Epistemophilia: Emma Goldman, no Ragtime

I listened to a podcast of the Leonard Lopate show today about the history of labor movements in the US and inevitably Emma Goldman's name came up. The author Philip Dray (There is Power in a Union) said that while Goldman was a union supporter, she was too hot for most of them to handle after McKinley's assassination in 1901. Dray says the killer, Leon Czolgosz, claimed to have been encouraged and influenced by Goldman. I knew Goldman lost favor with the anarchist movement by speaking out in favor of Czolgosz but I'm not really clear what the extent of her beforehand relationship was. Evidently, he had met her briefly and was a big fan of her speeches but they don't seem to have been particularly close. The way Dray phrased it, I couldn't tell if he meant that Goldman suggested Czolgosz kill McKinley but if that's the case, no one knows.

Dray also mentioned that Goldman was deported in 1919. Wait, does that mean she wasn't American? Actually, it looks like she was born in Russia and moved here when she was around 16. Granted, most of my knowledge of Emma Goldman comes from the movie Reds in which I don't remember Maureen Stapleton having a Russian accent. And probably the main reason I grew up liking Emma Goldman was first because I loved the movie and second because I loved Maureen Stapleton, partially because I figured she was related to the lady who played Edith on All in the Family (is that even true? Ah, Wikipedia says she is no relation to Jean Stapleton.) Oh well. Still a great movie. I can't believe my parents took me to see that when it came out. I was 12 I think. At the time, Jack Nicholson naked and Warren Beatty peeing red made a bigger impression on me than the politics but I surprisingly still found the movie engrossing even though it was long enough to have an intermission.