 Thank you so much for coming today on this rainy spring day. My name is Rebecca Taffel and I'm Director of Programs at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, which helps to support the wonderful Sackler Center staff here with additional programming. And I'm really happy to welcome all of you here today and to have Karen Averagery from Sasha and Emma, Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. For the past six years, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art has continued to fulfill its commitment to the past, present, and future of feminist art. Using its award-winning exhibition space and educational spaces, the Sackler Center strives to raise awareness of feminism's cultural contributions, dialogue and debate about feminist art, theory, and activism. Take place at the Sackler Center Forum here. And groundbreaking exhibitions are held in its feminist and her story galleries. Currently, the galleries are featuring two remarkable shows, worked by hand, hidden labor and historical quilts, and Kathy Colwitz prints from the war and death portfolios. Yet the center's success relies on more than its gallery spaces. It's a place that celebrates open and free discourse, conversation, and the exchange of ideas. Dr. Sackler could not be here today, unfortunately, because of some ongoing health issues. But she asked me to express how delighted she is to have Karen Averagery reading from the book. The dual biography of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, written in collaboration by Karen and her late father, the distinguished scholar and historian Paul Average. Describing the book Sasha and Emma as both densely detailed and lively and containing many surprises, New York Times book review editor Elsa Dixler concludes, Sasha and Emma is an enormously rich book offering an absorbing portrait of the world of anarchists in turn of the century America and the loving and competitive partnership at its center. Dr. Sackler and I couldn't agree more. We both enjoyed discovering the insights into the lives of these 20th century progressives and radicals. On an additional and related note, Emma Goldman is featured on the heritage panels on the floor of the dinner party. So it's really nice to have the connection between current ongoing scholarship and the dinner party out in the other room. So if you haven't stopped by to see Judy Chicago as the dinner party, I recommend doing that afterwards. Karen Average is a writer and editor living here in New York, and I'm pleased to welcome her here today to read from the book to answer any questions after she's done. And then there is a signing of the book downstairs in the lobby and I'll help direct all of you down after we're finished. So without further delay, Karen Average. Thank you so much, Rebecca. It's really an honor to be here. I actually, my senior year of college in my art history class, I studied Judy Chicago's dinner party. So it's especially nice and thank you so much for having me, particularly on such a beautiful day when I'm sure you'd all rather be outside in Frostbite Park. This book is about Alexander Bergman and Emma Goldman. They were two radicals, both of whom immigrated to the United States when they were teenagers in the 1880s. And they met in 1889. He was about 19, she was about 20 and had instantly hit it off. And on the very first date, he took her, he had been here about in Manhattan in New York for about New York City for about a year and a half. And she's just arrived. She had been living in Rochester in New Haven. And so we decided to take her on the city. The first place he took her was they rode the L down to the Brooklyn Bridge. And on one of their next dates, he took her to Frostbite Park because he told her having scouted out the whole city that he preferred it to Central Park because he found it less cultivated, more natural. So they were here too. This book is, my father, Paul Average was a, was a historian, a professor of Russian history and anarchism. When he was still a student, he became drawn to the field of radical thought. And when he started meeting actual anarchists, he became passionate about the subject. And in the 1960s and 70s, he started traveling around meeting with all of these people who had been active in the, in the term of the century, hearing their stories, listening to them, remember their exploits. And they all, many of them had actually worked with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and had incredible stories to tell. And it was his great dream to always write the book about the two of them. Their lives were so intertwined that he felt it was a dual biography, it was essential. But then unfortunately he became ill and would have became clear to him that he wasn't going to be able to finish the project. He had been spending, he had had decades worth of, of interviews and notes and he had traveled all of the world getting their letters and photographs. He asked me to take over the project and I said yes, rather foolheartedly. But as I started to get to know, and then he died soon after and I was left with this massive, incredible information and I started to put it together. And not only was I just amazed, I just finally understood why he was so drawn to these two people for so long. I'd been hearing about Sasha and Emma in the house since I was a tiny little child. I was also struck by not just their commitment to their causes, but also to the incredible cinematic sweep of their lives. So it was indeed an odyssey that we were writing about. Both of them had rather similar upbringings. They both were born in Lithuania. Emma Goldman was born in 1869, Alexander Berkman Sasha in 1870. It was a part of the Russian Empire at the time under the Tsar. And both of them were from Jewish families, although his family is well to do. Her is rather less so, but both of them were very alert children and aware of the turmoil, the radical turmoil sweeping around them. In 1881, the Tsar of Zander II was assassinated and this brought in a new Tsar who had all sorts of some of the advances that his father had put into place. He rolled back. And so Sasha and Emma were raised in rather a hostile environment. And both had great dreams of what the United States might be like. They were just desperate to get out. Emma was the daughter of her father, was quite abusive and difficult. And his view was that women were only good to bear children and cook. And she said she wanted to see the world, to travel, to do things, to learn things. So they flashed a great deal. And so finally she convinced him when she was a teenager to let her go to the United States with her older half sister. And that's when she arrived in Rochester in 1886. Sasha Meemal at this point, even though he grew up in a very well-off family, he was orphaned by the time he was 17 and very difficult, could not get along with anyone. And finally his uncle, whose care he was under, let him also go off to the United States. And they both had these grand dreams of what America would be like after the oppression of Tsarist Russia. Although they used to carried with them the excitement and drama of things they'd witnessed, the assassination of Tsar, the rise of these terrorists, these young populists whose view