SYMHC Classics: Haymarket Riot

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Episode: SYMHC Classics: Haymarket Riot

Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Fry
Air Date: April 11, 2026 (original June 2, 2021)

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Episode Overview

This classic episode delves into the history of the Haymarket Riot (also known as the Haymarket Affair or Haymarket Massacre), a pivotal and complex event in American labor history that unfolded in Chicago in 1886. Holly and Tracy explore the roots and aftermath of the incident, the broader labor movement for an eight-hour workday, the influx of immigrants, growing tensions between workers and authorities, and the complicated legacy of the Haymarket events.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

I. The Context of Labor in Late 19th-Century America

• Setting the Stage (03:00 – 05:34)
  • The episode opens with the hosts reflecting on how current labor discussions connect to historical labor struggles, particularly the establishment of the eight-hour workday and 40-hour workweek.
  • Labor in 1880s Chicago was marked by long hours (10-16 hour days), low pay, and unsafe conditions. The push for an eight-hour day was a unifying demand among workers.

"There are a whole lot of different interconnected people and movements and events that have all been connected to this basic idea of what a full-time job is."
— Tracy V. Wilson (04:49)

• Industrialization and Demographic Changes (06:02 – 08:26)
  • Rapid industrialization led to both job losses (from mechanization) and new job opportunities, but with fierce competition.
  • Massive immigration from Europe (particularly Germany) and migration by freed slaves from the South fostered both hope and tension.

II. Early Movements & Legislation for Labor Reform

• Laws with Loopholes (09:14 – 10:47)

  • In 1867, Illinois passed a law limiting the workday to eight hours, but employers could evade it by requiring “special contracts.” Federal laws were similarly limited.

• Ongoing Activism & Political Diversity (10:47 – 12:34)

  • Despite laws, real change was limited; the labor movement included unionists focused on collective bargaining, as well as socialists, communists, and anarchists who saw capitalism as inherently corrupt.

III. The Tumult Leading to Haymarket

• Nationwide Mobilization (13:17 – 13:59)

  • In 1884, labor organizations called for a nationwide strike for the eight-hour day, culminating with May 1, 1886, as a day of action.

• Growing Hostility and Violence (17:22 – 19:10)

  • Police, militia, and private security routinely attacked or harassed strikers.
  • Anarchists' rhetoric sometimes included references to dynamite and violent resistance.

“Anarchist publications in particular did everything from waxing rhapsodic about the potential political power of dynamite to actually printing instructions on how to make bombs.”
— Tracy V. Wilson (18:25)

IV. The Haymarket Riot: Events Unfold (May 1–4, 1886)

• May 1–3: Rallies and Rising Tensions (19:10 – 21:36)

  • Large, peaceful rallies led by figures like Albert and Lucy Parsons.
  • On May 3rd, police killed at least one demonstrator outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, escalating tensions.

• Incendiary Response (21:36 – 23:06)

  • A handbill urging workers “to arms” with “REVENGE” added by the typesetter:

    "They killed them because they dared ask for the shortening of the hours of toil."
    — Tracy V. Wilson, quoting August Spies’ handbill (21:36)

• May 4: The Haymarket Rally & Bombing (23:14 – 26:17)

  • Initially peaceful, with only ~1,300 attendees and speeches by August Spies, Albert Parsons, and Samuel Fielden.
  • As the event waned, police moved in to disperse the remaining crowd. A bomb exploded amid police ranks, killing Officer Matthias J. Deegan instantly; chaos ensued with further deaths and injuries among both police and attendees.

“Just after that, someone threw a bomb into the police ranks. It detonated and Officer Matthias J. Deegan was killed instantly. Dozens more were injured, and the police opened fire on the crowd. Some of the people in the crowd were armed and returned fire.”
— Tracy V. Wilson (25:13)

V. The Aftermath: Crackdown and Trial

• Sweeping Repression (29:41 – 31:02)
  • Massive police raids on labor organizers, anarchists, and German immigrants. Labor meetings were banned; homes and offices were searched on scant evidence.

“‘Make the raids first and look up the law afterward.’”
— State’s Attorney Lewis Grinnell, quoted by Tracy V. Wilson (29:41)

• The Haymarket Trial (35:01 – 38:25)
  • Eight men were tried together—most German immigrants, only one (Samuel Parsons) US-born.
  • Jury selection was highly biased, with most jurors openly prejudiced.
  • Little evidence tied any of the convicted to the actual bombing; even defense-attending mayor Carter Harrison described the rally as “tame.”

