Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh was born October 25, 1884 in Albany, New York. After joining the Socialist Party of Schenectady, New York in 1911, he renounced the party the following year in favor of anarchism. Around this time, he began corresponding with Emma Goldman owing to their shared interest in the anarchist cause. This was the beginning of a friendship, often conducted chiefly through correspondence, that would span decades. Beginning in 1921, Van Valkenburgh worked for the New York City office supply company Elliott-Fisher Co. doing publicity and advertising, but was fired in 1927 when the company became aware of his anarchist activities. Soon after, he adopted the pseudonym Warren Starrett (though he was known as "Van" to friends, including Goldman) and devoted himself more fully to various anarchist causes. In addition to his work as editor of the anarchist journal Road to Freedom, he became involved in numerous political committees, such as the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, while working odd jobs. He also spent a great deal of time raising funds on Goldman's behalf, particularly to provide for her living expenses while she wrote her autobiography in exile from the United States, and doing personal favors for her. At the end of his life, he edited a newspaper about the Spanish Revolution and was active in organizing street meetings in New York to promote the Spanish cause. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1938 at age 53, survived by his wife, Sadie Robinson and at least two children.
Emma Goldman was born June 27, 1869, in Kovno, the Russian Empire (today Kaunas, Lithuania). She moved to the United States in 1885 and was inspired to join the anarchist cause following the Haymarket Affair of 1886-7. Though she was living in Rochester, New York at the time, she moved to New York City a few years later and became active in the anarchist community there. In New York, she edited the journal Mother Earth, publishing articles on topics including anarchism, the anti-war movement, free love, and birth control. Both the magazine and Goldman herself were the frequent target of police raids and government scrutiny, owing to her increasingly high national profile and her links to other prominent anarchists, and Goldman was arrested many times. In 1917, Goldman and her longtime comrade Alexander (Sasha) Berkman were arrested for their anti-conscription activities, and in 1919 the pair were deported to the Soviet Union along with 247 of their fellow "radical aliens." Alarmed by the repression and violence she observed in the Soviet Union, Goldman left less than two years after her arrival and became a strident critic of Soviet policy from the left. She spent the last decades of her life in exile from the United States, living mostly in Canada, England, and France, and would return to the U.S. only once, in 1934. In St. Tropez, France, she wrote the bulk of her autobiography,Living My Life, published in two volumes in 1931 and 1934. To the end of her life, she continued to write and lecture on topics including literature, free speech, free love, and the Spanish Civil War. She died in Toronto in 1940.
Sources: Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America. Princeton University Press, 1995.
McKinley, Blaine. The Quagmire of Necessity: American Anarchists and Dilemmas of Vocation.American Quarterly, 34:5 (Winter 1982).
https://jwa.org/womenofvalor/goldman http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/MeetEmmaGoldman/index.html
