Fragment of the Prison Experiences, A.
Goldman Speaks From Prison
Goldman, Emma and Alexander Berkman. A Fragment of the Prison Experiences. In the State Prison at Jefferson City, Mo., and the U.S. Penitentiary at Atlanta, GA. February, 1918-October, 1919. New York: Stella Comyn, [1919].
8vo.; grey printed wrappers; wrappers lightly darkened near stapled spine, else nice. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First and only edition of this 25-page pamphlet documenting the 1917 incarceration of Goldman and Berkman for pacifist activities. The “publisher” Stella Comyn (née Cominsky) was Goldman’s niece, with whom she lived after her release from prison. The pamphet includes a 6-page article by Goldman describing her 19-month prison stay. According to Alice Wexler:
In early February of 1918, Goldman arrived at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City...The largest prison in the United States, the institution housed some twenty-three people, of whom approximately one hundred were women. Although Goldman, recalling Blackwell’s Island in 1893, thought the prison “a model in many respects,” a 1929 report found it “chiefly notable for its grave defects,” which included overcrowding, low sanitary standards, bad working conditions in the shops, poor medical services, harsh methods of discipline, and the absence of any kind of educational program...” (Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life, NY: Pantheon Books, 1984, pp. 247-8)
In June 1917 Emma Goldman and her co-worker and lover Alexander Berkman were arrested for aiding draft resisters in defiance of the Selective Service Act. It was hardly Goldman’s first prison stay: she had served time for inciting the lower classes to riot, for disseminating birth control information, and for suspicion of involvement with the anarchist-led assassination of President William McKinley (these charges against Goldman were never proved and she was eventually released). In October 1919 Goldman and Berkman were deported to the Soviet Union along with several hundred other immigrant anarchists and radicals. This Russian visit was to be a transformative experience for Goldman both personally and politically. (For a more detailed examination of Goldman’s relationship with Berkman, see the description of a letter she wrote about him after his suicide in June 1936.)
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