“The jury deliberated for about three hours before finding all eight defendants guilty.”
— Tracy V. Wilson (38:07)

• Sentences and Martyrdom (38:25 – 41:02)
  • Seven were sentenced to death, one to 15 years hard labor. Final speeches included Lewis Ling’s defiant:

    “I despise your order, your laws, your force propped authority. Hang me for it.”
    — Lewis Ling (38:51)

  • Appeals failed. Ling committed suicide in jail; four were hanged in November 1887. The executed became labor martyrs to many; a funeral procession drew up to half a million people.

VI. Historical Interpretation & Legacy

• Reassessment and Controversy (41:02 – 42:23)

  • Historians long saw the Haymarket trial as a miscarriage of justice. New scholarship (Timothy Messer-Kruse, 2011–2012) challenged this, arguing for some fairness by the standards of the time and evidence of a wider conspiracy—but these views are controversial.

• Commemoration and Impact (42:23 – 45:10)

  • May 1st declared International Workers’ Day in honor of Haymarket.
  • Memorials erected for both police and labor martyrs.
  • Lingering xenophobia, anti-union sentiment, and the association of anarchism with violence resulted from the incident.
  • The labor movement paused its push for an eight-hour day, which was not widely codified until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1937.

“The bombing also stoked anti-union sentiments and xenophobia, and it really fueled a perception that anarchism was intrinsically connected to violence and terrorism.”
— Tracy V. Wilson (43:05)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Origins of the 8-Hour Workday & Labor Movement: 03:00 – 09:14
• Radicalization and Anarchist Influence: 10:47 – 13:59, 17:22 – 19:10
• May Day and Events Leading to Haymarket: 19:10 – 23:14
• The Haymarket Evening & Bombing: 23:14 – 26:17
• Aftermath: Crackdown & Trial: 29:41 – 41:02
• Historical Interpretations & Legacy: 41:02 – 45:10

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Memorable Quotes

• On Labor Activism's Modern Echoes:

  “So many of the things in this episode have parallels to discussions and events still happening now.”
  — Tracy V. Wilson (11:53)

• On the Hostility to Radical Thought:

  “People who opposed these groups generally saw communists, socialists, and anarchists as indistinguishable from one another and as antithetical to so-called American values.”
  — Holly Fry (12:06)

• On the Incendiary Handbill:

  “They killed them because they dared ask for the shortening of the hours of toil.”
  — August Spies, via Tracy V. Wilson (21:36)

• On the Controversial Trial:

  “Some historians have concluded that it was unfairly Biased... only two of the twelve selected jurors had a working-class background. The rest were businessmen, clerks, or salesmen.”
  — Tracy V. Wilson (35:41)

• Ling’s Defiant Speech Before Execution:

  “I despise your order, your laws, your force propped authority. Hang me for it.”
  — Lewis Ling (38:51)

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Tone & Style

Holly and Tracy bring clarity to this complicated historical episode, drawing clear links between past and present labor debates and maintaining a tone that is both analytical and empathetic. They emphasize the lack of easy answers and the resonance of these questions today.

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Conclusion

The Haymarket Riot remains a cornerstone of American and global labor history. Tracy and Holly’s episode underscores how a movement for fair work was met with violence, repression, and enduring questions about justice, rights, and remembrance—issues still encountered in labor discussions today.

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For further reading, listeners are directed to the February 16, 2022 SYMHC episode on Lucy Parsons, and to contemporary historical debates about Haymarket’s legacy.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Fry]

Happy Saturday. We have an upcoming episode that's going to make some references to the Haymarket Affair, also called the Haymarket Massacre or the Haymarket Riot. So we are bringing out our episode on that event for today's classic.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

As a note, Lucy Parsons is a big part of this episode, and we also have an episode about her that came out on February 16, 2022.

[Holly Fry]

This episode originally came out on June 2, 2021. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. And I'm.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Lately, I've been reading a lot of articles about the purported labor shortage in the United States. I feel like you maybe need to have been under a rock to have seen none of this discussion and discourse.

[Holly Fry]

I was gonna make a fake. Like, what? I haven't heard about this, but it's too on the nose.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. So there's just. I mean, there's been a lot of conversation about whether there's a labor shortage and whether it's not a labor shortage. It's like a shortage of jobs that are paying a living wage and have decent working conditions. But then I've read a bunch of other articles that are about how even that idea is a little oversimplified. And it's more that in the wake of the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic, people just all across the socioeconomic spectrum are reevaluating their lives and what they want to do with them and what kind of work they want to do. So all of that discourse has led me to just think a lot about how here in the United States, we arrived at a work week being at least theoretically 40 hours long, with a work day, again, theoretically eight hours long, and a weekend that falls on Saturday and Sunday. Like, all of that is just kind of random and arbitrary, and yet it feels almost like a given at this point.

