The Emma Goldman Papers

This one-month university sponsored crowdfund campaign ends today. Tomorrow (May Day!) you can still requests some perks with your donationto support the Emma Goldman Papers as always. Just click: https://give.berkeley.edu/browse/?u=39

—

“ I want freedom, the right to self-expression, every body’s right to beautiful, radiant things” --Emma Goldman, Living My Life. (1931).

Who are we?

Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was a tireless advocate of free expression and social justice. Her papers are a treasure trove of women’s, immigration, ethnic, transnational, political, cultural, sexual, and civil liberties histories.The Emma Goldman Papers has been collecting, organizing, publishing, and transcribing documents by and related to Emma Goldman since 1980. What began as a standard reference work has expanded into a multi-source scholarly project of American radicalism, women’s contribution to the shaping of American history — and beyond. The Emma Goldman Papers’ Project papers includes original correspondence, oral histories and interviews from Emma’s contemporaries and supporters, including ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, Daniel Malmed, anarchists Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin, broadcaster oral historian Studs Terkel, writer Meridel Le Sueur, Ora Robbins, among others.

Please help us preserve the Emma Goldman Papers by making a gift.

As we near the publication of our fourth and final volume, we seek a stable and accessible home for the rich archive of administrative and institutional records of the project itself. Our forthcoming and final volume, "Democracy Disarmed, 1917-1919,” covers the tumultuous period when the United States entered World War I and culminates in Emma Goldman’s deportation to Russia by the Wilson administration for her opposition to conscription. It resonates strongly with concerns about immigration and deportation law, surveillance, limitations on free speech in times of national crisis, prison conditions, and the fragility of citizenship and residence for those who were not born in the U.S. As we find ourselves in a vast and often violent world in which the smallest forms of dissent are condemned as treason, human dignity itself is threatened. We believe that the messages championed by Emma and her contemporaries are even more important now, as is the critical issue of free speech.

What we will do with your help:

Your contribution will be put to use immediately. Anything you contribute will ensure the Emma Goldman Papers Project remain a valuable teaching resource, both for those interested in pursuing similar work as well as those who wish to learn research, writing, documentary editing and archival skills necessary for other fields. Indeed, it will also support the labor of finding a final major archival home for these records, including the costs of archival supplies, communicating with outside institutions and the times spent conducting inventories, organizing and processing these items. $5500 would provide the monetary compensation for the 3 students on our research and administrative staff and will underwrite segments of the preservation and organization of the material relating to Emma Goldman, as well as to the Emma Goldman Papers’ organizational records.

With your support, we will be able to secure a permanent institutional home for the collection of tens of thousands of historical documents and organizational records that the project has amassed and produced over more than 37 years. A contribution of $50 will cover the preservation of 50 pages of EGP institutional records, while a donation of $100 would sponsor the archiving of 100 pages and $500, 500 pages! In this way, the Emma Goldman Papers’ will not be put to rest, but will remain accessible far into the future, one page at a time.

To learn more about Emma Goldman and our project, please visit our website here. You can also find our Facebook here and follow us on Tumblr and Twitter. Feel free to email us if you have any questions at emma@berkeley.edu.