Haymarket
On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded during a workers’ rally on Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The workers were protesting the death of striking workers at the McCormick factory the previous day, as tensions mounted between workers fighting for the eight-hour labor day and the police.
The bomb killed one police officer immediately and wounded several. The other policemen panicked. Firing into the crowd and apparently also at each other, they killed at least four demonstrators and wounded a score more, while seven more police officers died of wounds sustained in the blast and from bullets.The incident brought an uneasy situation to a boil. An alliance of factory owners, media concerns, and members of the political establishment seized the opportunity to
destroy Chicago’s popular radical Left, especially the anarcho-syndicalist groups. Scores were arrested, and eventually eight anarchists, six of them German immigrants, were charged with the murder of the policemen. The trial degenerated into a mockery of justice. The prosecution (Julius S. Grinnell) failed to establish the involvement of any of the accused in the explosion, and police officers leading the investigation cooperated with the prosecution to create the impression of an anarchist “conspiracy” ready to use weapons of mass destruction against the city. A packed jury and a biased judge (Joseph E. Gary) sentenced seven of the eight defendants to death on the gallows on October 9, 1886. The verdict was upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court, and a petition for a writ of error was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Haymarket bomb explosion in Chicago, May 4, 1886, which killed 7police and wounded 70 others. The bomb was thrown after police dispersed an anarchist meeting. (Bettmann/Corbis)
Governor Richard Ogelsby refused an amnesty for the eight convicted men, but he reduced two sentences (Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab) to life imprisonment, while Oscar Neebe was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
Louis Lingg, probably the only really dangerous individual among the eight, committed suicide. August Spies, Albert Parsons, Georg Engel, and Adolph Fischer were hanged on November 11, 1887, amidst a wave of national and international protests.On June 26, 1893, after meticulously reviewing the evidence and the court protocols, Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the surviving Haymarket prison inmates, against the vociferous opposition of conservative circles and the press. Altgeld sealed his own political fate by his action, but Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab became free men again. Whoever threw the Haymarket bomb was never found out.
A monument to the dead anarchists was erected in the German Waldheim Cemetery (Forest Park, Illinois). An allegory of justice is shown placing a laurel wreath on the head of a fallen man. The base of the monument bears an inscription attributed to August Spies: “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.”
Wolfgang Hochbruck
See also Altgeld, John Peter; Anarchists;
Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law; Chicago
References and Further Reading
Adelman, William J. Haymarket Revisited: A Tour Guide of Labor History Sites and Ethnic Neighborhoods Connected with the Haymarket Affair. Chicago: Illinois Labor History Society, 1976.
Hausmann, Friederike. Die deutschen Anarchisten von Chicago, oder Warum Amerika den 1. Mai nicht kennt. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1998.