It’s May Day and I expect my granddaughters will hang their May Day baskets through out the neighborhood after school. It’s a tradition I didn’t grow up with in AZ but since moving to MN I look forward to my basket every year.
Now, you may be wondering… If this diary is about International Workers Day, why am I talking about my granddaughters and baskets? Well, as my daughter and her daughters make their baskets every year, she tells them about workers rights and labor unions. My daughter is also the one who introduced me to the story of the Haymarket Riot on May 4 , 1886. I was going to be visiting Chicago, traveling by train, and she told be to look up the statue which is close to Union Station.
What started out as a national strike for 8 hour work days on May 1, turned into a deadly riot by May 4th in Chicago. From the Illinois Labor History Society:
On May 1st 1886, 80,000 workers marched up Michigan Avenue everywhere slogans were heard like "Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!"...
On Sunday, May 2, Albert [Parsons] went to Ohio to organize rallies there, while Lucy [Parson] and others staged another peaceful march of 35,000 workers. But on Monday, May 3, the peaceful scene turned violent when the Chicago police attacked and killed picketing workers at the McCormick Reaper Plant at Western and Blue Island Avenues. This attack by police provoked a protest meeting which was planned for Haymarket Square on the evening of Tuesday, May 4…
The Haymarket meeting was almost over and only about two hundred people remained when they were attacked by 176 policemen carrying Winchester repeater rifles… Then someone, unknown to this day, threw the first dynamite bomb ever used in peacetime history of the United States. The police panicked, and in the darkness many shot at their own men. Eventually, seven policemen died, only one directly accountable to the bomb. Four workers were also killed, but few textbooks bother to mention this fact...
The next day martial law was declared, not just in Chicago but throughout the nation. Anti-labor governments around the world used the Chicago incident to crush local union movements. In Chicago, labor leaders were rounded up, houses were entered without search warrants and union newspapers were closed down. Eventually eight men, representing a cross section of the labor movement were selected to be tried…
On August 20, 1886, the jury reported its verdict of guilty with the death penalty by hanging for seven of the Haymarket Eight, and 15 years of hard labor for Neebe. On November 10, the day before the execution, Samuel Gompers came from Washington to appeal to Governor Oglesby for the last time. The national and worldwide pressure did finally force the Governor to change the sentences of Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab to imprisonment for life. Although 5 of the 8 were still to be hanged the next day, on the morning of November 10, Louis Lingg was found in his cell, his head half blown away by a dynamite cap. The entire event was most mysterious, since Lingg was hoping to receive a pardon that very day. Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Albert Parsons and August Spies were hanged on November 11, 1887. In June of 1893, Governor John P. Altgeld pardoned the 3 men still alive and condemned the entire judicial system that had allowed this injustice.
The article also includes:
The real issues of the Haymarket Affair were freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to free assembly, the right to a fair trial by a jury of peers and the right of workers to organize and fight for things like the eight-hour day.
The History Channel takes a slightly different view:
The American labor movement during this time also included a radical faction of socialists, communists and anarchists who believed the capitalist system should be dismantled because it exploited workers. A number of these labor radicals were immigrants, many of them from Germany.
I’m also adding a link to this Library of Congress guide. It includes resources and a collection of newspaper articles of the time
I’m sure there are many on DKos who can tell the story of Labor Unions and Workers Rights better than me. That’s what I love about this site, I learn so much.
And I wish that everyone could receive a basket of flowers on their doorstep today.
Lenny Frank’s diary May Day History: The Haymarket Riot that he publishes every year tells the story so much better than I ever could.