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Haymarket affair

The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, United States.[2] The rally began peacefully in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, the day after the events at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, during which one person was killed and many workers injured.[3] An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing retaliatory gunfire by the police caused the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.[3]

Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see 2007 London car bombs and Haymarket Riot (band).

Eight anarchists were charged with the bombing. In the internationally publicized legal proceedings against the accused, the eight were convicted of conspiracy.


The Haymarket affair is generally considered significant as the origin of International Workers' Day held on May 1,[4][5] and it was also the climax of the social unrest among the working class in America known as the Great Upheaval.


The evidence put forward in the court trial was that one of the defendants may have built the bomb, but none of those on trial had thrown it, and only two of the eight were at the Haymarket at the time.[6][7][8][9] Seven were sentenced to death and one to a term of 15 years in prison. Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two of the sentences to terms of life in prison; another died by suicide in jail before his scheduled execution. The other four were hanged on November 11, 1887.[3] In 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the remaining defendants and criticized the trial.[10]


The site of the incident was designated a Chicago landmark in 1992,[11] and a sculpture was dedicated there in 2004. In addition, the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997 at the defendants' burial site in Forest Park.[12]

Rudolph Schnaubelt (1863–1901) was an activist and the brother-in law of Michael Schwab. He was at the Haymarket when the bomb exploded. Frederick Ebersold issued a handwritten bulletin for his arrest for murder and inciting a riot on June 14, 1886.[115][116] Schnaubelt was indicted with the other defendants but fled the city and later the country before he could be brought to trial. He was the detectives' lead suspect, and state witness Gilmer testified he saw Schnaubelt throw the bomb, identifying him from a photograph in court.[117] Schnaubelt later sent two letters from London disclaiming all responsibility, writing, "If I had really thrown this bomb, surely I would have nothing to be ashamed of, but in truth I never once thought of it."[118] He is the most generally accepted and widely known suspect and figured as the bomb thrower in The Bomb, Frank Harris's 1908 fictionalization of the tragedy. Written from Schnaubelt's point of view, the story opens with him confessing on his deathbed. However, Harris's description was fictional and those who knew Schnaubelt vehemently criticized the book.[119]

General Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department

George Schwab was a German shoemaker who died in 1924. German anarchist Carl Nold claimed he learned Schwab was the bomber through correspondence with other activists, but no proof ever emerged. Historian also suspected him but noted that while Schwab was in Chicago, he had only arrived days before. This contradicted statements by others that the bomber was a well-known figure in Chicago.[120][121]

Paul Avrich

George Meng (b. around 1840) was a German anarchist and teamster who owned a small farm outside of Chicago where he had settled in 1883 after emigrating from . Like Parsons and Spies, he was a delegate at the Pittsburgh Congress and a member of the IWPA. Meng's granddaughter, Adah Maurer, wrote Paul Avrich a letter in which she said that her mother, who was 15 at the time of the bombing, told her that her father was the bomber. Meng died some time before 1907 in a saloon fire. Based on his correspondence with Maurer, Avrich concluded that there was a "strong possibility" that the little-known Meng may have been the bomber.[122]

Bavaria

An was suggested by some members of the anarchist movement. Albert Parsons believed the bomber was a member of the police or the Pinkertons trying to undermine the labor movement. However, this contradicts the statements of several activists who said the bomber was one of their own. For example, Lucy Parsons and Johann Most rejected this notion. Dyer Lum said it was "puerile" to ascribe "the Haymarket bomb to a Pinkerton".[123]

agent provocateur

A disgruntled worker was widely suspected. When Adolph Fischer was asked if he knew who threw the bomb, he answered, "I suppose it was some excited workingman." Oscar Neebe said it was a "crank". Governor Altgeld speculated the bomb thrower might have been a disgruntled worker who was not associated with the defendants or the anarchist movement but had a personal grudge against the police. In his pardoning statement, Altgeld said the record of police brutality toward the workers had invited revenge adding, "Capt. Bonfield is the man who is really responsible for the deaths of the police officers."[125]

[124]

Klemana Schuetz was identified as the bomber by Franz Mayhoff, a New York anarchist and fraudster, who claimed in an affidavit that Schuetz had once admitted throwing the Haymarket bomb. August Wagener, Mayhoff's attorney, sent a telegram from New York to defense attorney Captain William Black the day before the executions claiming knowledge of the bomber's identity. Black tried to delay the execution with this telegram, but Governor Oglesby refused. It was later learned that Schuetz was the primary witness against Mayhoff at his trial for insurance fraud, so Mayhoff's affidavit has never been regarded as credible by historians.

