Emma Goldman Speaks on 'The War'
December 20, 1914
On December 20, 1914, anarchist Emma Goldman addressed the largest audience she ever attracted in her "adopted hometown" of Rochester, New York.
She delivered "The War," a strident lecture against America's entry into World War I, at the Victoria Theater. The venue seated 1,500, but accounts suggest that Goldman had drawn a standing-room-only audience of 1,800.
The lecture was organized by Goldman's niece, Miriam Cominsky, whose only appearance in the anarchist historical literature has to do with her work arranging this lecture.
The next day, December 21, Goldman delivered another controversial speech to a smaller, though still capacity, crowd at the Labor Lyceum. Titled "The Birth Strike," it urged women to practice sexual abstinence and, to the degree they could, birth control to protest against American involvement in World War I.