was, in Russia, if you wanted to make a protest, you threw a bomb, fired a gun, you had your day in court and then you were sent off to Siberia executed. So this is what the seeds were inside of them and what true rebellion was. And they carried that with them to the United States. And both of them as teenagers got jobs in factories and Sasha lived on the Lower East Side, got to know a lot of radical groups. He was fired up by the anarchist movement. And around the same time in Chicago, there was an event in the Haymarket Square in which a group of a bunch of anarchists were meeting and a bomb was thrown. And the police reacted and as a result, a lot of people were killed, including eight police officers. And eight anarchists were tried, although none of those no evidence to suggest that any of them were guilty. In fact, none of them were guilty. Four were hanged. One of them was meant to be hanged, but the day before his hanging was, he committed suicide in his cell. This was the Haymarket event and it drew both Emma and Sasha to anarchism. Sasha had been reading about it in the library back in Kovno in Lithuania. And he was intrigued by this. Emma was already here in the United States and she followed the trial carefully and was horrified when these anarchists were put to death. And she said, this is the thing that fired her up and inspired in her and stilled in her a lifelong dream to follow their path and try to bring about social change in America. So because while she was disillusioned by her experiences, she came to the United States. It seems to be the same as Russia. She was working in a factory. There were dramatic differences between rich and poor. She still had hope and faith that there was a chance for this country to really bloom. And so in 1889, as I said, the two of them met on the lower side. She decided to move. She had been married in Rochester. She was bored. So there was a fellow factory worker who she married. Then they got divorced and then they got married again and then she left him for good. And she just really wanted to forge her own path. And she and Sasha bonded instantly. They had this incredible connection that they both of them described later in life as something that actually lasted 50 years, something that neither of them could explain, neither of them could control. They started out as lovers and then just became friends. But they were completely connected, like two puzzle pieces like soulmate, they said. And they decided that the two of them were going to change the world. At this point, they were joined by Sasha's cousin, Motska, who had also come over from Russia. And the three of them plotted together and they thought we have to use our wiles and our intellect and we're going to inspire the workers to revolt against the capitalist system. And we're going to, America's going to be the golden place that we hoped it would be. And around the same time, they'd been living together as a menage à trois, I should point out. Off and on, Emma was a big, they all were big proponents of free love, sometimes to sort of gotten away with romance and other things. But they felt it was too bourgeois to deal with things like jealousy. They also had, they had joined an anarchist movement, the autonomous group. Initially, they had been linked with another anarchist who was a very powerful speaker who noticed that Emma was a great orator herself. She was only 20 at the time. His man's name was Johann Most, who was a very famous German anarchist who attracted great audiences on the Lower East Side and all over the world when he was in Europe and then the United States. And he felt that she really had a spark. And so he encouraged her to start speaking out again for, on behalf of labor rights. And she found she did indeed have a voice, although she was always, even throughout her entire life, even speaking into her 60s, when she would track thousands of people to her lecture, she'd always take a drink of whiskey and paste nervously back and forth before she was getting up onto the, to speak out of the podium. So with the whole, their whole lives ahead of them at this point, they were, the Homestead Steelstrike broke out in Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh. This was a steel plant owned by Andrew Carnegie and operated by Henry Clay Frick. And they, and the two of them were determined, Frick especially, to, to crush the strike. The workers wanted fair wages. They wanted to increase. Things had been going well. And Frick made it his business to end the strike by every means necessary, including bringing in Pinkerton's, the, the sort of hired, hired soldiers, hired pit bulls of the era, notorious for their, their brutality and mercenary instincts. And Sasha Emma and Sasha's cousin observed this with horror, but also with excitement, because they thought here's not the, the country had been following this, the events. There were, there was a battle at one point, the workers were, you know, waged a battle against the Pinkerton's and actually won, got a lot of national attention. And they thought, this is our opportunity. This is our opportunity to take a step to do as the, as the terrorist populists did in Russia and to make a decisive mark and convince the workers, galvanize them into action and show them this is their opportunity to rise up against the capitalist class and take over. So their, their goal was to assassinate none other than Henry Clay Frick himself. These, these, you know, they were, they were at the time 21, 22, just, you know, whipped up into a fervor by all the experience of the last couple of years in the United States, that they're, the radical groups they've been meeting with people all over the Lower East Side, all these exciting ideas to them. And violence seemed to be a perfectly plausible reaction to, to how to get things done. It wasn't ideal, but to them, he was not really a man. He was really a symbol of capitalist evil. And he, and in order to, in order to improve the world, he had to take serious steps. So the three of them plotted to take him out. They had, they had been operated, but living in Massachusetts at this time, operating a little lunch room. Emma Goldman was a spectacular cook and they had sort of thought about maybe going back to Russia, but they stayed and, and, and started making a lot of money. And, and then the Homestead event occurred. And so they left the place. They had all, they took their money and they used it to buy weapons to Sasha decide he was going to take out Frick with some, with some bombs. He made some bombs. He tested them on Staten Island and they did not go off. And they decided he'd have to find a new, a new solution. I mean, again, they were, they're a little haphazard to these, these wild planners. So he decided would be, he'd use a pistol. And he went off to Pittsburgh where Frick lived, stayed with some anarchist comrades, started scouting out the Frick's mansion and the suburbs and also his office in downtown Pittsburgh. Emma meanwhile, because they had, at this point they had limited funds, could not go with him. It was a big sore point for her. She really wanted to be at Sasha's side when he did the deed. Again, they referred to it as propaganda by deed and that acting, creating a national discussion