[Holly Fry]

Right. That's just how the world works.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Even. Even if you're in an industry or a job where you work on Saturdays and Sundays. Like, I have been in those jobs before. Like, Saturday and Sunday were still the weekend, even though my weekend might be on a Tuesday and a Thursday, which are not even consecutive days off.

[Holly Fry]

Yes. In any conversations. Cause I, too, have had those jobs. People are always like, oh, you have to work the weekend. Like, you are always clearly the outlier if you have a job that doesn't fall on that Monday to Friday.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right. So, you know, I've just. I'VE been thinking about that a lot and how as a society that became a thing. And really there are a whole lot of different interconnected people and movements and events that have all been connected to this basic idea of what a full time job is. And some of them particularly stand out. One is the Haymarket Riot, also called the Haymarket Affair or the Haymarket Massacre. I really feel like none of those three terms really encapsulate what happened. That's been on our listener suggestion list for a long time and it's what we are going to talk about today. After all of my navel gazing about what a work week is.

[Holly Fry]

Oh yeah, we could get into a whole thing. Maybe we will on Friday. The Haymarket Riot took place in Chicago in 1886 during a period of widespread labor activism in Chicago and across the United States. Workers were facing a lot of the same issues that have come up pretty much every time we have discussed labor rights and the labor movement. So things like long hours and low pay and unsafe or otherwise poor working conditions.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. This also clearly was not just in the U.S. but that's where we're talking about today. And the United States had also been rapidly industrializing. People had been losing their jobs in the wake of that industrialization. Sometimes whole positions had just been eliminated as workplaces had become more mechanized. And in other cases, tasks that required some kind of specialized training or skills had been mechanized in a way that allowed employers to replace those workers with ones who had less training and could be paid lower wages.

[Holly Fry]

So the US Civil War had ended a little more than 20 years before in 1865, followed by the abolition of slavery, except in punishment for a crime. This had contributed to huge shifts all across the nation as industries that had relied on enslaved workers having to adjust to an economy where slavery was outlawed. This also led to demographic shifts nationwide as freed people from former slave states tried to move north to find work.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the 1870s and 1880s, huge numbers of people had also immigrated to the United States from Europe, especially from England, Ireland and Germany. These are the same years that the US Was also trying to curb immigration from Asia, especially from China. We have talked about that on several previous episodes of the show, including our recent one on Tsai Chomping. Most of these new arrivals were fleeing some kind of financial or economic hardship. And so this all led to even more competition for paying work. Economic factors compounded these job shortages, including the panic of 1873 and the economic depression that followed it.

[Holly Fry]

For Chicago specifically, these changes in the economic conditions connected to them were massive. In 1830, about 30 years before the start of the civil war, Chicago had basically been a small outpost with a population of only about 100 people. And then over the next 60 years, it became the second largest city in the US with a population of more than a million people. For comparison, the largest city in the world at that point was London, with a population of about 5 million. And in the late 19th century, more than 40% of Chicago's population were immigrants. At some points, that number was as much as half.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So working in most of Chicago's industries generally involved low pay and long hours. 10 to 12 hour work days, 6 days a week were really common. At packing houses, Shifts were often between 12 and 16 hours long, and mills usually ran in 12 hour shifts. So the idea of a shorter workday had become a big issue for labor activists, Coalescing around the idea of that a day should be eight hours long. One popular slogan basically divided the 24 hour day into thirds. It was eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will. Robert Owen, who we talked about in our episode on the New Harmony Utopia, is often credited with coining this phrase as eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.

[Holly Fry]

So by 1886, labor organizations in Chicago and elsewhere in the US had been working to shorten the workday for decades. And in theory, they had some success. On May 1, 1867, Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby signed a law establishing an eight hour day for workers in Illinois. On June 25, 1868, Congress passed an act doing the same for some federal workers. Other governments passed similar laws as well. But our focus here is Illinois.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So that federal law only applied to laborers, workmen and mechanics who were being paid by the federal government. So that was not everyone by any stretch. And the Illinois law contained some really big loopholes. It applied only, quote, where no special contract exists. And that meant employers could just completely get around it by getting their workers to sign special contracts. Employers threatened to close if their employees didn't agree to work longer shifts or they made new job offers contingent on the worker signing a waiver that just required that person to accept longer working hours.

