Haymarket Riot

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Haymarket bombing redirects here, for the 2007 London car bombs in London, see 2007 London car bombs

Coordinates: 41.8849° N 87.6441° W

The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886 in Chicago is generally considered to have been an important influence on the origin of international May Day observances for workers.^[3] In popular literature this event inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating business and working class people in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. The site of the riot was designated as a Chicago Landmark on March 25, 1992.^[4] The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument in nearby Forest Park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark on February 18, 1997.^[1]

[edit] Strife and confrontation

[edit] May Day parade and strikes

In October 1884 a convention held by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada set May 1, 1886 as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become law.^[5] Meanwhile the Knights of Labor, a more conservative organization, opposed the strike.^[6]

On Saturday May 1 rallies were held throughout the United States. There were an estimated 10,000 demonstrators in New York and 11,000 in Detroit. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin some 12,000 workers turned out. Four days later, Wisconsin National Guard troops opened fire on the crowd of protesters, killing seven people in what came to be known as the Bay View Massacre. The biggest rally was in Chicago, where an estimated 90,000 people participated. Albert Parsons was an anarchist and founder of the International Working People's Association. He and his wife Lucy Parsons along with their seven children led marchers down Michigan Avenue. Over the next few days an estimated 350,000 workers nationwide went on strike at 1,200 factories.

On May 3 striking workers in Chicago met near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. plant. A fight broke out when replacement workers attempted to cross the picket lines. Chicago police intervened and attacked the strikers, killed four and wounded several others, sparking outrage in the city's working community.

Local anarchists quickly printed and distributed fliers calling for a rally the following day at Haymarket Square (also called the Haymarket), which at the time was a bustling commercial center near the corner of Randolph Street and Des Plaines Street 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 surviving flyer printed in both German and English contains the words Workingmen Arm Yourselves and Appear in Full Force!^[7]

[edit] Rally at Haymarket Square

The rally began peacefully under a light rain on the evening of May 4. August Spies spoke to the large crowd while standing in an open wagon on Des Plaines Street.^[8] 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 bomb was thrown at the police line and exploded, killing policeman Mathias J. Degan.^[9] The police immediately opened fire. While several police officers aside from Degan appear to have also been injured by the bomb, most of the police casualties seem to have been caused by bullets. About sixty officers were wounded in the riot along with an unknown number of civilians. In all, seven policemen and at least four workers were killed. However, it is unclear how many workers were wounded since the injured were afraid to seek medical attention, fearing punishment for their part in the riot.^[10][11][12]

[edit] Trial, executions and pardons

Eight people connected directly or indirectly with the rally and its anarchist organizers were arrested afterward and 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 a U.S. citizen of German descent. Two other individuals were indicted, but never brought to trial. William Seliger turned state's evidence and testified for the prosecution. Rudolph Schnaubelt fled the country before he could be brought to trial.

The trial started on June 21 and was presided over by Judge Joseph Gary. The defense counsel included Sigmund Zeisler, William Perkins Black, William Foster and Moses Salomon. The prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing but argued that the person who had thrown the bomb had been encouraged to do so by the defendants, who as conspirators were therefore equally responsible. Albert Parsons' brother claimed there was evidence linking the Pinkertons to the bomb.^[13]

The jury returned guilty verdicts for all eight defendants, with death sentences for seven. Neebe received a sentence of 15 years in prison. The sentencing sparked outrage from budding labor and workers movements, resulted in protests around the world and made the defendants international political celebrities and heroes within labor and radical political circles. Meanwhile the press published often sensationalized accounts and opinions about the incident which polarized public reaction. For example, Journalist George Frederic Parsons wrote a piece for the Atlantic Monthly articulating the fears of middle-class Americans concerning labor radicalism, asserting workers had only themselves to blame for their troubles.^[14]

The case was appealed in 1887 to the Supreme Court of Illinois,^[15] then to the Supreme Court of the United States where the defendants were represented by John Randolph Tucker, Roger Atkinson Pryor, General Benjamin F. Butler and William P. Black. The petition for certiorari was denied.^[16]

