Haymarket Square Riot
Setting a day aside to honor workers is a custom celebrated around the world. In nearly every country that day is the 1st of May, also known as May Day. The United States is an exception, celebrating Labor Day on the first Monday in September. That’s been the case since 1894, when President Grover Cleveland made Labor Day a federal holiday. Why not the 1st of May, the day globally recognized as International Workers Day? The answer goes back a decade before the establishment of the holiday, to the tragedy in Chicago’s Haymarket Square.
May Day
Known as the Haymarket Massacre, the Haymarket Affair, or the Haymarket Riot, depending on the source, that began as a peaceful gathering on 4 Ma, 1886 in Chicago ended in a bombing, brawls, and gunshots. It forever changed the American labor rights movement.
In the 1880s, Chicago was one of the biggest cities in the world, marshalling the power of the industrial revolution with a booming meat-packing industry, steel mills, and a central rail transportation hub. In order to accomplish this, however, labor was required. A lot of labor. Much of that labor was performed by recent American immigrants.
One of those immigrants was August Spies (1855 -1887). Born in Hesse, Germany to a well-to-do family, when his father, a forester, died suddenly, he left the 22-year-old young man in desperate financial straits. August Spies decided his odds of success were better in America, and he moved to Chicago the same year.
Life as a laborer in Chicago was, without question, a hard life. Should they be injured or even killed on the job, workers rarely received compensation from their employers. Workplace safety was almost completely unregulated. For most of the 19th century and well into the 20th, a 12-hour workday was normal, as were 6- and 7-day workweeks. Children worked, too.
Spies was shocked by the working conditions in Chicago and as a result helped found the International Working People's Association, marching with firearms in the streets for workers’ rights. He also became the editor of the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, a German-language newspaper founded by union veterans of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. As the tension between workers and owners escalated in the 1880s, strikes and national demonstrations in support of an eight-hour workday were planned around the country for the 1st of May.
On that day, Spies led a march of 80,000 workers down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue in support of a more humane workday. The strikes led to a riot that broke out between striking workers and their replacements at the McCormick Harvester factory, and the police fired into the crowd, killing two and perhaps as many as seven. Spies was outraged and called for a peaceful demonstration on the 4th of May.
Between 500 and 3,000 people were estimated to have attended the 4th of May gathering. According to observers, it was a calm and even somewhat boring event. After several hour-long speeches on economic philosophy, many in the crowd left early. As the people dispersed, however, someone (never identified) threw a bomb into the street and it exploded, injuring many bystanders, killing a policeman, and sending the crowd into a panic. Chicago police once again fired directly into the crowd of civilians, this time four civilians and seven police officers died.
The massacre in the middle of downtown Chicago shocked the city and the world and the ensuing trial became a flashpoint for international labor reformers. Eight men were tried for the murders: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Georg Engel, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Oscar Neebe and Samuel Fielden. All were labor activists of varying degrees of radicalism and were lumped together simply as the “eight anarchists.” Most were immigrants, and six of the eight could show they were not even in attendance at the rally, while the other two, Spies and Fielden, were plainly visible onstage when the bomb was thrown.
The Haymarket Trial was the anti-labor faction’s best chance to discredit immigrant labor, the eight-hour day campaign, and the labor movement itself. Most of the media piled on, with headlines such as, "Anarchy's Red Hand--Rioting and Bloodshed in the Streets of Chicago," and “Anarchy’s Dripping Hand: Fresh Outbreaks of Treason in Chicago Yesterday; Dynamite Devils in Duress.”
Most historians today and even many observers at the time believed the trial was unfair to the defendants. The jury was hand-selected by the court bailiff instead of appointed randomly, ensuring no immigrant or union member was allowed on. The conduct of Judge Joseph Gary likewise revealed prejudices from the outset. The prosecution’s argument was based on questionable circumstantial evidence and relied on inciting fear. Lead prosecutor Julius Grinnell tried to dehumanize the defendants and told the court that acquitting the eight men would cause the “rats and vermin” [immigrant workers] who supported them to erupt in violence.
After a few hours of deliberation the jury found seven of the defendants guilty of murder and one, Oscar Neebe, one of the men not in attendance at the rally, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The other seven were sentenced to death.
Within a few months, Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted the sentence of Fielden and Schwab to life imprisonment. Louis Lingg took his life the night before the execution. One hundred thousand citizens signed a petition asking for mercy for the men, to no avail. Spies, Parsons, Engel, and Fischer were hanged on 11 November 1887, immediately becoming martyrs to the labor cause. Six years later, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld granted posthumous pardons to the executed men and set Oscar Neebe free. Most historians today view the Haymarket Trial as an example of defendants put on trial for their beliefs, not their actions. The eight-hour day movement had been defeated, for the moment.
The international labor movement chose the 1st of May to celebrate Labor Day, in honor of the deaths of the Chicago Eight. President Grover Cleveland moved the holiday away from the 1st of May, so as not to create a day that clearly honored the activists and might inspire more protest. Nevertheless, many of the labor movement’s future leaders were inspired and radicalized by the trial. Future leaders such as political activist Emma Goldman and labor leader Bill Haywood cited the Haymarket Trial as a turning point in their political consciousness.
