EMMA GOLDMAN

BY HARRY WEINBERGER

SPEECH DELIVERED AT HER FUNERAL

CHICAGO, MAY 17TH 1940

PUBLISHED PRIVATELY BY THE ORIOLE

PRESS/BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. / 1940

SPEECH OF HARRY WEINBERGER AT FUNERAL
OF EMMA GOLDMAN MAY 17, 1940.

For more than thirty years I have known Emma Goldman, as her lawyer & her friend. Never in all those thirty years have I known her except as a battler for freedom and justice. She was tireless; she was fearless; she never compromised. Liberty was always her theme; liberty was always her dream; liberty was always her goal.

     In a machine age, Emma Goldman always seemed to me the glorification of individuality. She was symbolical of the greatness of mental freedom in an age of regimentation.

     Fear is in the hearts of mankind, & some men & women, in a hurry to save the world, would dispense with all liberty to fight dictatorship. In a world of marching feet and tremendous battles, one marcher is missing, one warrior for freedom will struggle no more. The plea for liberty has been made a thousand times, aye, ten thousand times, but always needs repeating. There is one tongue less, to make that plea today.

     Emma Goldman is gone, gone to a dreamless sleep, gone to join that army of men and women of the past to whom liberty was more important than life itself.

     Emma Goldman in her lifetime had been ostracized, jailed, mobbed, & deported from these shores for advocating that which all the world now admits should be brought about - a world without war, a world without poverty, a world with hope and the brotherhood of man.

     Courage is the greatest force in individuals and nations. Courage in Emma Goldman was as natural to her as it was for her to breathe. She spoke out in this country against war and conscription, and went to jail. She spoke out for political prisoners, & was deported from the United States on the very day we celebrated the sailing to America of the Mayflower in Colonial days. She spoke out in Russia against the despotism of Communism, and again became a fugitive on the face of the earth. She spoke out against Nazism and the combination of Nazism and Communism, and there was hardly a place where she could live.

     Emma Goldman, we welcome you back to America, where you wanted to end your days with friends and comrades. We had hoped to welcome you back in life but we welcome you back in death. You will live forever in the hearts of your friends and the story of your life will live as long as the stories are told of women and men of courage and idealism.