[126]

Reinold "Big" Krueger was killed by police either in the melee after the bombing or in a separate disturbance the next day and has been named as a suspect but there is no supporting evidence.[128]

[127]

A mysterious outsider was reported by John Philip Deluse, a saloon keeper in who claimed he encountered a stranger in his saloon the day before the bombing. The man was carrying a satchel and on his way from New York to Chicago. According to Deluse, the stranger was interested in the labor situation in Chicago, repeatedly pointed to his satchel and said, "You will hear of some trouble there very soon."[129] Parsons used Deluse's testimony to suggest the bomb thrower was sent by eastern capitalists.[130] Nothing more was ever learned about Deluse's claim.

Indianapolis

While admitting that none of the defendants was involved in the bombing, the prosecution made the argument that Lingg had built the bomb, and prosecution witnesses Harry Gilmer and Malvern Thompson tried to imply that the bomb-thrower was helped by Spies, Fischer and Schwab.[112][113] The defendants claimed they had no knowledge of the bomber at all.


Several activists, including Robert Reitzel, later hinted they knew who the bomber was.[114] Writers and other commentators have speculated about many possible suspects:

List of homicides in Illinois

(in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 5, 1886)

Bay View Massacre

of 1919–1920

First Red Scare

also known as May Day

International Workers' Day

May Day Riots of 1894

May Day Riots of 1919

of 1919

Palmer Raids

Sacco and Vanzetti

of 1920

Wall Street bombing

List of massacres in the United States

Violent labor disputes in the United States

List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States

Argentinos Juniors

Bach, Ira J.; Mary Lackritz Gray (1983). . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-03399-6.

A Guide to Chicago's Public Sculpture

Fireside, Bryna J. (2002). . Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow Publishers. ISBN 0-7660-1761-3.

The Haymarket Square Riot Trial: A Headline Court Case

(1908). The Bomb. London: John Long. OCLC 2380272.

Harris, Frank

Hucke, Matt; Ursula Bielski (1999). Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries. Chicago: Lake Claremont Press.  0-9642426-4-8.

ISBN

Kvaran, Einar Einarsson. Haymarket – A Century Later (unpublished manuscript).

Lieberwitz, Risa, "The Use of Criminal Conspiracy Prosecutions to Restrict Freedom of Speech: The Haymarket Trial," in Marianne Debouzy (ed.), In the Shadow of the Statue of Liberty: Immigrants, Workers, and Citizens in the American Republic, 1880–1920. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992; pp. 275–291.

Lum, Dyer (2005) [1887]. A Concise History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists in 1886. Adamant Media Corporation.  978-1-4021-6287-9.

ISBN

McLean, George N. (1890). . Chicago: R.G. Badoux & Co.

The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America

(1889). Life of Albert R. Parsons : with brief history of the labor movement in America. Chicago: L. E. Parsons.

Parsons, Lucy

Riedy, James L. (1979). Chicago Sculpture: Text and Photographs. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.  0-252-01255-0.

ISBN

Smith, Carl (1995). Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  0-226-76416-8.

ISBN

Haymarket Affair Digital Collection

Table of Contents

Chicago Historical Society

The Dramas of Haymarket

Anarchy Archives

The Haymarket Massacre Archive

Libcom

1886: The Haymarket Martyrs and Mayday

at the Kate Sharpley Library

Haymarket Affair texts

Illinois Labor History Society

The Story of the Haymarket Affair

Graveyards of Chicago

Haymarket Martyrs' Monument

Timothy Messer-Kruse's blog

The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists

Famous Trials, University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law

Haymarket Trial

American Memory, Library of Congress

Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair 1886–1887

Northern Illinois University Libraries

The Haymarket Bomb in Historical Context

Archived May 3, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. World Socialist Web Site

The Haymarket frame-up and the origins of May Day

. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Haymarket Affair Collection