran with his wife. In the mid-twenties he was involved in real estate for a period of five or six years; during which time he closed the delicatessen and opened a hosiery store.

LM was a radical and supported the anarchist movement, although his active participation seems to have decreased as his business demanded more time. Beginning in about 1903, he attended and arranged meetings and distributed literature. He met EG in about 1906; his friendship with her continued until her death. In 1915, after some travel on his own, he joined EG, Ben Reitman, and Alexander Berkman on a cross-country lecture tour, during which he was arrested and fined in Portland, Oregon, for distributing birth control material. In 1926 he contributed to a fund which made possible EG's trip to Canada, and in 1934 LM arranged her lectures in Albany. After EG's death he wrote, "I feel I lost the very essence of life in Emma's death" (see # 69 ). LM died in 1956.

* Candace Falk, editor, letter to Patricia King, Director, Schlesinger Library, September 28, 1982.

From the guide to the Papers, 1899-1940, 1956, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)