Explore histories of migration, citizenship and belonging in Germany and the U.S. over the centuries.
The U.S. government sponsored an anti-leftist crusade known as the first “Red Scare,” through which immigrants were especially hard hit by government crackdowns on leftist political radicals and those considered susceptible to leftist propaganda.
In the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution and in the context of a wave of labor militancy, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer led a series of raids between 1919 and 1920, resulting in the deportation of hundreds of immigrants, particularly from Russia. The period was also marked by many civil rights abuses against labor leaders, anarchists, communists, and socialists. Among those deported in 1919 was Emma Goldman, a Russian Jewish immigrant who emerged as an internationally renowned public figure in the labor, anarchist, and women’s rights movements of the early twentieth century.
Red Scare (1918-1921). Date accessed: December 2, 2014.
A.K. Schulman. Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader. New York: Schocken Books.
William Jr. Preston. Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals 1903-1933. Edition 2nd Sub edition. University of Illinois Press.
