Revolt in Union Square — Alexander Berkman Rises Above the Crowd, New York City, 1914, 1914

One Man. Thousands of New Yorkers. A City in Revolt.

In 1914, an immense crowd floods Union Square, New York's great public arena for labor protest and radical politics. Rising almost impossibly from a sea of dark hats stands Alexander Berkman (1870–1936)—Russian-born Jewish immigrant, anarchist, writer, labor activist, and one of the most controversial political figures of his generation.

By the time this extraordinary photograph was made, Berkman's life already read like a revolutionary novel. He had emigrated from the Russian Empire to America as a teenager and entered New York's radical immigrant world, becoming closely associated with Emma Goldman. In 1892, during the violent Homestead Steel Strike, Berkman attempted to assassinate Carnegie Steel chairman Henry Clay Frick, whom he blamed for the deadly confrontation between striking steelworkers and Pinkerton guards. He was imprisoned for approximately fourteen years before returning to radical activism, writing and public speaking. 

Now, in Union Square in 1914, the former prisoner stands before an enormous gathering of workers during a year of intense labor and anarchist demonstrations in the square. The photographer captured a remarkable visual metaphor: Berkman alone above thousands, his voice confronting the industrial city surrounding him. Contemporary Bain News Service records document IWW gatherings in Union Square that year and Berkman speaking there. The Library of Congress

The Fine Art Print

This museum-quality fine art print is produced from a high-resolution master image developed directly from an original historic glass plate negative from the archive of an important turn-of-the-century photographic news agency.

The remarkable resolution of the original glass negative preserves an astonishing panorama of 1914 New York: thousands of individual faces and hats, policemen, early motor vehicles, storefronts, advertising signs and architectural details—with Alexander Berkman emerging dramatically at the center of it all.

Past in Present owns the original historic negative from which this image is produced. All original negatives represented in the Past in Present collection are held in our private archive. Past in Present is the exclusive source for fine art prints produced from this particular original negative and this specific image.

The Story Behind the Photograph

From the Russian Empire to Radical New York

Born in Vilna in 1870, then part of the Russian Empire, Berkman came of age amid political repression and revolutionary ferment. After emigrating to the United States, he entered the extraordinary immigrant world of late-19th-century New York, where anarchists, socialists and labor organizers debated how radically American society should be transformed.

His relationship with Emma Goldman would become one of the most famous intellectual and political partnerships in American anarchist history.

Then came Homestead.

On July 6, 1892, striking steelworkers and Pinkerton guards fought a deadly battle at the Carnegie Steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania. On July 23, Berkman entered Henry Clay Frick's Pittsburgh office and attempted to kill him. Frick survived; Berkman was imprisoned.

After his release, Berkman returned to political life. His experiences became the basis for his celebrated Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, published in 1912.

Union Square — New York's Political Stage

By 1914, Union Square had become one of America's most visible gathering places for workers, socialists, anarchists, suffragists and political reformers. 

The scale of the present photograph is what makes it unforgettable. Berkman is not photographed safely behind a podium or isolated in a portrait studio. He seems to rise directly from the people. Thousands press around him until individual bodies merge into an almost continuous landscape of hats and faces.

Above them stands a single man.

Behind them stands New York.

And inside a fragile sheet of glass, the photographer preserved both forever.

What Came Next

Only a few years later, Berkman's anti-war and anti-draft activities during World War I brought him and Emma Goldman into direct conflict with the federal government. Berkman was imprisoned in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, and his prison writings from 1918–1919 survive in the Library of Congress. 

But that future is still invisible here.

This is New York in 1914—and Alexander Berkman is standing above the crowd.