The Haymarket Riot

What do they have against the statue?

Or

Hay Market Square – typical work day

Chicago “the” industrial U.S. city withmajor social problems and major labor demonstrations

**Home to thousands of German immigrants

Peaceful rallies supporting eight-hour day

Workers averaged 9 to 14 hour dayssix days a week, - $1.50 a day

Around $40 per day in 2009 

**Socialist and anarchist infiltrated organized labor seeking better pay and shorter work days

**Some anarchists – (anti government)were equipped with guns and explosives

Believed that successful operations against the police and the seizure of major industrial centers  would result in public support and establish a socialist economy

**Employers responded to strikers with police “approved” violence

**Chicago was home to the country’s largestGerman language newspaperArbeiter-Zeitung edited by August Spiesa self-proclaimedanarchist

**With continued police violence against striking workers the anarchist planed an attack on the police

Protest planned for Haymarket Square

Spies would be a speaker printed the notice of the rally in his paper

May 4, 1886, Haymarket Square Chicago

**Anarchists joined the demonstrations not for the sake of labor rights but to confront the government

**Did nothing more than add fuel to the fire as they stirred up trouble

Fewer than 2,000 people showed up to protest, and 180 policemen were called to maintain peace

Police unites called in to close the rally

**The crowd was so calm that Mayor Carter Harrison stopped by to watch

The last speech finished about 10:30 when police ordered the rally to disperse and began marching in formation towards the speakers' wagon

**A  pipe bomb was thrown at the police line and exploded, killing a policeman

Pipe bomb thrown at police

What your typical anarchist pipe-bomb would lookLike

Odd of this actuallyworking were verysmall at best

Police immediately opened fire

**Some workers were armed, but accounts vary widely

The incident lasted less than five minute

Seven policemen – four workers killed

Eight protestors including Spies were charged with murder and inciting a riot

**Prosecution offered no credible evidence connecting the defendants with the bombing

**Argued that the person who had thrownthe bomb was not discouraged to do so by the defendants, who as conspiratorswere therefore equally responsible

**Little evidence and insufficient proof

**An unedited line in Spies’ paper calling for violence if demands were not met was used to condemn them

The jury returned guilty verdicts for all eight defendants death sentences for seven of the men, and a sentence of 15 years in prison **The sentencing sparked outrage from labor and workers' movements, resulted in protests around the world, and made the defendants martyrs within labor and radical circles

Four of the eight were hung

After the appeals had been exhausted, Illinois Governor commuted two sentences to life in prison

On the eve of his execution, one anarchist committed suicide in his cell with a smuggled dynamite cap which he reportedly held in his mouth like a cigar (the blast blew off half his face and he survived in agony for six hours)

**All eight were German immigrants

**Governor John P. Atgeld of Illinoiscame to believe the accusations had resulted from outcry rather than trueevidence pardoned the last three.

Spies, and the other three anarchists were taken to the gallows in white robes and hoods They sang the Marseillaise, the anthem of the international revolutionary movement.

Witnesses reported that the condemned men did not dieimmediately when they dropped, but slowly strangled to death, which left the spectators visibly shaken

Anarchist immigrants were scapegoats - society needed someone to blame

**John Altgelda progressive governorwas himself a German immigrant, signed pardons for "hysteria, packed juries, and a biased judge“

“The state never discovered who threwthe bomb which killed the policeman, and the evidence does not show any connection whatsoever between the defendants and the man who threw it “

Gov. John Altgeld

Blamed the city for failing to hold Pinkerton guards responsible for repeated use of lethal violence against striking workers.

**Altgeld's actions concerning labor issueswere seen as unpopular, and were used to defeat his reelection

Statue of Altgeld andthe pardon of the other four

Aftermath of the Haymarket

Riot and TrialAffects of The Haymarket Riot on the U.S.labor movement

People associated labor problems as an excuse for governmental problems

The riot also marked the shift to “bread and butter” unionism, as unions focused on concrete aspects of work, such as wages

What did that statue ever do to you?

The city restored the statue in 1928 and moved it to Union Park

Statue of anearly ChicagoPolice officer

Has become thesymbol of the Police department

On May 4, 1927, the 41st anniversary of the Haymarket affair, a streetcar jumped its tracks and crashed into the monument

The motorman said he was "sick of seeing that policeman with his arm raised“

During the 1950s, construction of the Kennedy Expressway erased about half of the old, run-down market square

And in 1956, the statue was moved to a special platform built for it overlooking the freeway, near its original location

The Haymarket statue was vandalized with black paint on May 4, 1968, the 82nd anniversary of the Haymarket affair, following a confrontation between police and demonstrators at a protest against the Vietnam War

Protesting the Vietnam War

On October 6, 1969, shortly before the Days of Rage" protests, the statue was destroyed when a bomb was placed between its legs. 

Weatherman took credit for the blast, which broke nearly 100 windows in the neighborhood and scattered pieces of the statue onto the Kennedy Expressway below

Weatherman (Weather Underground Organization, WUO), 1969-77 ..

The statue was rebuiltand unveiled on May 4, 1970, then blown up again by Weathermen on October 6, 1970

The Weatherman once again

The statue was again rebuilt, and Mayor Richard J. Dailey posted a 24-hour police guard at the statue

In 1972 it wasmoved to the lobby of the central Police headquarters, and in 1976 to the enclosed court yard of the Chicagopolice academy

For another three decades the statue's empty, graffiti-marked pedestal stood on its platform in the run-down remains of Haymarket Square where it was known as an anarchist landmark

On June 1, 2007 the statue was rededicated at Chicago Police Headquarters

Chicago Police Headquarters

Haymarket Memorial, 1886 – 2013 Commemorating a significant and volatile event in the struggle between business, labor, and law enforcement..

Political editorial which ran in theChicago Trib after the hangingof the fouranarchists

Forest Home Cemetery, Des Plains, Il.

Previously known as German WaldheimCemetery

Anarchists from theHaymarket Rion

Governor Altgeld’sPardon of those linkedto the HaymarketRiot

Scabs protected by 400 police officers

Spies advised non-violence

Well-planned and coordinated, the general strike had remained largely nonviolent Well-planned and coordinated, the general

Scabs hired by McCormick Harvest were threatened as they crossed the picket lines