with one big act. And so while he was in Pittsburgh, hanging out and stalking his victim, Emma decided to raise some money. And she felt the only thing she could, she the only thing she could do at this point, she was, she was inspired by Sonya in crime and punishment, crime and punishment. And went outside, she was going to become a prostitute for the night to raise some funds. And so she, she was a petite woman with blonde hair and, and brilliant blue eyes. And she looked in the mirror and she decided she could pass herself off as a prostitute, bought her first pair of high heels, went down to 14th street, started strutting around, see, you know, what would happen. And every time a man approached her, she would run in the opposite direction. So finally, a gentleman with a white hair gentleman came up to her and said, you know, come let me buy you a beer. He took her to Saloon. He bought her a beer. He said, this is your first time doing this. She said, yes. He said, it's not for you. Here's $10, go home. And she said, she wrote in her memoirs later that this was the first time in her whole life that she had met any man who wasn't either a vulgarian or an idealist. So it's her first experience with that. So she said money to Sasha. He got himself a suit at the time the strike was ongoing. So his, his plan was to pass himself off as, as a, as, as a, as a, as a, someone with way who could provide workers to fray. So still looking for scabs, strike breakers. So he got himself a suit and some business cards with an alias on them, bought himself a 38 caliber pistol. And he had a knife with him that he had made himself. And so on in 1892, July 23rd, he gathered his courage about him, went down to Frick's office, staked him out, you know, had a couple of false starts, and then finally burst into Frick's office, took out his gun and started shooting, hit him twice. Once in the shoulder, once in the shoulder blade. He tried to go for the third time, but Frick's vice president who was sitting with him, this man named Leishman, grabbed Berkman from behind and a final shot went into the ceiling. Sasha was undeterred. He lunged at Frick, took out his little, his knife and started stabbing at him. By this point, there was chaos. People were coming in from the outside of the office. People could see them out on the street on the street. This was right, you know, crowded downtown Pittsburgh. They could see people from across the way, could see through the window it was going on. But, well, Berkman was a small, a small, wiry man. He was very tough, very strong. And finally, it took a carpenter bursting in with a hammer hitting around the head and a couple of other people to finally pull him off of Frick. And Frick, who was badly injured, a police officer came in and someone asked if he wanted, if they wanted Sasha to be shot. And Frick said, no, but pull his head back and let me see his face. And the two men looked at each other and Frick was very badly injured and Sasha looked at him and the symbol of capitalist evil. And for the first time, he saw not a sister symbol, but actually a man, a man, a bleeding, wounded man. And he felt this feeling of remorse and guilt as he looked at him. And then he felt terribly ashamed because he was a revolutionist. You're not supposed to feel these things. And so we dashed that sensation away and they dragged him off to jail. Frick, meanwhile, doctors came in, doctors, there had been some doctors in the area come in. He had actually just been dining for a lunch date with his own doctor. And so they removed the bullets. They patched him up. They sent him home. And he remained pretty stalwart throughout. Meanwhile, Sasha, in the prison, people were fascinated by this act. They couldn't imagine why he had done it. They didn't understand his philosophy. They didn't understand that he was an anarchist who was inspired by the events that occurred in Russia and the United States, that he had a whole plan. They thought he was crazy. They thought he was just some lunatic foreigner. He had no relationship with any of the men, the striking men at the Homestead Plant. And he was terribly upset by this reaction. Some of the people in jail who we thought surely would understand some of the more strikers themselves, they didn't get it. They're like, well, why would you go after this man? And as a result, instead of helping the cause, some people thought he actually hurt the cause. Meanwhile, Emma was still in New York. She had been asked, because this was 1892, the only way she'd get the information was to wait at Park Road for the newspapers the next day. And when she found out that Frick had lived, initially she was disappointed, then she realized, well, at least Sasha won't be put to death for this crime. So she was a combination of sorrow and relief. And she decided that she was going to dedicate her life to speaking out and explaining Sasha's act. If he was going to have to go to prison, she was going to do her best to support him. Sasha's trial lasted four hours and he was sentenced to 22 years. He was 21 years old at this point and faced the rest of his youth behind bars. And he was not a very good prisoner, I will say. He fought back against the system. He clashed with a warden. He worked on underground newspaper. He was constantly trying to reveal the corruption. He was horrified by what was going on in the prison. But there he was for the next 13 years. He would eventually have some of his time scaled back. Meanwhile, Emma herself spent the next 10 years getting famous. After Sasha went to prison, she began to speak more and more until she was very well known in New York. Many people would come out to see her speak. She had this incredible gift for oratory and a lot of great ideas. She did speak just about anarchism, but about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, eventually homosexuality, women's rights, and she was incredibly compelling. She herself also had an experience in prison. She was speaking in Union Square in 1893, in August of 1893, and a serious depression was going on and many workers were out of work. She told the people in the square, there are several thousand people, about 4,000 people, she said, demonstrate for the palaces of the rich. A demand work. If they won't give you work, demand bread. If they won't give you bread, take it. For this, she was arrested and she was sentenced to a year on Blackwell's prison, which was Roosevelt Island, once called Blackwell's Island. She herself made good use of her time there. Sasha, by the way, was spending a great deal of this time reading and learning and educating himself about, he learned a lot of languages in prison. His English had not been perfect until that point. Both of them were quite well educated in Russia and they spoke Russian and German and Yiddish, but Sasha picked up Yiddish in New York, but Sasha really perfected his English both his writing and his speaking and his reading when he was in prison. And Emma also read a great deal and she had spent some time in the infirmary when she first arrived and befriended the doctor who gave her some nursing training, a skill that she would enhance when she studied in Vienna after she got out of prison and then would help her through her whole life, always