Gabriella (Ella) Segata Antolini (1899–1984) was an Italian–American anarchist activist.

Personal life

Antolini was born in 1899 in the province of Ferrara and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1913.[1]: 134  Her family worked as contract laborers in Louisiana and later settled in Connecticut, where they found employment in manufacturing. Antolini began working as a factory laborer at the age of fourteen and only received one year of elementary school.[2]: 53 

Anarchism

Antolini joined the anarchist movement in 1916 after having prior exposure to the newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva through her brother Alberto,[3][2]: 53, 70  the same year she married her husband August Segata, a member of Italian rebel organization Gruppo I Liberi.[2]: 53  The following year Antolini joined the organization herself.[4]: 108  It is through the anarchist movement that she met Carlo Valdinoci, who later became her lover.[4]: 110 

In 1918 Antolini was arrested for transporting dynamite to Chicago and spent six months in a prison in Jefferson City, Missouri alongside Emma Goldman and Kate Richards O'Hare, who were imprisoned in the same facility.[2]: 70  While in jail Goldman and O'Hare became friendly with Antolini, the latter of whom helped Antolini improve her English skills.[4]: 115–117  While Antolini was in prison her husband Segata "vanished from sight" and was believed to have returned to Italy. Historians have no further information on Segata after this point.[4]: 121 

Following her release, Antolini moved to Detroit, where she met and married a Sicilian man named Jerome Pomilia. The two had a son, Febo Pomilia.[1]: 131–135 

References

  1. 1 2 Avrich, Paul (1995). Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America. AK Press.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Cornell, Andrew (2016). Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-96184-5.
  3. ↑ Bencivenni, Marcella (2011). Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940. NYU Press. p. 48. ISBN 978-0-8147-0944-3.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Avrich, Paul (1996). Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-02604-6.
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