After the appeals had been exhausted Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby commuted Fielden's and Schwab's sentences to life in prison on November 10, 1887. On the eve of his scheduled execution Lingg committed suicide in his cell with a smuggled dynamite cap which he reportedly held in his mouth like a cigar (the blast blew off half his face and he survived in agony for six hours).^[17]

The next day (November 11, 1887) Spies, Parsons, Fischer and Engel were taken to the gallows in white robes and hoods. They sang the Marseillaise, the anthem of the international revolutionary movement. Family members including Lucy Parsons who attempted to see them for the last time were arrested and searched for bombs (none were found). August Spies was widely quoted as having shouted out in the moments before they were hanged, "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.^{[citation needed]}

Lingg, Spies, Fischer, Engel and Parsons were buried at the German Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Schwab and Neebe were also buried at Waldheim when they died, reuniting the "Martyrs." In 1893 the Haymarket Martyrs Monument by sculptor Albert Weinert was raised at Waldheim. Over a century later it was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior, the only cemetery memorial to be noted as such.

The trial has been characterized as one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in United States history.^[18] Most working people believed Pinkerton agents had provoked the incident.^[19] 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 governor said the real reason for the bombing was the city of Chicago's failure to hold Pinkerton guards responsible for shooting workers.^[20] The pardons ended his political career.

The police commander who ordered the dispersal was later convicted of corruption. The bomb thrower was never identified.^[21]

[edit] Who threw the bomb?

While admitting none of the defendants were involved in the bombing, the prosecution made a very weak argument Lingg had built the bomb and two prosecution witnesses (Harry Gilmer and Malvern Thompson) tried to imply the bomb thrower was helped by Spies, Fischer and Schwab.^[22] The defendants claimed they had no knowledge of the bomber at all.

Several activists including Dyer Lum, Voltairine de Cleyre and Robert Reitzel later hinted they knew who the bomber was.^[23] Writers and other commentators have speculated about many possible suspects:

• Rudolph Schnaubelt (1863-1901) was an activist and the brother-in law of Michael Schwab. He was at the Haymarket when the bomb exploded. Schnaubelt was indicted with the other defendants but fled the city and later the country before he could be brought to trial. The prosecution assumed he was the bomb thrower. State witness Gilmer claimed to have seen him throw the bomb, but Schnaubelt did not resemble Gilmer's description of the bomber. Schnaubelt later wrote two letters from London disclaiming all responsibility. He is the most generally accepted and widely-known suspect mainly because of The Bomb, Frank Harris's 1908 fictionalization of the tragedy. Written from Schnaubelt's point of view the story opens with him confessing on his deathbed. However, Harris's description was fictional and those who knew Schnaubelt vehemently criticized the book.^[24]
• George Schwab was a German shoemaker who died in 1924. German anarchist Carl Nold claimed he learned Schwab was the bomber through correspondence with other activists but with no proof ever emerged. Paul Avrich also suspected Schwab but noted that while he was in Chicago at the time, he had only arrived days before. This contradicted statements by others who claimed the bomber was a well-known figure in Chicago.^[25].
• George Meng (b. around 1840) was a German anarchist and teamster who owned a small farm outside of Chicago where he had settled in 1883 after emigrating from Bavaria. He was a delegate at the Pittsburgh Congress and a member of the North Side Group of the IWPA. Meng's granddaughter Ada Maurer sent Paul Avrich a letter in which she claimed her mother (who was Meng's younger daughter) had said her father was the bomber and that Schnaubelt had fled to the Meng farm after the bombing. Meng died sometime before 1907 in a saloon fire.^[26]
• An agent provocateur was suggested by some members of the anarchist movement. Albert Parsons believed the bomber was a member of the police or the Pinkerton's agency trying to undermine the labor movement. However this contradicts the statements of several activists who said the bomber was one of their own. Lucy Parsons and Johann Most both rejected this notion. Dyer D. Lum said it was "puerile" to ascribe "the Haymarket bomb to a Pinkerton."^[27]
• A disgruntled worker was suggested by Adolph Fischer, who when asked if he knew who threw the bomb, answered, "I suppose it was some excited workingman." Oscar Neebe said it was a "crank."^[28] Governor Altgeld speculated the bomb thrower might have been a disgruntled worker who was not associated with the defendants or the anarchist movement but had a personal grudge against the police. In his pardoning statement Altgeld said the record of police brutality towards the workers had invited revenge adding, "Capt. Bonfield is the man who is really responsible for the deaths of the police officers."^[29]
• Klemana Schuetz was identified as the bomber by Franz Mayhoff, a New York anarchist and fraudster, who claimed in an affidavit that Schuetz had once admitted throwing the Haymarket bomb. August Wagener, Mayhoff's attorney, sent a telegram from New York to defense attorney Captain William Black the day before the executions and claimed knowledge of the bomber's identity (but did not name Schuetz). Black tried to delay the execution with this telegram but Governor Ogelsby refused. It was later learned Schuetz was the primary witness against Mayhoff at his trial for insurance fraud so Mayhoff's affidavit has never been regarded as credible by historians.^[30]
• Thomas Owen was a carpenter from Pennsylvania. Severely injured in an accident, he reportedly confessed to the bombing on his deathbed a week before the executions by saying, "I was at the Haymarket riot and am an anarchist and say that I threw a bomb in that riot." He was both an anarchist and apparently in Chicago at the time but other accounts note that long before his accident he had said he was at the Haymarket and saw the bomb thrower. Owen may have only been trying to save the condemned men.^[31]
• Reinold "Big" Krueger was killed by police either in the melee after the bombing or in a separate disturbance the next day and has been named as a suspect but there is no supporting evidence.^[32]
• A mysterious outsider was reported by John Philip Deluse, a saloon keeper in Indianapolis who claimed he encountered a stranger in his saloon the day before the bombing. The man was carrying a satchel and on his way from New York to Chicago. According to Deluse the stranger was very interested in the labor situation in Chicago, repeatedly pointed to his satchel and said, "You will hear of some trouble there very soon."^[33] Parsons used Deluse's testimony to suggest the bomb thrower was sent by eastern capitalists.^[34] Nothing more was ever learned about Deluse's claim.