as a fallback career. When you're not being a radical, you could be a seamstress or a nurse or a cook, that's something she did. And when she got out of prison, a year older and wiser, she, as I said, began to lecture around the country. She would go out on these lecture tours, a tragic great deal of tension. And some people called her the Queen of the Anarchists, some people were afraid of her, some people found her fascinating. Students came to see her, people from all walks of life, liberals, libertarians, rich people, poor people. And she really was making quite a name for herself until she became infamous in 1901 when she, at this point, she had been very well-traveled. She had been all over crossing the Europe. She would often talk about the whole rash of assassinations that were going on at this period in the 1890s in Europe of leaders and kings and various rulers. And she would always defend the assassin under all she always said, it's always the rulers fault, they're the ones who are pressing the people. And they're hearts in the right place, she'd say about these various assassins. And when in 1901 she was speaking in Cleveland and a man listened to her speech and was fascinated and he came up to her and talked to her afterwards and he had a charming face and Emma was always kind of a sucker for a sweet looking face. She really enjoyed a good flirtation and this man appealed to her and he was interested in what she had to say. And he started hanging around the anarchist, the anarchist she knew in Chicago and Cleveland. And they started talking about him, a lot of her friends were concerned. They said he's weird, this man is a strange man, he's asking a lot of peculiar questions, he seems to think the secret societies were worried about him, she said he's fine, he's very nice. She met him exactly twice, once after her speech and then once he sort of encountered her when she was on her way out of town. This man whose name was Leon Shogosh and he in September went to Buffalo and assassinated President William McKinley. And when the police arrested him and asked him why he had done it, he said that Emma Goldman's words set him on fire. And he also had been greatly inspired by a man named Bresci, Italian who had assassinated King Umberto of Italy and he carried around a clipping of the assassination description in his wallet. And he claimed he was an anarchist and said that he had to commit this act. And so he was arrested, tried and then executed, put to death the following month. Things were very speedily back then and McKinley died after several weeks and Emma became one of the most hated and feared women in America. She had no idea what was happening, she read about the papers in St. Louis, she finally noticed that it was the man that she said, oh he had given his name, he had not given his real name to her, he called himself Niemen or nobody in German but she had not picked up on that at the time and she was tracked down by the police. She hid out for a couple of days, she was undercover, she was riding on a train back to Chicago, a lot of her anarchist friends were being pursued, persecuted by the police and rounded up and interrogated because this terrible thing had happened to the president of the United States, the country was in turmoil and they were in a panic to see if there was some sort of conspiracy or what exactly had gone on. And so she decided she was going to go to Chicago to see what she could help out and she was hiding out in the train and she overheard all the people on the train, a bunch of people near her talking about the beast goldman, how horrifying she was and how what a terrible person and she had this notion that maybe she would jump out and you know, boo and scare them but she decided that it would not be a good idea and so eventually the police interrogated her, she said that she had nothing to do with it and eventually they could not find any connection and she was said let go but she continued to praise and defend even though a lot of the anarchists were horrified as they had no issue with McKinley, they didn't see any point in it, even Sasha thought it was a stupid thing to do and made no sense, he said there's no propaganda in it, there's no point in it, you know and she was sort of the lone voice, sort of stubbornly defending this man and even her community temporarily turned against her and for a year she went into hiding, you know, went back to her nursing, stepped away from the anarchist movement although she came raging back after a year or so. Sasha meanwhile was still locked up in prison making trouble, he had, there'd been some efforts to get imparted here and there, he had not had a lawyer at his trial because he thought that's what people did in Russia, you just stood up and you made your statement and then you were carted off and he thought that the legal system was just part of bureaucracy and government and everything he hated and so as a result when during his four-hour trial he had spent an hour reading, he had spent an hour speaking in German because he didn't feel comfortable in English at that point and it was translated by someone who could barely speak apparently either English or German and so it was just a whole disaster from beginning to end so there was some efforts to get him pardoned which failed and so in 1900 at this point he had been in jail for about eight years with another decade to go or so he thought, he decided he was going to attempt a breakout and he, Emma actually was sort of helped him get some money together and got the people involved and then she went out out to, you know, got out of the country to Europe which she was planning to do as well, she thought it was just as well because so much attention was always focused on her and so at this point he had some access, a friend of his, a fellow prisonmate had just been released and had smuggled some blueprints of the prison outside the walls and brought them to the anarchists and they rented a house across the street from the prison and the plan was to dig a tunnel directly in from the basement across the street and up into the prison grounds. Sasha had been there for eight years at this point had been given a job as arrangement on the prison so he had occasional access to the outside and he knew that if there was a tunnel with a hole he could at some point get to, you know, get to this area right by the gate and slip out and so they, the neighbors thought this was very, so notice odds going on at this house near the prison, they heard, you know, this is a couple arrived, they didn't seem to bring much with them except a piano and the piano was played night and day and when it stopped playing there were these two spinster ladies, the McCarthy sisters, at the house next door and they said they would play all day long and then the, and when they stopped you'd hear it sound like a, like a, like a coffee grinder and what it was was the people digging and they had hired a couple of miners from a nearby mine and then they had an anarchist comrade sort of, you know, organizing the digging and they did this extremely narrow tunnel and they actually managed to do it all the way across the street and up into the prison yard and the female anarchist, her name was, she was an anarchist