[Holly Fry]

Labor activists in Illinois didn't think this law was good enough for obvious reasons. So they organized a statewide strike to begin on May 1, 1867. This strike partially nearly shut down the city of Chicago, and it lasted for about a week. But the strike eventually crumbled, and the eight hour law, which was already full of holes, Wasn't really enforced after that.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I found Conflicting accounts about whether the city of Chicago was just totally brought to a standstill or if it was more like specific sectors of Chicago. Yeah, grounds to a halt. For the next two decades though, activists and organizers in Chicago and in the rest of the US kept working toward an eight hour workday, even though these two laws were already supposedly guaranteeing that for at least some people. Aside from this focus on an eight hour day though, a lot of these people who were doing this work did not share the same political perspectives. Some labor organizations were focused on the idea of collective bargaining and trying to secure better working conditions, shorter hours and higher pay for workers while operating within the structures of capitalism. But there were also socialists, communists and anarchists who worked more from the idea that capitalism was inherently corrupt and exploitive and that the capitalist system needed to be dismantled entirely.

[Holly Fry]

I'm just marveling at the ongoing discussion that remains the same forever.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, the thing that led me to this episode was this whole thing about like, what's a work week? Why? Why is it this way? But so many of the things in this episode have parallels to discussions and events still happening now.

[Holly Fry]

For sure, anarchists in particular were focusing on the idea of an 8 hour workday at a 10 hour pay rate. This was something that employers were not likely to accept at all. And it was more of a tool to try to push workers to demand more radical changes. People who opposed these groups generally saw communists, socialists and anarchists as indistinguishable from one another and as antithetical to so called American values.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So we noted earlier that about 40% of Chicago's population were immigrants and many of these immigrants were from Germany. Many of the labor movements, communists, socialists and anarchist members were also German. But Chicago's German immigrant community was just. It was not monolithic at all. They represented a whole spectrum of the population of Germany. They had arrived in the US for a range of reasons and in pursuit of a range of goals. But especially after the events that we're going to talk about, German immigrants were also grouped together as like one indistinguishable mass, regardless of their individual politics or backgrounds. Once again under the idea that they were opposing American values.

[Holly Fry]

In 1884, nearly two decades after the federal government in Illinois had each passed laws setting a workday as eight hours. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor unions called for May 1, 1886, to mark the start of a massive nationwide movement for an eight hour workday for everyone. The Knights of Labor and the International Working People's association iwpa, which was an anarchist organization were also part of this eight hour workday movement. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions organized a national strike and huge demonstrations, rallies, parades and other events were held all over the United States.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The Haymarket riot took place just a few days after the start of this national event and we will talk about it after a sponsor break. We're lost. It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm gonna ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Before the break, we talked about activism that had been ongoing for just decades before this national strike started on May 1st of 1886. But we didn't get into how those same decades were often very violent. In general, business owners, political leaders and the public saw striking workers as a threat. So police, militia, Pinkerton detectives, and sometimes even the National Guard frequently tried to dissect, disperse, striking and demonstrating workers with force, or to intimidate and terrify them into backing down on their demands.

[Holly Fry]

Leading up to the Haymarket incident In May of 1885, Illinois militia had killed two striking workers in Lamont, and today that's a suburb of Chicago. Three months later, bystanders were beaten during a strike at the West Division Railway Company. Anytime there was a labor demonstration of any size, law enforcement tended to be on edge, regardless of who was there and whether the demonstration itself was peaceful.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But parts of this movement were also employing violent rhetoric and actual violence. Dynamite had been invented in 1867 and had made it a lot easier for people to make and transport bombs. Anarchist publications in particular did everything from waxing rhapsodic about the potential political power of dynamite to actually printing instructions on how to make bombs. August Spies, who was editor of the German language anarchist newspaper Arbeiter Zeitung, kept a pipe on his desk that he said was a bomb. In April of 1885, the Radical newspaper the Alarm, printed a piece that read in part, dynamite is a peacemaker because it makes it unsafe to harm our fellows.

[Holly Fry]

Although they were happening in this incredibly tense atmosphere at first, the events in Chicago around the May 1, 1886 national strike proceeded mostly without incident. May 1 was a Saturday and about 35,000 workers walked off the job that day. About 80,000 people participated in a march down Michigan Avenue. This march was organized largely by husband and wife team Albert and Lucy Parsons. Lucy had been born in Virginia and enslaved from birth. And her enslaver had moved his enslaved workforce to Texas shortly before the end of the Civil War. Albert had fought for the Confederacy before becoming a radical Republican. After the war was over, Albert and Lucy had married in 1872 and they moved to Chicago together in 1873. Albert had become a typesetter and had joined Chicago socialist movement, later becoming editor of the periodical the Alarm.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So marches and demonstrations continued. On May 2, which was a Sunday, Monday, May 3, would have been the first day back to work. May 1 had been considered a work day, even though it was a Saturday, because Saturdays were not considered a weekend day yet at that point. So Sunday was the only day off that people typically had. So on Monday, May 3, August spies spoke at a rally to support the Lumber Shovers Union, which was on strike. And then after that rally, some of the attendees joined union workers from the nearby McCormick Harvesting Machine company who had been locked out of their workplace since the since February. After they went on strike, McCormick had brought in non union replacement workers. And so the striking members of both of these unions, along with members of the IWPA who were there basically to support them, they all started heckling these strike breakers at McCormick as they left the building.

