On May 1, 1886 (on May Day), labor unions organized a strike for an eight hour work day in Chicago, Illinois, United States. On May 3, a small riot occurred at the McCormick Harvester Plant in which there was a shooting and one fatality when police tangled with the rioters.

Violence escalated on May 4 when a protest meeting began in Haymarket Square. During this meeting to denounce the events of the previous days, the police began to disperse the crowd when someone threw a bomb, killing twelve people. Policeman Mathias J. Degan was killed almost instantly and seven other policemen later succumbed to injuries. Some of the speakers earlier in the day had been anarchists, and so the crime was presumed to have been committed by an anarchist, despite the fact that no evidence for such a link could be demonstrated.

Although nobody ever identified the bomb-thrower, eight men, mostly of German descent, who were involved in organizing the rallies were accused of the crime and found guilty. Seven of the men were sentenced to death and the eighth was sentenced to fifteen years in prison by Judge Joseph Gary, despite a startling lack of evidence that any of them had any role in the bombing. The sentencing sparked outrage in international labor circles, resulting in protests all around the world.

Eventually, Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer were hanged. Louis Lingg committed suicide in his cell using a smuggled stick of dynamite to effectively behead himself. On June 26, 1893, Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld signed a pardon for Samuel Fielden , Oscar Neebe , and Michael Schwab . Altgeld's predecessor Richard Ogelsby had already commuted Fielden and Schwab to life in prison after admitting their innocence. Altgeld's pardon not only freed the three remaining men, it also sealed his own political demise.

August Spies is widely quoted as having said at his execution: "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."

Following the executions Lingg, Spies, Fischer, Engel and Parsons were buried in Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago. Over the years they were joined there by many notable leftists including Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood, half of whose ashes are buried in Waldheim, the other half are in the Kremlin. In 1893 the Haymarket Martyrs Monument by sculptor Albert Weinert was raised at Waldheim cemetery. It was later named a National Historic Monument by the Department of the Interior, the only cemetery memorial to receive that distinction.

In 1889, a 9-foot tall bronze statue of a Chicago policeman by sculptor Johannes Gelert was erected near the site of the riot. The statue was long a subject of debate and scorn. A year after it was set up the first attempt to blow it up occurred, so it was moved. On May 4, 1927 (oddly enough, the anniversary of the Riot) a street car jumped its tracks and crashed into the monument, and it was moved again. After being moved from its original location, it was blown up at least twice more, in October 1969 and again a year later, reportedly by the Weather Underground. Mayor Richard Daley Sr. then placed a 24 hour police guard around the statue for the ensuing two years, before being moved to the lobby of police headquarters in 1972. The statue's empty pedestal can still be found in Chicago.

The site is now marked by a bronze plaque about two feet square set into the sidewalk, reading:

"A decade of strife between labor and industry culminated here in a confrontation that resulted in the tragic death of both workers and policemen. On May 4, 1886, spectators at a labor rally had gathered around the mouth of Crane's Alley. A contingent of police approaching on DesPlaines Street were met by a bomb thrown from just south of the alley. The resultant trial of eight activists gained worldwide attention for the labor movement, and initiated the tradition of "May Day" labor rallies in many cities."

Designated on March 25, 1992

Richard M. Daley, Mayor

Related articles

• History of the United States (1865-1918)

Sources

• Bach, Ira and Mary Lackritz Gray, Chicago's Public Sculpture, University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1983
• Hucke, Matt and Ursula Bielski, Graveyards of Chicago, Lake Claremont Press, Chicago Il 1999
• Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, Haymarket -A Century Later, unpublished manuscript
• Riedy, James L, Chicago Sculpture University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL 1981

External link

• The Haymarket Martyrs