Haymarket affair
The Haymarket Riot on 4 May 1886 in Chicago, Illinois is the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the inaccurate caricature of "the bomb-throwing anarchist". The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business and working communities in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath.
Strike at the McCormick reaper plant
On May 1, 1886 (later known as May Day), labor unions organized a strike for an eight-hour work day in Chicago. By 21st century standards, working conditions in the city were miserable, with most workers working ten to twelve hour days, often six days a week under sometimes dangerous conditions. On May 3 striking workers met near the Cyrus McCormick reaper plant. Chicago police attacked the strikers without warning, killing two, wounding several others and sparking outrage in the city's working community.
Local anarchists distributed fliers calling for a rally at Haymarket Square, then a bustling commercial center (also called the Haymarket) near the corner of Randolph Street and Desplaines Avenue in what was later called Chicago's west Loop. These fliers alleged police had murdered the strikers on behalf of business interests and urged workers to seek justice. One flier insisted they fight back with weapons:
To arms, we call you, to arms!
However, few copies of this version are known to have been distributed.
Rally at Haymarket Square
The rally began peacefully under a light rain on the evening of 4 May. Anarchist leader August Spies spoke to the large crowd while standing in an open wagon on a side street. According to many witnesses Spies said he was not there to incite anyone. Meanwhile a large number of on-duty police officers watched from nearby. The crowd was so calm that Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr., who had stopped by to watch, walked home early. Some time later the police ordered the rally to disperse and began marching in formation towards the speakers' wagon. A lit, fused bomb whistled over the heads of onlookers and landed near the police line, killing twelve people including a policeman, Mathias J. Degan (seven other policemen later died from their injuries). The police immediately opened fire on the crowd, injuring dozens. Many of the wounded were afraid to visit hospitals for fear of being arrested. A total of eleven people died.
Trial, executions and pardons
Eight people connected directly or indirectly with the rally and its anarchist organisers were charged with Degan's murder: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Oscar Neebe. Five (Spies, Fischer, Engel, Lingg and Schwab) were German immigrants while a sixth, Neebe, was of German descent. The trial was presided over by Judge Joseph Gary. The prosecution never offered evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing but argued that the person who had thrown the bomb had been incited to do so by the defendants, who as a result were equally responsible. The jury returned guilty verdicts for all eight defendants, with death sentences for seven. Neebe (who seemed to have been almost forgotten by the prosecution) received a sentence of 15 years in prison. The sentencing sparked more outrage in labor circles, resulted in protests around the world and made the defendants international political celebrities and heroes.
After the appeals had been exhausted Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby commuted Fielden's and Schwab's sentences to life in prison. On the eve of his scheduled execution Lingg committed suicide in his cell using a smuggled stick of dynamite, which he reportedly held in his mouth like a cigar (the blast blew off half his face and he survived in agony for several hours). The next day, November 11, 1887, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged together before a public audience. August Spies was widely quoted as having said, "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today." Witnesses reported that the condemned did not die when they dropped, but strangled to death slowly, a sight which left the audience visibly shaken.
Lingg, Spies, Fischer, Engel and Parsons were buried at Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago (as were Schwab and Neebe when they died). 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 United States Department of the Interior, the only cemetery memorial to have received that distinction.
On June 26, 1893 Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld signed pardons for Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab after having concluded all eight defendants were innocent (the pardons signalled his own political end).
The police commander who ordered the dispersal was later convicted of unrelated corruption. The bomb thrower was never identified, although some anarchists privately indicated they had later learned his identity but kept quiet to avoid further violence and death. The trial is often referred to by scholars as one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in United States history.
Haymarket Square in the aftermath
In 1889 a commemorative nine-foot bronze statue of a Chicago policeman by sculptor Johannes Gelert was erected in the middle of Haymarket Square with private funds raised by the Union League Club of Chicago. On the 41st anniversary of the riot, 4 May 1927, a street car jumped its tracks and crashed into the monument (statements made by the driver suggested this was deliberate). The city moved it to nearby Lincoln Park. During the early 1960s, freeway construction erased about half of the old, run down market square and the statue was moved back to a spot on a newly built outcropping overlooking the freeway, near its original location. In October 1969 it was blown up, repaired by the city and blown up again a year later, reportedly by the Weather Underground. Mayor Richard J. Daley placed a 24-hour police guard around the statue for two years before it was moved to the enclosed courtyard of Chicago police headquarters in 1972. The statue's empty, graffiti marked pedestal stood in the desolate remains of Haymarket Square for another three decades and was known as an anarchist landmark.
In 1985, scholars doing research for a possible centenial commemoration of the riot were shocked to learn that most of the primary source documentation relating to the incident was not in Chicago but in East Berlin, at that time still in the German Democratic Republic, part of the communist-controlled Soviet bloc.
In 1992 the site of the speakers' wagon was marked by a bronze plaque 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 Des Plaines 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
On 14 September 2004, after 118 years of what some observers called civic amnesia, Daley and union leaders unveiled a monument by Chicago artist Mary Brogger, a fifteen-foot speakers' wagon sculpture echoing the wagon on which the labor leaders stood in Haymarket Square to champion the eight-hour day. The bronze sculpture, centerpiece of a new Labor Park there, is meant to symbolize both the assembly at Haymarket and free speech. The site includes an international commemoration wall, sidewalk plaques, a cultural pylon, seating area and banners.
Related articles
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 links
- The Haymarket Martyrs
- The Haymarket Monument
- The Haymarket Affair Digital Archive
- The Haymarket Massacre Archive
