Post Office Lifts Ban on Alexander Berkman’s “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist”
Postmaster General Will Hays on this day lifted the ban on Alexander Berkman’s book, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, making it the last political publication banned by the U.S. Post Office during the World War I and Red Scare era (1917–1920).
Berkman had already been deported from the U.S., along with Emma Goldman, on December 21, 1919.
In July 1892 Berkman had attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, the notoriously anti-union manager of the Carnegie Steel Co. Berkman burst into his office one day, fired two shots at Frick and then stabbed him three times with a knife. Frick lived, however, and Berkman was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 21 years in prison. He served 14 years in prison and was released in 1906.
Censorship of sexually related materials continued, however, and even increased over the next several years. On the continuing Post Office censorship of sexually related materials, see the famous arrest and subsequent vindication of Mary Ware Dennett, author of the sex education pamphlet, The Sex Side of Life (April 23, 1929; March 30, 1930).
Will Hays soon left his position to become head of the Hollywood Motion Picture Producers, where he persuaded increasingly stronger self-censorship measures by the film industry. That effort culminated in the repressive Hollywood Code, enacted on June 13, 1934.
Hear an excerpt from Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDEx18aK-xk
Learn more about Alexander Berkman: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAberkman.htm
Read about Berkman’s life with Emma Goldman: Vivian Gornick, Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life (2011)