One hundred years ago, Emma Goldman was one of the most famous women in America.
 |
| Emma Goldman |
William Jennings Bryan was similarly famous, now forgotten, along with most names of that era 100 years ago. Woodrow Wilson, who purged the federal government of Negroes, who jailed dissidents and sent waves of federal agents to arrest protesters, is now remembered as an idealist who wanted to make the world safe for democracy, and his name still shimmers engraved in Granite at Princeton University. Oddly, one of the few names any American school kid might know from that era is that of Vladimir Lenin, if only because every red blooded American classroom needs a Voldemort to keep the kids interested.
 |
| Best (L) & Banting (R) 1921 |
The years surrounding 1920--1914 to 1924--were astounding times: Insulin was discovered by two determined but uncertified men in Toronto, Banting and Best; Eugene Debs spoke out for freedom of speech, against the looming World War carnage in Europe and he was jailed for years for his ideas; Hemingway and Fitzgerald were forged in flame; Jazz and flappers and alcohol and premarital sex all ignited and flared brightly, but were stamped back down by frightened men and constricted minds. Freedom of thought, in Dylan's words, "seems like it's dying and it's hardly been born." The world's most deadly pandemic, the 1918-1919 influenza killed more than bullets and bombs did. How many school children in America know about this? How many know about the role army camps in the US played in this pandemic?
In a nation where women were not allowed to vote, or to have their own bank accounts, much less contraception, and sex outside marriage could not be discussed publicly, Emma Goldman said sex was something that was a powerful and wonderful force and women should have it, with as many partners as they wanted, and that meant contraception had to be widely available. Her autobiography took readers through her succession of lovers, none of whom she married, as she thought marriage a form of repression.
She said a bayonet was a weapon with a worker on either end, and that war in Europe was simply rich men making poor workers vie for domination of one capitalist over another. She was an anarchist, which even today is hard to understand. Did she really think no government was the answer to oppressive government? She meant that ultimately, if society evolved properly, no government would be necessary to force order on people. She was a fool and an idealist but she held up an ideal to which crowds responded.
 |
| Fitzgerald |
You can hardly read the history of that era and not see the seeds of today's Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch.
 |
| Papa |
The Second World War was inevitable, and in fact was really just an extension of the First World War, a second round after the first bloody punch out, but both contestants were left standing and once cleaned up in their corners, surged forth for another go round.
The wonderful thing about reading history is you can see the present so much more clearly--you know how that story ended and you can see the movie currently playing almost as we once did in movie theaters, when you said, "Oh, this is where I came in."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BviTcbeRz8o
Watching this documentary about Emma Goldman is deja vu, as Yogi Berra said, all over again.
Mad Dog,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the video link- American Experience is one of my PBS favorites and I had never seen this one on Emma Goldman. What a life-all the more amazing given she arrived in the US a penniless teen and not so many years later was speaking to thousands. She certainly had the courage of her convictions, although, like you, I struggled to understand some of those convictions. Yes, she was a champion of women’s rights, worker’s rights, immigrant’s rights and fought conscription into a wrongful war, but she also saw violence as a means to a glorious end. That the glorious end included a utopia devoid of government left me scratching my head as well.
She was one brave woman though- and she didn’t shrink from taking on friend and foe alike. She appears to have been a very loyal person and her lifelong relationship with Alex “Sasha” Berkman was particularly moving.
I did think it surprising that, given how extreme her views were for the times, that she didn’t spend more time in prison. The fact that she drew such large crowds indicates that even a hundred years ago, much of her message resonated with a large swath of the country. No wonder the US government feared her and deportation became their final solution.
Maud
If you can judge someone by her enemies, she has to be a great figure of the 20th century: Woodrow Wilson, J. Edgar Hoover, Attorney General Palmer...with enemies like those, we ought to have to love her.
ReplyDelete