Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912)
Freethought, she wrote, was "the right to believe as the evidence, coming in contact with the mind, forces it to believe. This implies the admission of any and all evidence bearing upon any subject which might come up for discussion." DeLamotte commments that "among the many subjects that came up routinely in late-nineteenth-century freethinking circles were marriage, sexuality, birth control, women's rights, race relations, labor relations … and the relation of the individual to the state."
Little wonder, then, that, as Paul Avrich puts it, "between the anarchist and free thought…
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