[Holly Fry]

And as a side note, yes, this harvesting machine company was owned by the same McCormick family whose fortune Catherine Dexter McCormick inherited part of. And that was money that she used to fund the development of the first oral contraceptives.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So it's not entirely clear what happened outside the McCormick harvesting machine company on May 3rd. But at some point, about 200 police attacked the demonstrators and at least one demonstrator was killed. I've seen sources say anything from one to two, all the way up to as many as six people.

[Holly Fry]

After this, spies went to the Arbeiter Zeitung office and wrote up a handbill in both German and English. It read, workingmen to arms. Your masters sent their bloodhounds the police. They killed six of your brothers at McCormick's this afternoon. They killed the poor wretches because they like you had the courage to disobey the supreme will of your bosses. They killed them because they dared ask for the shortening of the hours of toil. They killed them to show you, free American citizens, that you must be satisfied and contented with whatever your bosses condescend to allow you or you will get killed. You have for years endured the most abject humiliations. You have for years suffered unmeasurable inequities. You have worked yourself to death. You have endured the pangs of want and hunger. Your children you have sacrificed to the factory lords. In short, you have been miserable and obedient slave all these years. Why? To satisfy the insatiable greed to fill the coffers of your lazy, thieving master. When you ask them now to lessen your burden, he sends his bloodhounds to shoot you, kill you. If you are men, if you are the sons of your grand sires who have shed their blood to free you, then you will rise in your might, Hercules, and destroy the hideous monster that seeks to destroy you. To arms, we call you. To arms.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So when he was setting the type for this hand bill, the typesetter added the word revenge in all capital letters up at the top of the page.

[Holly Fry]

Meanwhile, anarchists George Engel and Adolf Fisher started planning and advertising a rally to be held May 4th in Haymarket Square. Posters in English and German announced a mass meeting to begin at 7:30 featuring, quote, good speakers who would be present to, quote, denounce the latest atrocious act of the police, the shooting of our fellow workmen. This also read in bold letters, working men, arm yourselves and appear in full force.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Fisher invited spies to speak at this rally, and spies actually refused unless that last sentence was removed from the poster. And it was, and the posters were reprinted. But a few that still had that line in there did wind up in distribution.

[Holly Fry]

Although the language promoting this demonstration was deliberately incendiary, the event itself was relatively subdued. Only about 1300 people attended, a fraction of the number who had attended other events earlier in the week. And the whole thing started more than an hour late. Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, who was pro union, was in attendance, both to verify that it was a peaceful gathering and to encourage it to remain that way. As the speeches went on, he repeatedly relit his cigar to make sure the assembled crowd saw him and knew that he was there.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Three men spoke at this rally. August spies Albert Parsons and Samuel Fielden. After a while, it started to rain and people started leaving. Eventually, only 300 people or so still remained. Spies, Parsons and the mayor all left before the rally was over, a little

[Holly Fry]

after 10:30pm as Fielden was getting to the end of his speech, more than 175 police officers moved in and Captain William Ward ordered the crowd to disperse. At first, Fielden told them that he was almost done with his speech and that the crowd was peaceful so they should be allowed to stay. Ward insisted that the crowd disperse immediately.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Fielden agreed. But just after that, someone threw a bomb into the police ranks. It detonated and Officer Matthias J. Deegan was killed instantly. Dozens more were injured, and the police opened fire on the crowd. Some of the people in the crowd were armed and returned fire. And this previously peaceful protest just turned into a riot or a melee. Like it was a whole huge incident.

[Holly Fry]

In addition to Officer Deegan, seven other police officers died, including one whose death two years later was attributed to the injuries that he sustained. At least 60 officers were wounded. It's estimated that about the same number of attendees at the rally were injured and killed, but that number is a lot harder to determine. Samuel Fielden was shot, as was August Spee's brother Henry. But both of those men survived. In general, people feared retribution for having been at the rally. So many of the injured people were patched up in one another's homes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This incident led to a huge crackdown against labor activists, anarchists and German immigrants. And we'll talk more about that after a sponsor break. We're lost. It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm gonna ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.