from Chicago, she was a very good musician and she would play and sing to hide, hide the noise of the digging and Emma Goldman later wrote in her memoirs that the, that the prison guards were paroling the, patrolling the walls really enjoyed the music so the day of his big escape Sasha was, went about his, went to his rounds, he had these pet birds that his, his sort of claim was he had to take them out to give them fresh air he, he went to the place where they discussed the, the hole would remove which was sort of like a shed on the, you know, on the outskirts of the prison grounds and to his great disappointment there had just, there had been coincidentally some construction work on the prison grounds and the place where the hole was and sort of hidden away someone had dumped a huge pile of bricks just coincidentally, just as he was about to leave, you know, there, and he knew, he knew there was a suit waiting for him, there was this, you know, in the, in the kitchen at this house there was a suit with money, he was going to, you know, his friends had said, you know, you'll, you'll crawl underneath the ground, you'll get, you'll, you know, you'll change out of your prison guard, you'll take your money, you'll, you'll flee to Paris and we'll be celebrating in Paris, you know, before the end of the week and here he was seeing this giant massive bricks and there was no hope and he was completely devastated and a few, a little bit shortly after this some kids were playing and discovered the, the hole and they called him the police and the police were baffled, they could not imagine, they, there's some, there's some newspaper reports that say, you know, they thought possibly it was Alexander Berkman who'd been trying to escape but they, they didn't think he could possibly have had the wherewithal to manage this extraordinary, expensive event, they thought maybe it was a, a famous train, there was a famous train robber, there was a jewel thief, a safe cracker, they thought these were other options but they never solved it and he was stuck returning to life in prison and waiting out his, the end of his term, which, which happened finally in 1906, 13 years in prison, one year in the workhorse, which he referred to as resurrection, actually the anniversary of it was yesterday, May 18th, which he said he thought of as his, as his new birthdays, new resurrection, the day when he was finally freed and, and the two, and Emma and Sasha reunited, she had been his lifeline, she had written him letters, she had, they had, they had very little contact, she was barred from the prison, she had three months into a sentence, she had come to visit him under the guise of his sister but, you know, she pretended to be his sister but her, the jig was up and the warden recognized her and, and he was barred from having visitors and she'd only seen him occasionally, all they had managed to, to send letters back and forth and they were just thrilled at being together again although he was wracked with a depression from his prison experience that stayed with him his whole life and he'd never been particularly cheery, although he was, he was a wit, his, his, when my father talked to these anarchists they all remembered, I mean he's had this sort of fanatical passion, you know, Emma liked to, she liked to cook, she liked to dance, she, she loved to be, you know, have love affairs and, and she liked to find things and, and have a good time. Sasha felt everything was about the cause, all he had planned was love affairs himself, including in prison but he, he, he felt that everything was about the cause but yet he was, he was a, he was a, despite his sort of violent tendencies and these, and sort of the, you know, sort of unforgivable aspects related to those, he was, people remembered him as sweet and funny and wonderful with children and wonderful with animals and it was one of the, sort of the, the, the elements that attracted my father to this, to this strange interesting complicated man and, but this was a whole other chapter after his resurrection of their, of their lives together. Emma started a magazine in 1906 that same year called Mother Earth which also put her on the map and not just as a, as a radical order but as a, someone with a real literary bent people attracted all sorts of intellectuals and thinkers and writers and artists who contributed to it and she really enjoyed that part of it. She was very protective of it and it lasted until 1917. There another, there another thing that was, when I was doing the research and learning about them is when I said it was a cinematic sweep it's ridiculous. This period involved, you know, bomb plots and, and all sorts of drama including drama that, you know, and Marana, a Russian theater company. It was just one thing after the other, a famous and tragic bombing incident in, in 1960 in San Francisco and another thing that struck me is in 1914, 22 years after the, the, the Frick attempt, Berkman, Sasha became livid. There was a similar incident at the Ludlow Mine in Colorado that was run by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and there was a, they hatched another plot, another assassination attempt. This is, what was striking to me about this is that 1914 had been a period, up in, lead in 1913, 1914 there had been another serious depression and a lot of people out of work and there were a lot of demonstrations, peaceful demonstrations that were almost identical in some ways to the Occupy Wall Street movement that sprang up. There were anarchists and radicals who, who gathered hundreds of people to protest. They would walk peacefully through Manhattan and end up at churches and, and gathering places and, and ask for food or play, or shelter. And then, and that combined with the, this incident at Ludlow where some miners were killed and a National Guard came in. It was a terrible incident. Really started to provoke the United States to take another look at unemployment and, and the plight of the workers. And this was an opportunity for Sasha and Emma to, you know, to continue their goal. And for a while there Sasha, despite his sort of, you know, difficult past was really on the, on, in the view of many the side, the side of sort of the main street side. He'd speak, he'd speak out against what Rockefeller was doing. He organized these huge rallies in Union Square. They would do these, they would, they have these mass peaceful protests where people would gather outside the standard oil building, the Rockefeller company or the Rockefeller's homes to quietly silently just, just, just to physically protest what was going on. And then of course Sasha's nature got the better of him and he started plotting this, a second assassination attempt, although he wasn't going to be involved this time because he had proved himself not particularly adept. He was good at planning but not so good at execution so to speak. And, and so, and of course this also, he had a bunch of his anarchist colleagues who at this point they were living on, up in, on about, like in Harlem and some of his, there was the, the Lexington Avenue subway station was being built at this time. This was 1914 and they had been pilfering explosives and dynamite while it was going on. So they had this whole horde of dynamite, a group of his anarchist colleagues and they built a little bomb and they decided they were going to take it out to Rockefeller's house. They had been protesting, a group of them had been protesting in Tarrytown and, and the police and the, the villagers had been not very happy to see them. And of course, so they took the bomb out to Rockefeller's house. They were going to either throw it at his, you know, his car or, or try to get into the house and then he wasn't even there. He had gone off to Maine and so they came back with it. This was Independence Day 1914. The next morning the bomb went off. All the explosions, explosives that they had been collecting went off and the, the, the Branson was destroyed. Fortunately, because it was January, for his July 4th, a lot of people were out at picnics and so the, the three of the conspirators were killed, a, a bystander was killed and a few people were injured. And that's when that was sort of Sasha's last gasped violence. He, he got out of town, went to San Francisco, started a magazine which he titled The Blast because it wasn't really out of the system. And, and their, their final, their final act on in, in America was in, in 1917. Sasha and Emma had reunited to protest the war. They, they were back in New York. They'd organized a non, a new conscription league. And at this point they had attracted the attention of J. Edgar Hoover, who was the time of 24-year-old working for Attorney General Palmer. And, and they were arrested for conspiring against the draft. They had been giving some lectures from, some, they'd hold, holding rallies and giving speeches against all of it. They claimed to have been very careful in their language, not sort of, you know, step on any, any rules about what one could say at this point because the United States was about to head into war, was heading to war and had just, you know, they'd been nervous about this since 1914 and, and, and protesting against the Great War for those years. But when the United States decided to enter it, they, they, they took up their verbal arms. And, and so in July of 1917, the, the, in June of 1917, they were arrested and brought into court. And, and they were tried and they were sent to prison and then deported in 1919. In, in her, at this point, Emma had, had a great passion for the United States. She considered herself an American, a New Yorker, and she loved the country and she thought of herself as a patriot. Her view was she was fighting for the rights of, for a better country. She was right for the votes of the people, the rights of the people. And she said to the, to the jury, she said, aren't there not different forms of patriotism? You don't necessarily, I'm not the kind of person who will stand up when they sing the national anthem, but I'm the kind of person who will try to make this country a better place. She said, I, we are like, I'm, she said, it's like a, it's like a man who loves a woman. He with open eyes. He sees her beauty yet he also sees her flaws. But this, this did not go over well. And they were, as I said, convicted, sent off to prison for another 18 months. And then in December of 1919, they were sent back to Russia with other, other radicals who'd been rounded up in the Palmer Raids. J. Edgar Hoover went, went to the docks at five o'clock in the morning to see, to make sure, see them off, make sure the boat went out and got them, took them back to Russia. And although, and while Ambo's devastated to be leaving, they're also pretty excited because just as they'd come over from Russia when they were teenagers with this hope that America would be this great place and it had been subsequently disillusioned and then sort of worked around that disillusionment, now they're excited because the Russian Revolution was ongoing. They had met Trotsky in, in New York. They were excited about what was going on. They'd heard some rumblings from some of their Russian friends saying, you know, things aren't as great as you think, but they had hopes that this would be, this was the revolution they'd been waiting for. This is, this is going to, this is going to show the rest of the world how things are done. And they were thrilled at being able to participate in a way, even though they thought terribly to stay, to stay behind in the United States. They, they were, they're excited to be going back to Russia. This, of course, they arrived, they initially, things seemed pretty good. It was exciting. They met with Lenin who congratulated them on their excellent speeches during their trial, sent them out to tour the country, see what was what to gather propaganda materials and, and, and help out with the cause. And then, of course, and this was in 1919, Soviet Russia, they saw all sorts of things that they'd not expect to see. People being rounded up and imprisoned, executed the famine. People being treated, the Soviets taking charge. It was, it was exactly what they, what they feared. It was another dictatorship, disillusioned and sent in once more. And after two years, they fled. And then they, the, the two of them not able to go back to the United States, not wanting to go back to Russia, spent the rest of their lives in Europe and Canada. Emma was always desperate, as I said, to come back to the United States. And finally, in 1934, she had petitioned for years. She finally was allowed to do so. She'd been, she had written a book when she was living in South of France called Living My Life, this thousand-page tome in 1931. And Eleanor Roosevelt was a fan. And, and so finally, after it, she had all these famous friends and they all petitioned to get her back. And so finally, she was allowed to come back for three months. And I'm going to just read briefly from her return. Sasha, of course, wanted nothing to do with it. He never really liked America. He'd spent a lot of his time in prison there. He said, you go, you have a good time, even if you get in, which I don't think you will. He was shocked when she actually was allowed to visa. And, and so in 1934, she, she came over from, from, from Canada, had a meeting with her family in Rochester and, and then went off on her three, her three month tour of the United States. Emma's return was met with curiosity but little outcry. President Roosevelt's America was a rather different place from the country Goldman had left behind in 1919. Lecture agencies immediately offered a representative and a number of groups signed up to hear her speak. Many in the public now regarded her as a bold woman with a complicated past rather than as a chilling specter of chaos. Even so, not everyone was pleased with Red Emma's reappearance. Editorials objected the visit ran in newspapers around the country and some of my rate citizens took pains to make their sentiments known. Maude Marie Miller, a writer retired from the Columbus, Ohio dispatch, contacted Eleanor Roosevelt expressing her dismay that Goldman had been granted a visa. I believe, quote, I believe her to be a grave menace to this country, wrote Marie Miller. The assassin of President McKinley said, it was her influence that's deduced him to commit this atrocious crime. I'm afraid that she may have designs upon life on her beloved Roosevelt. He's accomplishing so much wonderful work that anarchists do not want this country to gain its former prosperity. It would be her first thought I suggest to remove him or have it done. And Mrs. Roosevelt wrote back, thank you very much for your solicitude and interest in the president. He's very carefully protected and in any case Emma Goldman is now an old woman. I really think this country can stand the shock of her presence for 90 days. I appreciate your writing however and hope you've not been unduly alarmed. And when she came back from, when she arrived by train, there were a lot of her family and press were waiting for her. For the occasion she wore a black felt hat and fur trim coat of a mild shade of red, her thick glasses were red frames, her hair was cut in a simple bob. One reporter said, whereas once Red Emma was named to frighten littered children, and she now looked like a motherly housewife or perhaps the president of the Library Committee of the Local Women's Club. Her modest appearance aside, Goldman was as blunt as ever. My views have not changed, she announced in Rochester, I'm still an anarchist, I'm the same, the world has changed, that's why I haven't had to. Everyone is an anarchist who loves liberty and hates oppression, but not everyone wants it for the other fellow. That's just my task, I want to extend it to the other fellow. And so she spoke, she had some events in New York, she spoke in Town Hall. Emma flatly denied that while on tour she would avoid topics of politics of the economy. I promise nothing, and pronounced herself free of resentment for all that had befallen her. Quote, I believe in the principle of letting people think for themselves, she explained, so why should I be bitter? A reporter wrote, the fires have cooled somewhat in the years, but they still burn. And so she spoke in Town Hall and again, they had had all sorts of discussions about what she could say, she was allowed to talk about theater and a little bit about her book, Nothing Political. And so her first speech in Town Hall had, she talked only about politics and the anarchist Peter Kuputkin and Eulogy and she denounced Hitler and her lawyer at the time told my father that, he said, this is what he said, he said, I personally doubted Emma would make no political speeches during her stay here. And the first thing she did was to make a political speech. It was quite an occasion. Town Hall was packed and people were hanging from the chandeliers. I thought the upper gallery would collapse, it was so heavy with people. She then also spoke at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And then she went around the country. She went to Washington, Kansas City. She traveled by plane. She told her lecture agent, quote, if the weather is good and the cost of flying, not much more I shall fly. My friends have always charged me with living too much in the air. I might as well be guilty of their charges. And she went to Pittsburgh and she paid homage to the prison where, the Riverside prison where Sasha had been kept for 13 years. She called it his living grave and she wrote to Sasha about the experience. She couldn't bear to bring her, she couldn't bring herself to go in. She couldn't bear to see it. But in Philadelphia, members of Emma's welcoming committee told the New York Times that she, quote, had the periods of a quiet housewife considerably younger than her years. She warned the crowd about the threat in Germany. Financial and military interests were deliberately planning a war in Europe, she said. Hitler will last a long time. It's not just the man who stands out in Europe, but it is a mass movement just as it is in Italy and Austria. Emma was thrilled to be back on American soil. Delighted to reconnect with her old friends and revisit her favorite haunts. Although she took issue with the president's policy, neither she nor Sasha had any faith in the New Deal, the nation's energy excited her. Quote, true America remains naive, childish in many respects, in comparison to the sophistication of Europe, she said to Sasha. But I prefer it's naive today. There is youth in it. There's still the spirit of adventure. There's something refreshing and stimulating in the air. The authorities followed her wherever she went. One comrade attended a speech near the tour said, quote, reporters were in detective sat in the front row writing down everything she said. And she was a little bit careful, but Hoover considered that all the elected, even though she was careful with her words, Hoover still said that her tone would deny her further visit, so she was not going to be allowed back in. Nevertheless, Goldman was gratified by the respect for reception she'd received. Her life was deemed amazing by a host of journalists and elites, and she was recognized by some as a true admirer of the United States after years of being a branded a traitor. Quote, America's where I had my spiritual growth, she said in New York. I'm loyal to all that is cultural and fine in America. She also talked about she, Emma also chatted comfortably about her long ago smoking habits during a train trip while she was seated with a group of interviewers in a Pullman dining car. She was pointed out that, quote, Miss Goldman was the only woman present not smoking. She had one smoke, she explained, but was forced to quit. Quote, back in 1890, I smoked 46 cigarettes a day, she said. I think I started just to be different and shock people. Often I was thrown out of restaurants. Then in 1893, I was sent to Blackwell's Island prison for a year. By that time smoking became a habit and for two months I suffered torture for a want of a cigarette. Finally, I overcame the pangs of appetite. When I was discharged, I decided I never smoke again. I knew I'd be in jail so often and never want to suffer so again. In the end of April 1934, Emma's three months in Europe came to a close and she departed with great reluctance. Quote, the trip to the United States has revived my spirit more than my 15 years in exile, she wrote to a friend before she left. If I ever had any doubts about my having roots in the United States, my short visit has dispelled them completely. I don't know what it is in America, but I felt years younger and full of vigor and enthusiasm. I felt a changed woman from the moment I arrived in New York and my departure will be more painful than it was when Sasha and I were deported. But the experience was well worth the headache and Emma was optimistic about the country's future. This is the age of youth she told reporters during her tour. Youth now has the controls. Let's see what youth can do. The old ones made a mess of things. So she never came back to the United States, although when she was in Canada at the end of her life, a young comrade of hers, who she actually helped save from being deported to Italy where Mussolini would have had him killed, he would take her on long drives along the Detroit River and she would sit and look out at America across the river and cry. And she was very lonely for it and homesick for it and she finally died in, Sasha was living in France and he had committed suicide in 1936. He had been ill with prostate disease and had a hard time making money and his death was absolutely shattering for her. It was the only thing that she was in France at the time too and the only thing that actually raised her spirits was the Spanish Civil War, which was another example of anarchism. When she was able she went and joined the fight and it was exciting for her and then of course the conclusion was not what she had hoped and she fled Europe when she came back to Canada when World War II was getting particularly ugly and brewing. And then in May of 1940 she died. She suffered a stroke the previous February and after her stroke she was unable to speak and a lot of her comrade friends said, you know, this woman who spent her whole life speaking out and speaking to audiences and sharing her voice, who now was unable to speak and they felt that a great tragedy and then she died. But her family and her friends lobbied the government to let her come back to the United States and so she was buried in the Wildland Cemetery in Chicago which is where the Haymarket anarchists who had so inspired her were buried and so she was buried not far from them and that's where she is today. And that's my speech. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Any questions you may have? We have a few minutes. Yes. So you gave that whole talk from memory really quick for us. Oh, thank you. That was terrific. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ian, you said that Emma Roosevelt was an admirer and that earlier you said that Rich Four would come to hear her speak. Kind of shocking. I mentioned Roosevelt must have known the tricks of new people in comment. How did she have this security degree and try going to all different classes of people? She spoke about as I said about many things including and one of the things that when she was traveling the country when she was when she was still quite young she talked about anarchism by about all sorts of other things and she was delighted that different people would come because she said then people might come to hear about or speak about the women's right women's movement or or you know freedom of speech would hear about anarchism and be inspired as well she just she was a very charismatic person and she was a extremely intelligent person very interesting person very charming person and she always had once when she reached her mid 20s she started getting a lot of attention from writers and and and leaders who even if they didn't necessarily want to be completely associated her you know in Georgia company I thought she was intelligent had interesting things to say she had a lot of very wealthy benefactors Peggy Guggenheim actually was the one who bought her that house in Santa Pea where she wrote living my life the art collector Peggy Guggenheim and and and and so it's just so she just had a lot of charisma and appeal and some people were interested in her ideas if you know if they didn't think that necessarily abolishing all government and turning things over to you know to to an anarchist philosophy was necessarily a good idea they still thought she was an extraordinary person and we're interested to see what you had to say yes that well that's that's what's so interesting and here and one of the things that I found completely fascinating about Sasha Emma is there are these two very learned Sasha an excellent education as a as a as a kid and then they were you know incredible um incredibly learned and knowledgeable about all sorts of things and yet they had this fantasy that that that despite all signs of human nature that you know you overdue people would just it would be obvious to everybody once the workers you know overturn the capitalist system everyone would be able to live in harmony I mean there were many different kinds of factions that communist anarchism and you know individualist anarchism everyone had their own little ideas but the basic system was that people could be trusted to live in harmony it was a beautiful it was a beautiful thing to do in fact at some Sasha sort of clung to this his whole life and ever was was willing to give it up although he started to get a little bit depressed later in life when he when he's you know but and but Emma sort of gradually recognized one of the reasons why um she branched out of it she wants she later in her life said that um quoting someone about her that Emma Goldman is 8 000 years ahead of her time but Sasha up until um almost the end of his life really sort of clung to this notion that this is something he was going to witness before his death it was because it was so obvious that this is the only way people could really be happy the only the only thing that would be fair but you know rationally I have no answer yes it was well he I started writing shortly before his death he was very ill um and um and it was it was sort of a confusing time because I was sort of trying to do this project but also sort of you know be both a daughter and a co-author um and then and then I felt a lot of pressure obviously to um you know to make it to be something that he would want even though we had to try to coordinate our views on things I mean he had done a lot he had spent 40 40 years he'd interviewed all these people around the world he had you know their letters uh Emma um after Sasha died she collected all of his letters and papers and her own and she brought them to a research library in Amsterdam I spent a lot of um a lot of summers a couple of summers in Amsterdam you know playing with my sister my father was you know transcribing these letters so again um he had done I had you know these wonderful um this this incredible material um but I just I sort of waded into it slowly and I I you know I he had taken me out to dinner a lot when I was growing up and he would tell me these incredible stories about you know about uh how you know this federal agent tracked down this um anarchist bomber across the country and I remember these stories and I said oh that's what he was referring to that's what he was referring to I mean it's unfortunate that I can't now have a conversation with them because it would be because I know he teal had it then I then I did say when I was six but um but so so I just I sort of I tried to sort of start from the beginning I learned about these people myself I read their all their work their memoirs I read literally thousands of newspaper articles from the period from the period um I read my father's books I read all of his interviews took a long took took me seven years so so that was my process yes no he died in 2006 so so I mean he would see he would see um anarchist uh events pop up here in the area I always regard them with either fascination or amusement or amusement depending on how they progressed he would be very I think it'd be it's I would have been interested to see how he would have looked at the last five years um but you know he sort of incorporated it all you know it was always intriguing to him I mean again um when I was when I was working on this book I was just and then the Occupy movement came up and you know got so much attention just some of the some of the just the actual slogans and commentary were so similar to what had happened you know they have a lot left to thank Emma and Sasha for okay as Rebecca said um there'll be books downstairs on the first floor um in the bookstore and I'll be happy to go and sign sign them or just say hi