NAWSA  General Correspondence  Whitaker, Robert



May 24, 1932.

Mrs. Anna C. M. Tillinghast
Commissioner of Immigration
East Boston, Massachusetts

Dear Madam:

As an old Bostonian, a minister of the Gospel, and a lover
of fundamental American ideals I am writing you in protest of the
stupid manner in which our immigration authorities are treating
such pioneers of social protest as Edith Berkman.  We know the
girl, have know her for years, and are not to be humbugged by
the pretense set forth in your letter to Dr. C. J. Taft of the
American Civil Liberties Union that she has not been in jail, or 
that her illness dates back to a period beyond the brutal treatment
she has had at the hands of the authorities.  She was physically 
fit in a high degree, and has sacrificed for the cause of
labor with a zeal and self-sacrifice which ought to earn for her
the decent respect of every American, whether in agreement with
her ideas or not.  I count her a modern Joan of Arc, and wonder
that our ruling classes can be so crassly ignorant and intolerant
as to build around people like her the structure of their own
ruin, as they are doing today.  For heaven's sake if Boston
 Bourbons have any sense left show it by setting this girl free.

Yours for human rights,
Robert Whitaker


Robert Whitaker



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