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Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

After the bombing in Haymarket Square, rumors spread that it had been part of a much bigger plot, one that had been planned as a coordinated attack on police stations and on freight houses where strike breaking workers were staying. Labor meetings were banned and police raided the homes and workplaces of anarchists, labor organizers and German immigrants, arresting people en masse. This included a raid on the Arbeiter Zeitung offices. Illinois State's Attorney Lewis Grinnell was reported as saying, make the raids first and look up the law afterward. Sometimes this response to the Haymarket bombing is described as the first Red Scare, Although the first Red Scare label is a lot more often used to describe the period that followed World War I and included the Palmer Raids, which we've talked about on the show before.

[Holly Fry]

During these raids in 1886, officers found radical texts, pistols, daggers and other weapons, along with explosives, bomb making materials, and instructions on making bombs at various locations all around the city. Detective Herman Schuedler said that while he was trying to arrest anarchist Lewis Ling, Ling cocked his revolver and tried to fire at him. Schuedler said that he only stopped Ling by biting his thumb while the two men fought.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Although labor organizers, anarchists, socialists and others protested against this crackdown, for the most part there was a public surge of support for police and approval of the wide scale raids and arrests. They were not finding weapons at everyone's homes, but since they were finding weapons at anyone's homes, people felt like it was a good thing that this mass sweep was being done. The Chicago business community generally approved of this crackdown as well, with some of the city's wealthiest and most prominent men vocally supporting it. People whose names people may still recognize today, including Marshall Field, George Pullman, and

[Holly Fry]

Cyrus McCormick Jr. On May 27, 1886, a grand jury indicted 31 men on charges of rioting and unlawful assembly. The grand jury also delivered a 69 count indictment of nine purported ringleaders. August Spies, Albert Parsons, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, Adolf Fisher, George Engel, Lewis Ling, Oscar Nieb, and Rudolf Schnaubelt. These nine men were charged with the murder of Matthias J. Degan. Even though other officers were killed, the men were not charged in their deaths, possibly because it wasn't clear whether they were killed by the bomb or by gunfire. And if it was gunfire, whether the shots had been fired by demonstrators or by other officers.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, there's been some debate over the decades since this happened about exactly how many of the officers were killed by shots that were fired by other officers and not by the crowd. It's not 100%. Resolved? Question? I think so. We have mentioned some of these men and their work already. Spies and Parsons had both been speakers at the rally, but both had left before the bomb was thrown. Parsons and his wife Lucy had actually brought their children with them, something you would not expect them to do if they knew about A violent plot that was going to be put into play during the night. The last speaker, Samuel Fielden, had been wrapping up his speech at the time of the bombing. Although spies, Parsons and Fielden all spoke at this rally, none of them was involved in the planning of it.

[Holly Fry]

George Engel and Adolf Fisher had organized the rally, as we mentioned, but also had not been there when the bomb was thrown. Engel had not attended at all, and he was home playing cards at the time. Along with Lewis Ling, who regularly practiced with a rifle, had learned how to make bombs and advocated resisting violence with violence. Engel and Fisher were probably the most radical of the men charged with Deegan's murder.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Michael Schwab had been at the rally, but had also left before the bombing. Police had also focused on his brother in law, Rudolph Schnaubelt, as a suspect in throwing the bomb. But he seems to have fled to Europe. Europe and was never seen in the US Again. Of the nine men who were indicted in the murder, Schnaubelt was the only one who did not stand trial.

[Holly Fry]

Oscar Nieb was a labor organizer and a communist, and he worked with spies, Parsons, Fielden and Schwab pretty regularly. But he wasn't involved with the rally at all and he was not there. Although there were suspicions that Lewis Ling had built the bomb, he also had nothing to do with the actual rally. Although spies, Parsons, Fielden, Schwab and Neeb were frequent collaborators, they didn't really know Engel and Fisher that well. And none of the other indicted men really had much contact with Ling at all.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Of all of these men, Samuel Parsons was the only one who had been born in the United States. Samuel Fielden had been born in England and had immigrated to the u. S. In 1868. The other men who were indicted in the murder were all immigrants from Germany, and most of them had immigrated to the US in the 1870s or early 1880s.

[Holly Fry]

With Schnaubelt having disappeared, the eight remaining defendants were tried as a group. Their trial began on June 21, 1886, with jury selection stretching all the way until July 15, 981. Potential jurors were questioned, and the transcript of those proceedings is about 4,000 pages long. Ultimately, only two of the 12 selected jurors had a working class background. The rest were businessmen, clerks or salesmen. All had acknowledged that they were prejudiced against the defendants. But said that they thought they could hear the case impartially in spite of that prejudice.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This jury selection continues to be pretty controversial. Some historians have concluded that it was unfairly Biased against the defendants, with the judge refusing to dismiss potential jurors who were obviously and unchangeably biased against them. A special bailiff had selected the potential jurors, which has led to speculation that the pool itself was biased. So, like, they started with people who were probably going to find the defendants guilty and picked the jurors from there. But it was actually the defense counsel who requested a special bailiff after the original pool of potential jurors had been totally exhausted without finding 12 appropriate people.

[Holly Fry]

The defense team was headed by William Perkins Black, who argued that all eight men had alibis for the bombing. Only two of the defendants were even at the rally when the bomb was thrown. Both of them were on the wagon that was being used as a stage, and one of them was speaking. Black also argued that the violent rhetoric in some of the men's writings and materials confiscated from their homes was just that rhetoric. Although Rudolph Schnaubelt was not on trial, Black introduced evidence showing that he was not at the rally when the bomb was thrown. Black also argued that there was no reason to send more than 170 police officers to try to disperse a crowd of about 300 people at an event that was nearly over.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But the prosecution, led by Julius S. Grinnell, argued that the small crowd and the generally non threatening speeches were a trap. One that was meant to lure police into complacency and then bomb them. The prosecution also argued that this was an international anarchist conspiracy introduced by foreign agitators. The prosecution did not establish who had thrown the bomb, but this entire case rested on the idea that the eight defendants were part of a conspiracy with that unknown person.

[Holly Fry]

The trial continued until Aug. 11. By that point, 227 witnesses had testified, including 54 members of the Chicago Police Department and four of the defendants themselves. The working men, arm yourselves version of the flyer advertising the rally was introduced as evidence. One of the witnesses for the defense was Mayor Carter Harrison, who described the rally as tame.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The jury deliberated for about three hours before finding all eight defendants guilty. Oscar Nieb, who had no clear involvement with the rally, in addition to not being there, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. And the other seven men were all sentenced to death.

[Holly Fry]

On October 7th through the 9th of 1886, the men who had been sentenced to death were allowed to speak before the judge to give any reason why they should not be put to death. The most vehement of these speeches came from Lewis Ling, who said, quote, I despise your order, your laws, your force propped authority. Hang me for it. In the end, the sentence of death was upheld for each of the men.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

To raise money for their appeals, the men's supporters published their speeches and sold copies of them, as well as printing and selling autobiographies that the men had written from prison. Parsons also whittled a small wooden boat that was auctioned off to provide some money for his family from prison. Spies had a relationship with nina van zant, who married him by proxy on January 29th of 1887. She was the daughter of a prominent businessman, Leading to fears that this relationship Would skew public opinion against the convicted men even further. Basically with this idea that he was corrupting the good daughter of a prominent citizen.

[Holly Fry]

The men's appeals were unsuccessful. On September 14, 1887, the Illinois supreme court upheld the conviction. The defense petitioned the u. S. Supreme court for a writ of error, but the supreme court denied it on November 2, 1887.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A movement for clemency had been growing throughout all of this. People increasingly started to see the trial as unfair and as a serious miscarriage of justice. Fielden and schwab both asked for mercy, and governor Richard oglesby reduced their sentences to life in prison. Oglesby said he couldn't offer clemency to any of the other men because they had not asked for it. This whole movement for clemency Was also kind of undermined when pipe bombs were found under ling's bed in his prison cell.

[Holly Fry]

The execution was scheduled for November 11, 1887. On November 10, Lewis Ling took his own life Using a blasting cap that had been smuggled into his cell. George engel, Adolf fisher, Albert parsons, and august spies were all hanged on the 11th. On November 13, a funeral procession for the executed men drew enormous crowds. Estimates that you read will place the number at anywhere from 150,000 to 500,000 people. By this point, the general public still largely approved of the trials and the hanging. But to the labor movement, anarchists, socialists, and other supporters, those men had become martyrs.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

For decades after all of this, historians have generally interpreted the trial and the executions as an enormous miscarriage of justice. But in 2011 and 2012, historian Timothy Messer Cruz published two books on this. One is the Haymarket conspiracy, Transatlantic anarchist networks, and the other is the trial of the Haymarket anarchists, terrorism, and justice in the Gilded age. In these two interconnected books, he argues that the trial would not be considered fair by today's standards, but that it was reasonably fair given the standards of the time. And he also argues that there really was an international violent anarchist conspiracy at work. Messer Cruz drew these conclusions after poring over the trial transcripts that had been digitized by the Chicago Historical Society along with other primary source documents. However, critics of his work have noted that trial transcripts and police records are not inherently unbiased. You basically can't use them to just correct the earlier record without more context and analysis of that. And they've also noted that his books essentially argue the same case that the prosecution argued in 1886, which other historians have already poked various holes in.

