On May 1st, 1886, labor unions all over America held rallies and strikes in support of legislation for an eight-hour workday, with the slogan “Eight-hour day with no cut in pay.” It was a huge event, but nowhere was the action larger than the union and anarchist hotbed of Chicago. Half the population of Chicago, and much of the poor and exploited, were recent European immigrants. This was the setting of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a place where people, including children, were often worked to death.

Chicago’s actions kept going past May 1, with workers in Chicago clashing with police and Pinkerton strikebreakers on May 3rd. The police supposedly shot live rounds into a crowd that included not only the workers, but their wives and children. In response, a few local organizers, including a German immigrant and anarchist organizer named August Spies, set up a rally the next day, May 4th. It was a last minute affair, and he didn’t have speakers lined up. But he knew people he could pull into it, including Albert Parsons, editor of the anarchist weekly The Alarm, and Samuel Fielden, a frequent anarchist speaker at labor demonstrations. Both of them would soon be Spies’ co-defendants.

The May 4th rally was itself fairly small and disorganized, and was beginning to disperse in the rain when it all went horribly wrong.

Months later from a jail cell, Parsons told the story of the night in his own words.

About 8 o’clock p.m. accompanied by Mrs. Holmes, Mrs. Parsons & my two children (a boy 6 yrs old & a girl 4 years old) we walked from home to Halsted & Randolph Sts. There we observed knots of people standing about indicating that a mass-meeting was expected. Two newspaper reporters, one for the Tribune and the other for the Times, whom I recognized … inquired if I was to speak at the Haymarket meeting that night. I told them that I was not. That I had to attend another meeting & would not be there… …when about 9 o’clock a committee entered the meeting & said that there was a large mass-meeting at the Haymarket but no speakers except Mr. Spies, & they were sent over to request Mr. Fielden & myself to come over at once & address the crowd. We… went over to the Haymarket in a body where I was introduced at once & spoke for about an hour to the 3,000 persons present urging them to support the 8-hour movement & stick to their unions. There was little said about the police brutalities of the previous day, other than to complain of the use of the military on every slight occasion. I said it was a shame that the moderate & just claims of the wage-workers should be met with police clubs, pistols & bayonets, or that the murmurs of discontented laborers should be drowned in their own blood. When I had finished speaking & Mr. Fielden began, I got down from the wagon we were using as a speaker’s stand… it soon appearing as though it would rain & the crowd beginning to disperse.. I assisted the ladies down from the wagon and accompanied them to Zepf’s Hall one block away where we intended to wait for the adjournment & the company of other friends on our walk home.

Bad weather had reduced the crowd from a few thousand to a few hundred people by the time Parsons left. Around 10 pm after Fielden had finished and the event was wrapping up, the Chicago police moved in to break up the remaining protesters. As they moved in, a bomb was thrown, killing Officer Matthias Degnan. A gunfight erupted, though it was never clear who besides the police was involved in it in the 19th century dark streets.

An illustration of the Haymarket Bomb. In the 1880s, they had to draw the photojournalism.

By the time the chief had called for a ceasefire 12 officers were injured or dying, and probably dozens of protesters. The total number beyond the four protesters dead at the scene was never known — the the injured and dying could not seek medical attention without risking arrest.

In the coming weeks seven figures of the labor movement were arrested. The eighth, Parsons, gave himself up. None of them were the bomber, whose identity remains unknown to this day. Only three of the eight had spoken at the rally, and only one, Fielden, was still present when the bomb was thrown. The eight men were charged with conspiracy and convicted by one of America’s worst kangaroo courts. There was no evidence that linked any of the eight men to the crime, they were convicted of saying things that might have lead that one man to throw a bomb. Five were sentenced to death.

Besides Parsons, Spies, and Fielden they were Michael Schwab, Oscar Neebe, Louis Lingg, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer.

The Eight Anarchists convicted of the Haymarket Bombing

Albert Parsons was a confederate veteran. He had married Lucy Parsons in 1872, who was probably a former black slave. Originally they lived in Texas, but the couple had to flee in 1874 because of KKK threats, winding up in Chicago. From prison, awaiting death he wrote of free speech and free assembly, of anarchy, what it meant to be a worker, and what was moral. Along with statements from the other seven, it was published far and wide, but it was Parsons and Spies whose eloquence most touched the watching world.

He wrote this: “My enemies in the South States consisted of those who oppressed the black-slave. My enemies in the North are among those who would perpetuate the slavery of the wage-slave. My whole life has been sober & industrious; was never under the influence of liquor, was never arrested for any offense, & voluntarily surrendered for trial in the present case.”

At the end of the trial, when it was obvious there was no hope to live, and the world beyond our borders was largely looking on in horror at what America was doing, each condemned man read a statement to the court. In his, August Spies said: