Post Office to Ban Emma Goldman’s “Mother Earth”
The U.S. Post Office directed Mother Earth, the magazine founded and edited by Emma Goldman, the famous anarchist and opponent of U.S. involvement in World War I, to show cause on this day why it should not be barred from the mails because of its opposition to the war.
Goldman had already been arrested for opposing the draft, in violation of the Espionage Act, passed on June 15, 1917. The Post Office subsequently denied Mother Earth its 2nd Class mailing privilege (a device that was widely used during World War I, and effectively denied use of the mails for publications), and Mother Earth suspended publication.
Goldman was eventually deported from the U.S. to the Soviet Union on the so-called “Red Ark” on December 21, 1919, along with 248 other alleged alien radicals.
Learn more at the Emma Goldman Archives: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/goldman/
Read: Alice Wexler, Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life (1984)
Follow a timeline of Emma Goldman’s life and work:http://ucblibrary3.berkeley.edu/goldman/Curricula/timeline.hml
Learn more about Emma Goldman: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/sfeature/sf_motherearth.html