[edit] 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 May 4 1927, the 41st anniversary of the riot, a streetcar jumped its tracks and crashed into the monument (statements made by the driver suggested this may have been 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 academy in 1972. The statue's empty, graffiti-marked pedestal stood in the desolate remains of Haymarket Square for another three decades, where it was known as an anarchist landmark.

In 1985, scholars doing research for a possible centennial commemoration of the riot were surprised to learn that most of the primary source documentation relating to the incident was not in Chicago, but had been transferred to then-communist East Berlin.

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 September 14 2004 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 proposed "Labor Park" there, is meant to symbolize both the assembly at Haymarket and free speech. The planned site was to include an international commemoration wall, sidewalk plaques, a cultural pylon, seating area and banners but three years later work had not yet begun and on June 1, 2007 the Gelert statue was rededicated at Chicago Police Headquarters with a new pedestal.

[edit] See also

• Dyer Lum, close associate of the defendants who wrote an account of the case in 1891.
• Bay View Massacre (in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 5, 1886)
• May Day Riots of 1894
• First Red Scare of 1917-1920
• May Day Riots of 1919
• Palmer Raids of 1919
• Wall Street Bombing of 1920

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Haymarket Memorial, 2005
• Haymarket Monument, Waldheim Cemetery
• The Chicago Historical Society Haymarket Affair Digital Collection
• Illinois vs. August Spies et al. trial transcript
• Illinois vs. August Spies et al. trial transcript
• Anarchist Archives The Haymarket Massacre Archive
• The Haymarket Martyrs
• The Haymarket Monument
• Mayday and the Haymarket Martyrs
• The Haymarket Massacre Anarchy Now! page
• Officer Down Memorial Page
• Library of Congress Memory page
• Death in the Haymarket:A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing that Divided Gilded-Age America
• Ripley's Believe It or Not! purchases Cook County gallows used to execute Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel for $68,300 [2]
• Meet the Haymarket Defendants

[edit] External images

• Late 19th century postcard view of Haymarket Square
• The police monument at its original site in Haymarket Square
• Gelert's Union League Club statue in the courtyard of Chicago police headquarters
• Brogger's sculpture at Haymarket Square during the winter of 2004-05
• Image of Haymarket rally flyer with controversial call for workers to come armed

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