in a new direction. Immigration from Europe was at its peak in 1907 with 1,285,349 entries.1 The dramatic reaction to this surge—restrictionist and racist—was reinforced later in the context of World War I and the rise of revolutionary ideologies. One of the primary objectives of the immigration and naturalization policies was to detect and prevent “un-American” immigration and to exclude and deport those who had succeeded in settling in the country. “Un-Americanism” was defined politically and encompassed opinions, acts, practices, or simply ethnicity.
In the context of the creation of the Dillingham Commission by the Immigration Act of February 20, 1907,2 whose report led to the adoption of the literacy test in 1917, and to the quota laws of 1921 and 1924,3 loyalty became an important concern of the government.
This trend resulted in the creation of a conditional citizenship for some categories of citizens. The Expatriation Act of March 2, 1907, promoted the goal of “reducing the number of Americans who, in the eyes of the federal government, have compromised their status as citizens by maintaining or establishing foreign liaisons of a certain type.”4 The quasi-simultaneity of the 1906 Naturalization Act, designed to create a standard on naturalization and to combat fraud and illegality, and the 1907 Expatriation Act, which created this conditional citizenship, is deceptive: one concerns mainly procedural fraud, the other xenophobia and fear of foreign and radical ideologies. While the 1906 act was the culmination of a legislative debate on fraud that had started in the 1840s, the 1907 act began a period of fear and paranoia that would greatly expand by 1940.
This conditional citizenship applied in 1907 to different categories of native-born Americans: women marrying foreigners and Americans acquiring another nationality. Even though the provision concerning American women was by then obsolete,5 in 1940 the scope of conditionality would expand to include American-born citizens evading the draft, joining a foreign army, or participating in foreign elections. But naturalized citizens remained the main target of crusaders against un-Americanism. If they were residing abroad, they were the object of both the 1906 and 1907 laws. The latter expanded the scope of the former to include naturalized citizens living two years in their country of origin or five years in any foreign country at any time after their naturalization.
New Americans living in the United States could also lose their citizenship if they violated certain standards. Let’s put aside the “criminals.” Today all democracies provide for the possibility of voiding a citizenship recently granted if a naturalized person is found to have lied about a criminal record prior to accession to citizenship. That provision was more expansive in the interwar period than it is today. It included in the scope of bad moral character, for example, cases involving extramarital relations, defense or advocacy of free love, the practice of plural marriage or polygamy,6 the possession and sale of intoxicating liquor in violation of the National Prohibition Act of 1922,7 or working as a pimp.8 These restrictions reflected the values and social norms of the time. Yet additional restrictions—based on race and politics—rose after 1906. A naturalized person who was Asian, spoke out against the war, or was a socialist, a communist, or a fascist risked the loss of his American citizenship.
Citizenship could be lost by acts or speech now considered basic rights. But this conditionality of the status of naturalized citizen would provoke conflicts within the executive branch—between the Justice and the State departments—and with and between the courts. Conditionality of citizenship was rooted in both the explicit language of the statute (for the naturalized citizen moving and living abroad) as well as in more expansive interpretations of the law’s intent. For instance words pronounced or acts committed after naturalization could serve as a post facto indication of a mental reservation, a lack of attachment to the U.S. Constitution at the moment of or before the naturalization. Sometimes an illegality committed before naturalization—like an error or a lie on the date of arrival in the United States—could serve as a pretext for a denaturalization for political reasons. This is how it started for Emma Goldman, the subject of the first political denaturalization in the United States in 1909.
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Goldman was born in 1869 in Lithuania, where she was introduced to anarchist principles at the factory where she worked. She emigrated to the United States at the age of seventeen and married fellow Russian-born factory worker Jacob Kersner, through whom she acquired American citizenship. The two separated not long thereafter, and subsequently divorced.
Goldman eventually became the “most prominent anarchist of the era” and was known by most Americans of the time as “Red Emma” and the “High Priestess of Anarchism.”9 Her involvement as a revolutionary grew in the aftermath of the Haymarket Riot in 1886, where a bomb had been thrown at police during a protest in favor of a shorter workday. The subsequent execution of several anarchists in connection with the attack galvanized many American anarchists, including Goldman. Six years later, Goldman is believed to have participated in the attempted assassination of factory owner and future philanthropist Henry Clay Frick. Goldman’s long-time companion and fellow anarchist Alexander Berkman was the would-be assassin. Though not personally involved, Goldman served as an inspiration to, and briefly met, Leon Csolgosz, the insurrectionary Polish anarchist and the assassin of President William McKinley.
Based on these revolutionary activities, the U.S. government wanted to deport Goldman.10 The government’s original strategy was simply to bar her reentry to the United States when she left the country in the fall of 1907 for speaking engagements at the International Anarchist Congress in Europe.11 On September 24, 1907, Frank Sargent, the commissioner general of immigration, sent a “strictly confidential” telegram to the New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore immigration offices declaring that “Emma Goldman, the notorious anarchist, is now out of the United States, but intends to return very shortly to resume her propaganda in this country. . . . It is desired that either or both of these persons [the other was Max Baginski] who may arrive at your port should be detained and rigidly examined; any claims of American citizenship to be fully verified before being accepted as correct.”12
Goldman was returning with fellow anarchist Max Baginski,13 and immigration officials initially attempted to treat and quickly deport her as an alien. But Goldman traveled from Liverpool to Montreal and “experienced no trouble whatever getting into Canada.”14 On the train from Montreal to New York, the porter took her ticket, “together with a generous tip, and he didn’t show up again” for the rest of the journey. Two weeks later, at her first public appearance, the newspapers, the public, and the government were informed of her arrival back in the States.15 Oscar S. Straus, secretary of commerce and labor, pronounced Goldman to be in violation of a 1907 act of Congress, known as the Anarchist Law, and issued an order “to take into custody the said alien, and convey her before a Board of Special Inquiry, at Ellis Island, to enable her to show cause why she should not be deported in conformity with the law.”16
On November 17, a memo of the Bureau of Immigration sent to Straus listed Goldman’s criminal record as well as the many anarchist speeches she had delivered in recent years, including the most recent one, on November 11 in New York City. But it also warned Straus of the possibility of deporting her, especially since it was still unclear whether or not Goldman was a citizen: “The general opinion of the officers who have been following her up is that she will welcome arrest; that it will not only advertise her and add to her prestige, but will be the means of bringing her in considerable sums in the way of contributions.”17 On November 19, 1907, Straus withdrew the warrant for Goldman’s arrest, pending an investigation on her citizenship status.18
On March 10, 1908, Sargent requested that Richard K. Campbell, the chief of the Division of Naturalization, open an inquiry into Goldman’s assertion that she was truly an American citizen via her naturalized father, as she had originally declared.19 On March 13, Assistant U.S. Attorney Palmer S. Chambers telegraphed Campbell: “Investigation progressing satisfactorily, very probably E.G. is not a citizen. Will
