Emma Goldman was an
anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided as an advocate of politically-motivated murder and violent revolution by her critics. Born in the province of
Kaunas,
Lithuania she moved with her sister Helena to
Rochester, New York in the
United States at the age of sixteen. Attracted to anarchism after the
Haymarket Riot, Goldman was trained by
Johann Most in public speaking and became a renowned lecturer, attracting crowds of thousands. The writer and anarchist
Alexander Berkman became her lover, lifelong intimate friend and comrade. Together they planned to assassinate
Henry Clay Frick as an act of
propaganda of the deed. Though Frick survived, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. In 1917 Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated
draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested – with hundreds of others – and deported to
Russia. Initially supportive of that country's
Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. Eventually she traveled to
Spain to participate in that nation's
civil war. She died in
Toronto on
14 May 1940.