The career of the Lithuanian-born American anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) drew attention to American problems in civil liberties at the turn of the century.

Emma Goldman was born on June 27, 1869, in Kovno of Jewish parents. She emigrated to the United States in 1885 and worked in clothing factories in Rochester, N.Y. In 1887 she married, quickly divorced, remarried, and finally separated. Inspired by the libertarian writings of Johann Most, she moved in 1889 to New York City. An attractive and intellectual woman, she now began her long association with the Russian anarchist Alexander Berkman.

Goldman's radical activities culminated in a plan with Berkman to commit an anarchist "deed" against Henry Frick, of the Carnegie Steel Company, who was resisting his employees' unionist efforts. Though she was not with Berkman when he shot and wounded Frick (and was sentenced to prison), she herself went to prison the following year in New...