“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
― Emma Goldman

On a cold December morning in 1919, just after midnight, Emma Goldman, her comrade Alexander Berkman, and more than 200 other foreign-born radicals were roused from their Ellis Island dormitory beds to begin their journey out of the United States for good.

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
― Emma Goldman

Convicted of obstructing the draft during World War I, Goldman’s expatriation came 34 years after she had first set foot in America, a young, brilliant, Russian immigrant. For more than three decades, she taunted mainstream America with her outspoken attacks on government, big business and war.

“The most violent element in society is ignorance. ”
― Emma Goldman

Goldman’s passionate espousal of radical causes made her the target of persecution. Her sympathy for Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley, brought down upon her the hatred of the authorities and the public at large. Feared as a sponsor of anarchy and revolution, she was vilified in the press as “Red Emma,” “Queen of the Anarchists,” and “the most dangerous woman in America.”

“Patriotism … is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.”
― Emma Goldman