Fair Use Blog

This is a side column from Page 2 of the New York Times on April 9, 1909, reporting the U.S. Attorney’s success in convincing a federal court to strip Emma Goldman of her citizenship, which she had gained by marriage to a naturalized citizen in 1887.

EMMA GOLDMAN NOW ALIEN.

Deprived of Rights of Citizenship by Disenfranchisement of Her Husband.
Special to The New York Times.

Buffalo, N.Y., April 8.–Judge Hazel, in the United States Court this morning, granted an order canceling the citizenship papers of Jacob A. Kersner. Through this order all rights of citizenship also are taken from Kersner’s wife, who is none other than Emma Goldman, the woman leader of the Anarchists in this country, whose fiery teachings, it was charged by many, incited Leon Czolgosz to the assassination of President McKinley.

The order was granted upon motion of Special United States Attorney P. S. Chambers of Pittsburg, and the evidence upon which it was based was presented principally by Kersner’s own father, who was subpoenaed from his home at Rochester.

Kersner obtained his citizenship documents in 1884, when the statutes governing such procedure were quite lax compared with the present laws. He was two years under age at the time. Three years later he married Emma Goldman. She was a foreigner herself, but by virtue of her marriage to a citizen she was clothed with the rights of citizenship. Emma was only a girl, then, and had barely begun the career that later connected her so closely with the Reds in the public eye.

—The New York Times (April 9, 1909), Page 2.