“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian."
~Emma Goldman (1869-1940)
On this episode of From the Vault, we celebrate the complex and sometimes stormy life of America’s best-known anarchist, Emma Goldman. The foundation for our study will be a wonderful documentary produced by Trish Valva in 1991 for Pacifica Radio. Emma Goldman: The Courage to Struggle, is a fascinating look at the feminist who advocated free speech, birth control, and women’s equality in the first half of the 20th century. We’ll hear interviews with Dr. Candace Falk, editor of the Emma Goldman Papers, Mollie Ackerman, Goldman’s personal secretary, and Ora Robbins, whose family provided a home while Robbins was a teenager.
The second half of this week’s episode will focus on an interview with Dr. Candace Falk, the director of the Emma Goldman Papers Project and author of the book Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman. The interview, conducted in 1985, deals with the personal life of Emma Goldman– her loves, her relationships– and how these loved ones were effected by her activism and how her activism was effected by her loves.