Haymarket Riot
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Early in 1886 labor unions were beginning a movement for an eight-hour day. Union activists called a one day general strike in Chicago. On May 1 many Chicago workers struck for shorter hours. An active group of radicals and anarchists became involved in the campaign. Two days later a shooting and one death occurred during a riot at the McCormick Reaper plant when police tangled with the strikers.
On May 4 events reached a tragic climax at Haymarket Square, an open market near Des Plaines Ave. and Randolph St., where a protest meeting was called to denounce the events of the preceding day at the McCormick Works. Speakers exhorted the crowd from a wagon which was used for a makeshift stage. Mayor Carter Harrison joined the crowd briefly, then left, believing everything was orderly. Toward the end of this meeting, while police were undertaking to disperse the crowd, a bomb was exploded. Policeman Mathias J. Degan died almost instantly and seven other officers died later.
The following day, under the direction of State’s Attorney Julius Grinnel, police began a fierce roundup of radicals, agitators and labor leaders, siezing records and closing socialist and labor press offices. Eight men were finally brought to trial for conspiracy.
Despite the fact that the bomb thrower was never identified, and none of these eight could be connected with the crime, Judge Joseph E. Gary imposed the death sentence on seven of them and the eighth was given fifteen years in prison. The court held that the “inflammatory speeches and publications” of these eight incited the actions of the mob. The Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts upheld the verdict.
On November 11, 1887 four men, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel were hanged. Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison awaiting the death sentence. The sentences of two others were commuted from death to imprisonment for life. On June 26, 1893, Governor John P. Altgeld pardoned the three who were in the penitentiary.
Extracted from John J. Flinn’s 1887 History of the Chicago Police from the Settlement of Community to the Present Time
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