Historian James R. Mock has characterized the U.S. Government during WWI as a government "of the people, by the people, and for the winning of the war." Verily, the Wilson Administration went to great lengths to ensure victory on both the foreign and domestic fronts. Unfortunately, the subjugation of foreign-born citizens did not cease with the advent of peace. Indeed, many citizens would never again enjoy the freedoms they had known before the war. The continued infringement of civil liberties was due mainly to the fact that although the American public no longer feared foreign agents, the war frenzy had taught them to despise any person with radical ideas. The world was safe for democracy, but many Americans doubted that the same could be said of their own nation.

In 1919 four million workers ­ four out of every five - were on strike. Anarchist pamphlets threatened a violent overthrow of society, and thirty-six bombs were mailed from New York to prominent Americans during the May Terror of 1919. Most of this agitation was thought to come from outside the United States, emphasizing the growing danger of "foreign infiltration." Consequently, authorities turned to the Alien Act of 1918, which authorized the deportation of all alien radicals. This act was, according to Mock, "a tidy solution to purge the U.S. of its bad seeds." Inevitably, Goldman would be among the first to go.

In the fall of 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, a political precursor to Senator Joseph McCarthy, began preparing evidence to invoke the Alien Act against Goldman. Palmer was originally opposed to the harassment of radically inclined individuals. However, in June of 1919, a bomb was hand delivered to the home of the Attorney General, and he was almost killed. Within days of this event, Palmer had developed a strategy for mass deportation. He issued a warrant for Goldman's arrest while she was still serving the final month of her prison term.

(Federal warrant for Goldman's deportation, from "The Emma Goldman Papers" http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/deportation.html)

Beginning in November of 1919, Palmer and his special assistant J. Edgar Hoover conducted a four month long roundup of supposed alien radicals nationwide. Somewhere between five and ten thousand individuals were arrested and brutally treated. Ironically, thousands of these victims turned out to be American citizens; they were arrested merely because they had associations with trade unions, certain political parties, or other minority groups. Goldman, a naturalized American citizen, certainly fell under this category. Nevertheless, her past confrontations with the government made her deportation inevitable. This was especially true after Hoover took a special interest in Goldman's case. He insisted that she would cause immeasurable harm if permitted to return to the community. As for Goldman, she made no effort to resist her fate. She was weary after years of government suppression, and she looked forward to joining the Bolsheviks in her former homeland.

(J. Edgar Hoover's recommendation concerning Goldman and Berkman, from "The Emma Goldman Papers" http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/deportation.html)

On December 21, 1919, Emma Goldman and 249 other deportees embarked from Ellis Island aboard the U.S.S. Buford, a dilapidated old military vessel spitefully referred to as the "Red Ark." They were accompanied by 250 soldiers, each armed with a rifle and two pistols. This formidable military guard sent the clear message that the deportees were dangerous enemies of the American people. It was under these shameful circumstances that the United States finally rid itself of Emma Goldman, "anarchist disturber, lecturer and leader of radical expression of distrust of the American Government and its part in the War." (Quote from War Department files)

(Political Cartoon depicting the departure of the Red Ark, from "The Emma Goldman Papers" http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/deportation.html)

Next Topic