"Red November, black November/Bleak November, black and red./ Hallowed month of labor's martyrs,/Labor's heroes, labor's dead." So wrote radical poet and American political prisoner Ralph Chaplin in 1933. The month of November is indeed a hallowed month for leftists in this country and around the world.

In November 1915, a Utah firing squad executed Joe Hill, the labor activist and songwriter whose tunes would later inspire such politically oriented musicians as Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Jailed on a murder charge under dubious circumstances, Joe Hill had supporters around the world, including President Wilson, who said the radical troubadour had not received a fair trial because of his membership in the militant Industrial Workers of the World labor union, also known as the Wobblies.

A year later, in November 1916, police gunfire killed five Wobblies who were arriving by boat for a labor rally in Everett, Wash. Two police officers also were killed, probably by "friendly fire" from their own ranks. The Everett Massacre was another chapter of labor history written in blood.

Washington's long saga of labor unrest reached a high point of horror in the small logging town of Centralia in November 1919. During an Armistice Day parade celebrating the end of World War I, members of the newly-formed American Legion attacked an IWW meeting hall. Union men fought back and there was gunfire from both sides in the conflict. Wesley Everest, a lumberjack, IWW member and World War I veteran, vowed, "I fought for democracy in Europe and I'll fight for it here" as he fired his pistol at the mob. That night, the captured Everest was taken from jail and lynched in his Army uniform. His body was displayed to gawking townspeople for three days and pieces of the lynching rope became coveted souvenirs of an event still remembered in labor history as the Centralia Conspiracy.

No event in the history of American labor strife has had the impact of the trial and executions of the anarchists and union organizers hanged in Chicago on Nov. 11, 1887, for their roles in what historian Paul Avrich has called "The Haymarket Tragedy" in his definitive book about the incident.

Union men and women were on the march in post-Civil War Chicago, and the city had become a mecca for radicals. Both the Democratic and Republican mainstream political parties offered little hope for disgruntled and downtrodden workers both immigrant and American-born, so doctrines like anarchy, socialism, communism, feminism and labor activism sprouted in the political soil of late-19th-century America.

In 1886, a bomb powered by the newly invented dynamite was thrown into the ranks of cops who were attacking a labor rally in Chicago's Haymarket district. One officer was killed outright and several others were wounded. To this day, no one knows precisely how many labor activists were killed or injured in the incident and no one knows who threw the dreadful bomb. Historians do know that martial law was declared in Chicago as the whole country came under the hysteria of this nation's first "Red Scare," as men who had no part in the bombing were hanged for their anarchist opinions.

"Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards," sneered Chicago prosecutor Julius Grinnel. After a sensational trial that had what Avrich called "the dimensions of a historical tragedy," four of the anarchists were hanged by Windy City authorities on Nov. 11, 1887 - 120 years ago this week.

The Haymarket affair had many political elements that we still struggle with today: government surveillance, police misconduct, immigration, workers' rights. It was one of the most important events in American history, but it is history that often is ignored by schools and colleges. As Ralph Chaplin wrote in "Wobbly," his autobiography: "Working people, like everyone else, have a way of forgetting the struggles and sacrifices that made possible the improved conditions they enjoy today."

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About author Tant has been an Athens columnist since 1974. His work also has appeared in The New York Times, The Progressive, Astronomy magazine and other publications.