ABSTRACT
The authors’ walking tour begins at Union Square, for decades the site of demonstrations for progressive causes from the Rosenbergs to abortion rights. Here, radical Jewish women joined with the larger American left. Anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman lived here on the top floor from 1904–1914. Born in Kovno, Poland in 1869, she moved to St. Petersburg at age thirteen. When President McKinley was assassinated by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz, Emma was arrested and held for a month. Government repression of anarchists intensified, she assumed the name E. G. Smith and worked as a nurse, seamstress, masseuse, manager, and agent for a Russian acting company. A free thinker who would be considered radical by progressive movements today, Emma lectured in English and Yiddish on unions, feminism, collective living, co-operation, and birth control. Women were trying to preserve their experience on paper. Anzia Yezierska was one of a few Jewish women writing in English about life on the Lower East Side.
