page_title: Emma Goldman
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Emma Goldman / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Emma Goldman (1869-1940), anarchist
context_page_description: Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
  Born in Kaunas, Russian Empire to a Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Chicago Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.
  In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft.
context_section_description: Goldman was well known during her life, described as—among other things—"the most dangerous woman in America". After her death and through the middle part of the 20th century, her fame faded. Scholars and historians of anarchism viewed her as a great speaker and activist, but did not regard her as a philosophical or theoretical thinker on par with, for example, Kropotkin.
  In 1970, Dover Press reissued Goldman's biography, Living My Life, and in 1972, feminist writer Alix Kates Shulman issued a collection of Goldman's writing and speeches, Red Emma Speaks. These works brought Goldman's life and writings to a larger audience, and she was in particular lionized by the women's movement of the late 20th century. In 1973, Shulman was asked by a printer friend for a quotation by Goldman for use on a T-shirt. She sent him the selection from Living My Life about "the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things", recounting that she had been admonished "that it did not behoove an agitator to dance". The printer created a statement based on these sentiments that has become one of Goldman's most famous quotations, even though she probably never said or wrote it as such: "If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution." Variations of this saying have appeared on thousands of T-shirts, buttons, posters, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, hats, and other items.
  The women's movement of the 1970s that "rediscovered" Goldman was accompanied by a resurgent anarchist movement, beginning in the late 1960s, which also reinvigorated scholarly attention to earlier anarchists. The growth of feminism also initiated some reevaluation of Goldman's philosophical work, with scholars pointing out the significance of Goldman's contributions to anarchist thought in her time. Goldman's belief in the value of aesthetics, for example, can be seen in the later influences of anarchism and the arts. Similarly, Goldman is now given credit for significantly influencing and broadening the scope of activism on issues of sexual liberty, reproductive rights, and freedom of expression.
  Goldman has been depicted in numerous works of fiction over the years, including Warren Beatty's 1981 film Reds, in which she was portrayed by Maureen Stapleton, who won an Academy Award for her performance. Goldman has also been a character in two Broadway musicals, Ragtime and Assassins.  Plays depicting Goldman's life include Howard Zinn's play, Emma; Martin Duberman's Mother Earth; Jessica Litwak's Emma Goldman: Love, Anarchy, and Other Affairs (about Goldman's relationship with Berkman and her arrest in connection with McKinley's assassination); Lynn Rogoff's Love Ben, Love Emma (about Goldman's relationship with Reitman); Carol Bolt's Red Emma; and Alexis Roblan's Red Emma and the Mad Monk. Ethel Mannin's 1941 novel Red Rose is also based on Goldman's Life.
  Goldman has been honored by a number of organizations named in her memory.  The Emma Goldman Clinic, a women's health center located in Iowa City, Iowa, selected Goldman as a namesake "in recognition of her challenging spirit." Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse, an infoshop in Baltimore, Maryland adopted her name out of their belief "in the ideas and ideals that she fought for her entire life: free speech, sexual and racial equality and independence, the right to organize in our jobs and in our own lives, ideas and ideals that we continue to fight for, even today".
  Paul Gailiunas and his late wife Helen Hill co-wrote the anarchist song "Emma Goldman", which was performed and released by the band Piggy: The Calypso Orchestra of the Maritimes in 1999. The song was later performed by Gailiunas' new band The Troublemakers and released on their 2004 album Here Come The Troublemakers.
  UK punk band Martha's song "Goldman's Detective Agency" reimagines Goldman as a private detective investigating police and political corruption.
caption: Goldman's image, often accompanying a popular paraphrase of her ideas—"If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution"—has been reproduced on countless walls, garments, stickers, and posters as an icon of freedom.
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