The Haymarket Riot

INTRODUCTION

The events that took place in Chicago on May 4th, 1886 changed the world. Occurring during a summer of unprecedented labor organization, a bomb was thrown into a crowd of police, wounding dozens and killing eight. The public reaction to the event was felt the globe over, leading to the first ‘red scare’ in the United States, and crippling the labor movement’s struggle for the eight-hour workday. The trial that ensued ended in the hanging of four innocent men.

FRAMING THE SITUATION

Beginning well before May 1st 1886 labor in the United States was in turmoil. The Nation was recovering from its Civil War, a war fought over labor and a war that was won in favor of wage labor. Since the Civil War, the United States underwent what has been known as the ‘Second Industrial Revolution’, a period where the rebuilding of the United States in both the north and the south took on unprecedented proportions. Huge waves of immigrants from Europe flooded into America, this driving down labor prices and new technologies led to a lack of need for labor that had been previously skilled.

In Chicago, many of the immigrants had come from various German states, and the philosophies at the time had a great influence on the people who had been imported. Anarchy and communism were concepts (strongly influenced by German writers such as Marx) that were philosophically linked, however they had not yet had states of their own, and were at the time still theories to be proven. Much of the language in periodicals of the time speaks of communism and anarchy equally.

MAYDAY PARADE AND STRIKES

On May 1st 1886 thousands and thousands of people all over the United States took off of work in favor of an unprecedented nationwide strike in favor of many labor reforms but mainly the 8-hour workday. Marches, negotiations and strikes were reported from the following cities in The Chicago Daily Tribune: New York 20,000 rally, Milwaukee 5,000 strike, St. Louis (conflicts settled), Pittsburg 600 strike, Washington D.C. (individuals celebrated their 12-hour schedule in the streets), Rochester, N.Y. (began working 8 hour days), Cincinnati 600 strike, Sandusky 13 strike, Detroit between 250 and 300 strike, Philadelphia (negotiations continue) and Baltimore 2000 threaten strike. In Chicago between April 25th and May 4th workers attended many meetings and thousands walked off their jobs. On May 1st alone some 35,000 workers walked off their jobs to march in the streets, with at least 10,000 more joining them as the march went on.
At the McCormick Reaper Plant a long time strike ended on May 3rd when police opened fire on strikers killing at least two. Anarchists immediately circulated several flyers in response to the event, calling workers to rally for a protest meeting at the West Randolph Street Haymarket. One of these flyers had the title: “Revenge! Workingmen to Arms!”


RALLY AT HAYMARKET SQUARE

Mayor Carter H. Harrison attended the meeting that took place on the evening of May 4th 1886, and instructed the police not to disturb the meeting, and the meeting did remain peaceful until a speaker told the crowd to “Throttle” the law. It was then that 176 uniformed Chicago Police Officers ordered the meeting to disperse. It was at that moment that someone threw a bomb into the wall of police, which exploded, killing one officer instantly. The police reaction was to fire wildly back at the crowd, resulting in 60 officers being injured, eight killed, and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. The event galvanized fears that many in the business and government spheres had suspected, and Mayor Harrison immediately banned meetings and processions. Police were ordered to make picketing and publication of ‘Anarchist Literature’ impossible essentially barring printed or public speech of all but the major papers in the city, and those major papers printed literature matching the anarchists’ calls for revenge towards the anarchists. Most of the strikers had become demoralized, and only a few strikes continued after that.

TRIAL, EXECUTIONS AND PARDONS

In the aftermath of the bombing, the police arrested hundreds of people, but could not pin the thrower of the bomb. The trial that occurred after the arrests was one in the midst of a public seeking revenge. Eight anarchists: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Oscar Neebe: all prominent speakers and writers, and 5 of the 8 German immigrants, were tried for murder. The judge and all 12 jurors on the trial admitted prejudice against the defendants. Having no evidence that the tried were the bomb-throwers, or that they knew the bomb thrower, or that they had in any way planned to throw a bomb, the jury, instructed to adopt a conspiracy theory without any legal precedent, convicted all eight defendants. Seven of the eight were sentenced to death.
While many Americans felt that the decision against the convicted was wrong, legal appeals failed. Two of the death sentences were commuted, and on November 11, 1887, four of the defendants, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged together before a public audience in the Cook County Jail. The night before the hanging Louis Lingg committed suicide in his cell supposedly using a smuggled dynamite cap held in his mouth like a cigar (the blast disfigured his face and he lived in agony for several hours). Hundreds of thousands turned out for the funeral procession of the five dead men.

LEGACY

Over the years the legacy of Haymarket has had many consequences, whether they be for labor, industry, police action, anarchy or law, the event has come to be an icon of a profound moment of history where ordinary working men and women as well as captains of industry and everyone in-between can take a long hard look at many major problems in society.

-Since the event, socialists and unionists from around the world have celebrated May 1st as “International Workers Day” or “May Day”, in solidarity with the movement. American observance of the holiday was at its peak in the era before World War I, and due to ‘communist’ overtones lessened during the Cold War. Its popularity has risen since the 1980’s. In 2006, a May Day protest occurred across the United States (much like the protest in 1886) with 400,000 mostly Hispanic immigrants in Chicago alone protesting for immigrant’s rights.

-In 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld (a German-born American) granted the three remaining imprisoned defendants absolute pardon, citing lack of evidence and unfairness of the trial. In circles of law, the trial is considered to be one of the worst miscarriages of justice in American History, lending towards many of the anarchists’ claims about the law.

-The complicated nature of the conflict is exemplified by how the Haymarket Square itself has been memorialized over the years. In 1893 the Haymarket Martyrs Monument was constructed at Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park Illinois, where the four executed prisoners were buried. In 1997 it was dedicated a National Historic Landmark with a plaque. Also in 1889, a nine-foot bronze statue of a Chicago policeman was constructed in the Haymarket Square itself. On the 41st anniversary of the riot (May 4, 1927) a streetcar jumped tracks and hit the monument. It is unclear if this was deliberate by the driver. Then, in October 1969 an anti-United States terrorist organization called The Weather Underground bombed the statue, and within a year it had been rebuilt and bombed again supposedly by the same organization. A 24-hour police guard remained around the statue until 1972, when it was moved from the pedestal on which it stood to the grounds of the Chicago Police Academy. The pedestal remained for three decades known as ‘the Anarchist Landmark’. On March 25, 1992 a plaque was dedicated on the spot of the rally, and in 2004, a sculpture was placed on the spot where the original speakers wagon stood, it remains there to this day.

Bibliography:

Green, James. Death in the Haymarket. New York: Pantheon Books, 2006.
Ashbaugh, Carolyn. Lucy Parsons American Revolutionary. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1976.
Wade, Louise Carroll. Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and the Environs in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Sifakis, Carl. “John P. Altgeld and the Haymarket Riot.” The Encyclopedia of American Crime, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2001. Facts On File, Inc. American History Online. HYPERLINK "http://www.fofweb.com" www.fofweb.com.
Unknown Author. “For An Eight-Hour Day.” Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1963); May 2, 1886: ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 – 1985) pg. 11.
Thale, Christopher. “Haymarket and May Day.” The Encyclopedia of Chicago. Ed. James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, Janice L Reiff. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
“Haymarket Riot.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thursday March 8th, 2007, 10:53 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation. 8 March 2006 HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_Riot" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_Riot.