Free Society (1895–1897 as The Firebrand; 1897–1904 as Free Society) was a major anarchist newspaper in the United States at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.[1] Most anarchist publications in the US were in Yiddish, German, or Russian, but Free Society was published in English, permitting the dissemination of anarchist thought to English-speaking populations in the US.[1]
The newspaper was established as The Firebrand in 1895 in Portland, Oregon, by the Isaak family, Abraham Isaak, Mary Isaak, and their children, along with some associates; the organization served as "the headquarters of anarchist activity on the [West] Coast".[2]
^ ab"Free Society was the principal English-language forum for anarchist ideas in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century." Emma Goldman: Making Speech Free, 1902–1909, p.551.
^Emma Goldman, Living My Life (Volume 1), pp. 224–225.
^Emma Goldman: Making Speech Free, 1902-1909, p. 551
^See particularly Goldman's "The Condition of the Workers in America" (published in 1895 Torch and then The Firebrand) and "Marriage" (July 18, 1897, Firebrand, Goldman's first publication about women and free love.
Carolyn Ashbaugh, "Radical Women: The Haymarket Tradition", IN Haymarket Scrapbook, ed. by Dave Roediger and Franklin Rosemont, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 1986 (available at The Lucy Parsons Project) (discussing Free Society, including later imprisonment of Isaak family in 1901 after the McKinley assassination, and Jane Addams' efforts to secure their release)
