May 1st & the Haymarket Martyrs
by Dancing Larry
Sun May 1st, 2005 at 18:11:17 PDT
Daily Kos
So today is May 1st. Some small handful of those who visit this site may recall a now quaint and almost forgotten political movement known as "socialism". No day in the calendar was more important to the "socialists" than May 1st. All around the world it came to be recognized as International Workers Day, the day to honor working people and their struggles for social and economic justice. One of the few countries where May 1st was not so celebrated was the United States. And therein lies an irony, for the reason for the choice of that day began right here.
...a moment of silence for the Haymarket Martyrs.
Albert Parsons
On May 1, 1886, led by Albert Parsons of the Chicago Knights of Labor, 80,000 Chicago workers marched down Michigan Avenue, demanding the establishment of an 8 hour workday, and in solidarity with workers on strike at the great McCormick Reaper works. The call sent out from that march resonated immediately around the country, and upwards of 300,000 marched in similar demonstrations across the country inn the next few days.
At a follow-up rally on May 3rd, 6,000 Chicago workers led by August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers Newspaper), marched to the McCormick plant to set up a picket line to stopscabs from replacing the striking workers. The Chicago Police arrived almost immediately and opened fire on the demonstrators, killing four and wounding dozens more. Spies called a rally for the following night at Haymarket Square to denounce the police riot.
The rally on the evening of May 4th, attended by 2,500, went peacefully, despite the tension of the situation. Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison,worried about the situation, observed the rally from the beginning. Recognizing that the rally would be peaceful, he advised Police Captain John Bonfield to send the large force of police at the neighborhood station house home. At about 10pm, with rain starting to fall, the rally wound down, and the crowd had largely dispersed. Only about 200 people remained in the square, when suddenly Bonfield and about 180 police arrived at Haymarket Square, demanding the remnant to disperse immediately. What happened thereafter was chaos, and the facts have never been fully ascertained, but from somewhere a bomb was thrown into the ranks of the police. The police response was to fire indiscriminately into the crowd. The total number killed and injured by the bomb and the police firing remains unknown to this day.
Beginning that night, and for weeks following, a massive crackdown on all elements of the labor movement in Chicago was carried out by the authorities, with the press and the preachers whipping the city into an atmosphere of hysteria. Meeting halls, union offices, printing works and private homes were raided. All known socialists and anarchists were rounded up. Even many individuals ignorant of the meaning of socialism and anarchism were arrested and tortured. "Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards" was the public statement of Julius Grinnell, the state's attorney.
Eventually eight people were put on trial for the bomb throwing: Parsons, Spies, Samuel Fielden, and five anarchists active in the labor movement, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg and Oscar Neebe. The jury was composed of businessmen, their clerks, and a relative of one of the dead policemen.
There was no evidence ever presented that any of the eight men had anything to do with throwing the bomb, or even that there was any anticipation of violence. On the stand, Mayor Harrison described the speeches as "tame"; Parsons had in fact brought his two small children to the rally. It didn't matter; in the hysteria following the event, the labor and anarchist affiliations of th accused were sufficient to bring back guilty verdicts, seven sentenced to death, Neebe to 15 years in prison. After a massive international campaign for their release, the state 'compromised' and commuted the sentences of Schwab and Fielden to life imprisonment. Lingg cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell the day before the executions. On November 11th 1887 Parsons, Engel, Spies and Fischer were hanged.
600,000 working people turned out for their funeral. The campaign to free Neebe, Schwab and Fielden continued. On June 26th 1893 Governor Altgeld set them free. He made it clear he was not granting the pardon because he thought the men had suffered enough, but because they were innocent of the crime for which they had been tried. They and the hanged men had ben the victims of "hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge".
Today, who remembers or cares about Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, and George Engel and what they fought and died for?
In memoriam.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/1/211117/2896