The Haymarket Martyrs Monument was erected in 1893 in Forest Home Cemetery, where it stands today. Although the condemned men were not offered a formal opportunity to state their final words before their death, all four shouted defiantly from under their execution hoods. The last words of immigrant worker and activist August Spies are engraved on the Haymarket Martyrs Monument: "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”
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They Came in Droves to the Windy City
To say that the state of Illinois, and more specifically the city of Chicago, encompasses a great heterogeneity of cultures is an understatement. In our country of immigrants, few cities represent the diversity of those ethnicities more than in the Windy City. Fueled by rapid economic expansion and growing industrialization, the influx of immigrants to America during the mid-to late-19th century through the early 20th century, brought a significant number to the shores of Lake Michigan, eventually making Chicago one of the largest cities in the United States. As a matter of fact, at the onset of the Civil War, Chicogo had just over 100,000 inhabitants and the population expanded to nearly 2.2 million by 1910, despite the obstacles presented by the war itself and the Great Fire of 1871.
Not only did the more than 30-hour fire devastate the area, it also destroyed all existing county vital records and the majority of federal records. As family historians, our thoughts go beyond the records to the ancestors who may have lost their lives during the tragedy. All was not lost though, the pre-1871 census, land and military records, as well as published works, among others, are extant and can prove to be informative sources for piecing together the history of your ancestors that called the City by the Lake home.
Immigrants tended to gravitate towards those of the same heritage with whom they shared cultural or religious beliefs and customs. As such, many immigrants joined cultural-heritage organizations and settled in neighborhoods that were dominant with residents of the same ethnicity. These organizations or a ethnically-specific genealogy society, such as the Czech & Slovak American Genealogy Society of Illinois, often hold records of biographical importance Many communities that were comprised largely of a single ethnic group established newspapers written in their native language, such as the Dziennik Chicagoski, a Polish-language newspaper published in Chicago, beginning in 1890.
The combination of city directories and maps are an often underutilized resource in genealogical research. Digital images of city directories are available through many online archives, including this Fold3 collection of Chicago city directories spanning the years of 1843-1916. Once you identify an address for an ancestor in a directory, or other record, search for the address in the interactive map provided by ChicagoAncestors.org. Immigrant ancestors not only gravitated toward and settled in areas with others who shared the same or similar heritage, they tended to work, worship and socialize within close proximity to their residence. The address search will provide you with additional information about the community where your ancestors lived, leading to potential church or synagogue records, employment records, organization records and more.
The historical records left behind by our Chicagoan ancestors are abundant and can reveal biographical information that is priceless. Genealogical treasures await you!
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Helpful Resources
The Luck of the Irish – Irish Migration Patterns and Resources and Jewish Genealogy: Periods of Mass Emigration and Immigration provides great insight into researching your immigrant ancestors in records of the United States.
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Sources….Duh!!
NPR (https://www.npr.org/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “The Haymarket Riot Remembered.”
Patrick T. Reardon, The Chicago Tribune (https://www.chicagotribune.com/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “The Haymarket Incident.”
Robert Loerzel, WBEZ Chicago (https://www.wbez.org/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “After Haymarket: Anarchism On Trial And A City In Search Of Its Soul.”
Eric Chase, Industrial Workers of the World (https://archive.iww.org/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “The Brief Origins of May Day.”
Mark Aldrich, Economic History Services (https://eh.net/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “History of Workplace Safety in the United States, 1880-1970.”
PBS (https://www.pbs.org/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “Eight Anarchists.”
The University of Chicago Library (https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “Chicago, 1900-1914.”
CyberDriveIllinois (https://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “Early Chicago, 1833–1871.”
Judy G. Russell, The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “Up in Flames.”
Herman Kogan, UChicago Magazine (https://mag.uchicago.edu/ : accessed 28 April 2021), “The Great Fire: Chicago 1871.”
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"Anarchy’s Dripping Hand: Fresh Outbreaks of Treason in Chicago Yesterday; Dynamite Devils in Duress," Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York), 6 May 1886, digital images, Newspapers.com (https://newspapers.com : accessed 28 April 2021), citing print edition,p. 1, cols. 1-4.
"Anarchy's Red Hand - Rioting and Bloodshed in the Streets of Chicago," The New York Times (New York, New York), 5 May 1886, digital images, The New York Times (https://nytimes.com : accessed 28 April 2021), citing print edition, p. 1, col. 1-4.
Library of Congress, Geography and Maps Division, digital images, Library of Congress (https://loc.gov : accessed 28 April 2021), digital image of original map, “Map showing the burnt district in Chicago : published for the benefit of the Relief Fund,” (St. Louis: R. P. Studley, [187?]) digital id g4104c.ct003153.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, digital images, Library of Congress (https://loc.gov : accessed 28 April 2021), digital image of original print, “The first dynamite bomb thrown in America" May 4th, 1886. The personnel of the great anarchist trial at Chicago. Begun Monday June 21st 1886. Ended Friday, August 20th 1886,” (Chicago: Inter Ocean Co., [1886]) digital id g4104c.ct003153ppmsca.19510.
Wikimedia Commons, database with images (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old St Patrick's Church.jpg : 28 April 2021), digital image of original print, “File:Old St Patrick's Church.jpg;” photograph uploaded by user Raeky.
Wikimedia Commons, database with images (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HaymarketRiot-Harpers.jpg : 28 April 2021), digital image of original illustration, “File:HaymarketRiot-Harpers.jpg;” photograph uploaded by user V4711.
