Maria Roda (1877–1958) was an Italian American anarchist-feminist activist, speaker and writer, who participated in the labor struggles among textile workers in Italy and the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Born in 1877 in Como, Italy, Maria Roda was an activist in radical social movements from a young age.
[1] The Italian government considered Cesare Roda to be one of the main anarchists in Como with connections to others in the movement abroad, and they monitored his activities and those of Maria throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
[6] While Roda and Esteve were based in Paterson until at least 1908, they also lived in Tampa, Florida, Brooklyn, and Weehawken, New Jersey, to spread the cause and organize other marginalized workers.
They had ten children, though only eight survived to adulthood (Violet, Sensitiva, Sirio, Iris, Flora, Pedro, Helios and Zephyr); they lost their ten-year-old son in an explosion that they believed was an attempt on Esteve's life.