a first version of “A Woman Without a Country” (see Appendix 1). In this short pamphlet written in a sarcastic tone, she narrates the government’s obsessive chase and concludes: “You have Emma Goldman’s citizenship. But she has the world, and her heritage is the kinship of brave spirits—not a bad bargain.”40
In subsequent years Goldman became involved in the opposition to World War I: “She could not understand how professed liberals could in one breath denounce Prussian militarism and in the next propose conscription.”41 In protest against the Selective Service Act of 1917, which required all males aged twenty-one to thirty to register for the draft, she and Berkman organized the No Conscription League of New York, which proclaimed: “We oppose conscription because we are internationalists, antimilitarists, and opposed to all wars waged by capitalistic governments.”
On June 15, 1917, Goldman and Berkman were arrested and charged with conspiracy to “induce persons not to register” under the newly enacted Espionage Act, and were held on $25,000 bail each.42 Defending herself and Berkman during their trial, Goldman invoked the First Amendment, asking how the government could claim to fight for democracy abroad while suppressing free speech at home.
The jury found them guilty and the judge imposed the maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment, a $10,000 fine each, and the possibility of deportation after their release from prison. Goldman served two years in the Missouri State Penitentiary.43 Just before the expiration of her sentence, on September 5, 1919, the Department of Labor ordered Goldman’s arrest in order to deport her on the basis of the 1918 Anarchist Exclusion Act.44 Harry Weinberger, her lawyer, tried to argue before the commissioner general of immigration that the denaturalization of her former husband did not affect the citizenship of Emma Goldman. “The citizenship of her husband made her a citizen,” he declared, “the same as if she had applied on her own account.”45 The final decision was submitted to Louis F. Post, assistant secretary of labor.46 He concluded that “the revocation of her husband’s citizenship, upon which hers depended, operated automatically to subject her to the disabilities of an alien.” “If I erred,” he wrote later in his memoirs, “my decision was jurisdictional and would have been reviewed by the courts in habeas corpus proceedings. But Miss Goldman didn’t take her case to the courts.”47
On December 8, 1919, Goldman and Berkman appeared in federal court before Judge Julius M. Mayer, who declared that as aliens, they had no constitutional rights. In court, Goldman argued: “The apparent cancellation of my citizenship by starting an action against Jacob A. Kersner without giving me an opportunity to defend or show the falsity of the government’s position, shows how any woman married to a naturalized citizen and feeling secure in her citizenship, may suddenly find herself an alien, and because of some opinion she may hold which may be unpopular, find herself an arrested alien and deported from the country she may come from more than 30 years ago, as is my case today.”48
Goldman and Berkman remained in detention at Ellis Island. On December 10, 1919, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis declined to overrule the lower court’s decision in their case. On December 13, her lawyer obtained the guarantee that Goldman and Berkman would be deported to the country of their choice, Soviet Russia, instead of to Germany, the first option of the Bureau of Immigration. And at dawn on December 21, 1919, Goldman, Berkman, and 247 aliens set sail on the SS Buford, bound for Russia. Fifty-one were considered anarchists and 184 were members of the Union of Russian Workers who had been arrested during the first Palmer Raids, conducted in eighteen U.S. cities in November 1919.49 Already working for the Justice Department, a young J. Edgar Hoover had supervised the deportation proceedings and was present when the boat deporting Goldman set sail.50
Later, on December 9, 1921, Goldman would write from Riga to Harry Weinberger. She was just out of Russia and in despair over her experience in the Soviet Union:
My dear, dear Councelor:
It is a long time between letters. Is it not? I will make no idle apologies. Living in Dante’s Inferno is not conducive to communication with the outside world. It is not only the censorship which prevented my writing. It was much more my own disturbed and harassed spirit which could find no peace or comfort long enough to write serenely.
. . .The only difference between Russia and other countries is that in Russia the very elements who have helped to unfurl the Revolution have also helped to carry the Revolution to her grave—and that pain eats more into one’s vitals than the existence of reaction in other lands. One can survive the betrayal of an enemy but one you believe in and loved—one can never survive.51
She implored Weinberger:
I want you to write me with perfect frankness about my chance of returning to America. It is no use deceiving myself and others by saying I will feel at home and be able to take root anywhere out of America. If I had unlimited means and could reconcile myself to a life of leisure, Europe would be preferable. Even though the world is one black dungeon, one could travel comfortably and without annoyance, if one had means and would change one’s name. It might even be profitable to cruise the world and write one’s impression. But I have no means and I cannot continue being dependent much longer. Nor can I continue inactive much longer. I must really know how I stand in regard to the States, so it’s up to you to tell me.
First, any sense in pressing the “Kersner” claim? Secondly, any good in going through with the marriage farce. I mean any good for a deported woman to attach herself to an American Gentleman? I mean will the fact of marriage to an American annul my deportation? I don’t say I have already found the unfortunate one who will sacrifice himself for a “good cause.” Still I meant to be prepared—meant to get my nadan52 ready. Please write me at your earliest opportunity.
It was a case of unfortunate timing that just months later American feminists, who had campaigned for the elimination of the clause in the 1907 law that prescribed deprivation of nationality for an American woman marrying a foreigner, saw their efforts rewarded with the passage of the Cable Act of September 22, 1922.53
The Cable Act thereafter disconnected marriage and nationality. American women were allowed to retain their nationality after marrying foreigners.54 But, likewise, foreign women would no longer automatically become American by marrying an American man.55 Henceforth, if Emma Goldman remarried to an American man, she would be required to go through naturalization proceedings, which allowed for greater federal government control.
CHAPTER 5
Radicals and Asians
In 1912, a few years after Emma Goldman’s denaturalization, Leonard Oleson was denaturalized on new legal grounds—“lack of attachment” to the U.S. Constitution. On September 21, 1910, the chief naturalization examiner in Seattle requested that the U.S. attorney institute a denaturalization proceeding.1 During his hearing, Oleson denied that he was an anarchist or opposed to organized government. He declared himself a socialist, “willing for people to retain their money, but insisting that all the land, buildings and industrial institutions should become the common property of all the people.” Oleson declared that this object could be attained “by the power of the ballot” and “when that object shall be attained the political government of the country will be entirely abrogated, because, there will be no use for it.” U.S. District Judge Cornelius H. Hanford declared that Oleson had no reverence for the Constitution, nor any intention to support and defend it against its enemies and was not “well disposed toward the peace and tranquility of the people.”2 Hanford cancelled Oleson’s certificate of naturalization on May 10, 1912.
In
