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May Day!

© Meg Greene Malvasi

Beginning as a pagan holiday to celebrate the return of spring, the first of May, or May Day, evolved with the advent of Christianity into a ceremony to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ. By the nineteenth century both the primitive and Christian observances of May Day had faded, and May Day became associated with the expression of international solidarity among the working class.

In the United States, the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions (later the American Federal of Labor) had long demanded the adoption of an eight-hour work day since it was common for workers to toil for up to ten, twelve, and even sixteen hours. When businessmen and factory owners refused to comply with union demands, labor leaders called for a nationwide general strike to take place on May 1, 1886 to pressure the federal government to enact legislation to establish the eight-hour day. More than 350,000 workers across the country participated.

Events that took place in Chicago on May 3 and 4, however, overshadowed this effort. A strike was already under way at the McCormick Harvester Company when the general strike began. Police had routinely harassed the strikers, and had, on May 3, killed four of them. Labor organizers called for a protest meeting at Haymarket Square on May 4 to protest the killings and remember the dead. The meeting was small and peaceful until police ordered the crowd to disperse. Most of the approximately 1,300 persons in attendance had already left when it began to rain; only about 300 remained. As the 180 policemen moved in to break up the crowd someone threw a bomb that killed one officer outright and wounded sixty-seven others, seven of whom later died. In retaliation, the police fired into the crowd, killing seven additional persons and injuring hundreds.

The Haymarket Affair, as this event came to be known, was a major setback for organized labor. The government response to the riot was swift and harsh. The eight workers arrested were convicted on charges of murder and inciting a riot, even though only one of the eight was actually present at the protest. The assailant who threw the bomb was never identified, and no evidence linked any of the eight men to the crime. Yet outraged Americans demanded retribution. In the end, seven were given the death penalty. Of those, one, Louis Lingg, cheated the executioner by committing suicide, two had their sentences commuted to life in prison, and four, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel, were executed. On June 26, 1893, Governor John P. Atgeld of Illinois pardoned the three survivors, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, and Oscar Neebe.

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