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"I shall speak in Philadelphia": Emma Goldman and the Free Speech League
| When Emma Goldman, the famous anarchist, came to Philadelphia in 1909 to deliver a speech at the Odd Fellows' Temple, she was met by a hostile police establishment. Anticipating her September 28 arrival on the noon train, assistant police superintendent Tim O'Leary threatened to turn a fire hose on her if she dared to speak a single word about anarchism. "She had better put on a rubber suit if she undertakes to make a speech there, because she certainly will get a ducking," O'Leary told the press. "There is nothing more distasteful to anarchists than a stream from a fire engine." He vowed that Emma Goldman would never speak in Philadelphia.1 |
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Goldman's less-than-cordial reception in the City of Brotherly Love was similar to her reception in many other cities where she had also recently attempted to hold lectures. The sharp economic downturn of 1907 and 1908 sparked anarchist demonstrations in Philadelphia and many other cities, leading to police crackdowns on anarchist speakers. In 1907, police prevented Goldman meetings planned for Columbus, Toledo, and Detroit. In March 1908, police repeatedly barred Goldman from speaking in Chicago. In December 1908, she was arrested in Seattle and Bellingham, Washington, and in January 1909, she spent four days in a San Francisco jail. During the month of May alone, police stopped eleven of her lectures. In New York City, the police anarchist squad broke up her Sunday morning lecture on Victorian playwright Henrik Ibsen, outraging her middle-class and socially connected audience.2 |
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When Goldman brought her anarchist road show to Philadelphia, she was already a national celebrity—"the high priestess of anarchism," according to the Philadelphia Public Ledger.3 The mainstream press's portrayal of Goldman and misconceptions about anarchism made this diminutive, slightly stout and now middle-aged, chain-smoking Russian immigrant appear to be a threat to the social order. To many of her detractors, "Red Emma" was synonymous with bomb throwing, political assassination, and free love. Many Americans, in fact, still believed she had something to do with the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, even though investigators could find no evidence linking her to the crime. As she arrived in Philadelphia in 1909, determined to deliver her scheduled lecture, she would take on still another label—champion of free speech. With the help of the Free Speech League, the first organization dedicated to defending civil liberties, she would argue in a Pennsylvania court that the Philadelphia police had prevented her from speaking at a public forum and thus violated the Pennsylvania Constitution and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Hers was a most unlikely strategy indeed for an anarchist who philosophically opposed organized government. In her attempt to defend herself, Goldman would take on police, an old nemesis, and the Republican political machine that ruled Philadelphia. |
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During the two decades prior to World War I, Goldman was just one of many who challenged police for infringing on the rights of free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to assemble in private halls or public places. Labor agitators connected with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies), sex radicals, freethinkers, and anarchists were among the most outspoken advocates of unfettered speech. Not surprisingly, these groups were often official targets of government repression. During the decades preceding World War I, the oppressed challenged this breach of their basic liberties in a vocal libertarian press, on the streets, and in the courts. Meanwhile, legal scholars, public officials at all levels of government, intellectuals, social commentators, and the public debated free-speech issues throughout the Progressive period. Yet, the judicial establishment generally remained hostile to litigants who used free-speech defenses to challenge censorship or police harassment.4 |
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