[Holly Fry]

In 1889, socialist and labor rights groups designated May 1 as international workers Day, choosing the date in commemoration of the Haymarket incident. That same year, a statue in honor of the police who had been killed was dedicated in Haymarket Square, unveiled by Officer Deegan's teenage son. In 1893, another monument to the executed men, known as the Haymarket Martyrs Monument, was dedicated in Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park. Albert Parsons son Albert Jr. Unveiled that statue. The next day, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, and Oscar Neeb.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Because several of the men who were tried in the wake of the Haymarket bombing had all been involved with the Knights of Labor, that organization was viewed with increasing suspicion. After all of this, a lot of its chapters ultimately moved over to the American Federation of Labor. The bombing also stoked anti union sentiments and xenophobia, and it really fueled a perception that anarchism was intrinsically connected to violence and terrorism. Although, as we noted up at the top of the show, anarchists were kind of all over the map in terms of what they thought about violence.

[Holly Fry]

The Haymarket riot also caused a temporary pause in the national campaign for an eight hour workday. About four years passed after the bombing before the American Federation of Labor renewed its calls for an eight hour workday. Although workers in some industries and places did wind up securing that eight hour day, at this point, it's still not universal. The Fair Labor Standards act, passed into law in 1937, sets a 40 hour maximum for some workers with work beyond 40 hours, requiring overtime pay. The Fair Labor Standards act applies to most, but not all businesses, and some types of employees are exempt from the overtime rule, including executives, professionals, administrative employees, and highly compensated employees.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In more recent decades, the Haymarket area of Chicago has been home to both pro labor and pro police rallies. After Weather Underground bombed the police memorial repeatedly in 1969 and 1970, that memorial was relocated to the Chicago Police Department's training academy.

[Holly Fry]

A new Haymarket Memorial designed by Mary Bragger was unveiled in 2004. This was commissioned by the City of Chicago, the Illinois Federation of Labor, History, Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, and the Chicago Department of Transportation. It depicts figures both on and under a wagon that is a nod to the wagon that was used as a stage at the rally.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So that's the Haymarket incident or the Haymarket riot, or the Haymarket affair. Again, as I said at the top of the show, I don't think any of those terms are perfect terms for it at all.

[Holly Fry]

The complicated Haymarket. I don't know what to call it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, none of them completely work, in my opinion. Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is historypodcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Brought to you in part by Vital Farms. I love eggs. I turn to them all the time as a quick and easy way to start a meal. And Vital Farms eggs are brought to you by hens that have access to fresh air and sunshine. And you can actually look up on the carton and see the farm that those eggs came from. Vital Farms is also a certified bee corporation with a purpose to improve the lives of people, animals and the planet through food. Look for the black egg carton in the egg aisle and visit vitalpharms.vital good eggs. No shortcuts. Hear that? That's the sound of your skin silently crying out for hydration. Luckily, Dr. Teals has just the thing to get you glowing in no time. Meet Dr. Teals Skin renewal Deep Hydration, made with a proprietary triple magnesium complex. Plus skincare actives for 50% improved skin hydration after just one bath. The words dry and dehydrated are about to be wiped from your vocabulary. Find Dr. Teals all dressed in blue in your local bath aisle. Dr. Teals. Yep, you needed that. Hey, it's Hailee Steinfeld. When everything requires your attention, it can be tough to figure out what to prioritize. But I'm here to talk to you about something that you should always put first. Your breast health. In fact, if you're 40 and over, you should be getting screened once a year. And if you're under 40, it's never too soon to visit your attention to learn about your breast cancer risk. So go on, pay the girls some attention and take the time to find out your breast cancer [e-mail] trust me your future self will thank you.

[Holly Fry]

Wouldn't it be great to never buy gas again? EVs are as easy to charge as your phone, and they are a perfect addition to your everyday life. Most people are only driving about 40 miles a day, and most EVs can handle 200 to 400 miles of range on a charge. And there are hundreds of EV models available today, so there's something perfect for every lifestyle and budget. I drive an ev. I've had it for a couple of years. It's my favorite car I've ever owned. It is so fun to drive. The pickup is incredible. It's super agile and it is easy to maintain. The way forward is electric. Learn [e-mail] this is an iHeart podcast.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Guaranteed human.