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A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America

May 1st, is known as May Day or International Worker's Day. The day is an official government holiday in most countries with mass demonstrations, rallies and marches being held to express labor solidarity and celebrate worker's rights. Here in the United States May Day is not a government-sanctioned holiday even though the commemoration originated here. However this year immigrant groups have chosen this day to stage a work strike and take part in a one-day economic boycott to protest anti-immigrant legislation being considered by Congress. Hundreds of thousands are expected to participate in the boycott and various other events taking place throughout the country.

We take a look at the origins of May Day, the Haymarket riot, which took place in Chicago in 1886.

• James Green, professor of History & Labor Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author of "Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America."

AMY GOODMAN: I'm Amy Goodman, as we talk about the history of May Day, 120 years ago today, May 1, 1886. Our guest is James Green. Death in the Haymarket is his book, A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. Again, welcome, and as we continue with the story. May Day, 1886, there is a mass uprising in Chicago.

JAMES GREEN: Right, and a tremendous euphoria and people in the streets and celebrating, because they called it their “Emancipation Day,” actually, because it appeared that all of this would take place peacefully, and it was a great empowerment moment for the immigrants who had come here and hadn’t yet started to vote. This was their vehicle almost for asserting their definition of Americanism, and unfortunately something happened on May 3rd that led to tragic consequences.

There were pickets at the McCormick Harvester plant, they called it the Reaper Works. They produced farm implements. There were strike breakers. There was a lockout going on there. Their workers protested the lockout. There was a fight. Chicago police intervened massively, and several workers were killed, several unarmed workers, so the anarchists in Chicago – and I have to tell you a little bit about them -- they were very active, very well-organized in Chicago, led by Albert and Lucy Parsons. They were people from Texas, not from Germany. Albert Parsons was from East Texas. He met Lucy there, who was a woman who had grown up in slavery and had become a free person, and they were married in Texas and had to flee there, because they were fighting for black rights after Reconstruction, and then they were dodging the Ku Klux Klan.

AMY GOODMAN: And they were an interracial couple.

JAMES GREEN: And they were an interracial couple and radicals, who believed – in those days being radical meant you supported the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments in Texas. That was radical, and it could cost you your life.

AMY GOODMAN: And Albert Parsons ran a press.

JAMES GREEN: He ran a press that supported the Black Freedom Movement of the time, and he lost all of his former friends and was, you know, couldn't sleep in the homes of white people. So he had already stepped outside of the mainstream before he left Texas. They came to Chicago in 1873 in the midst of a great depression, and as a result of their experiences there, particularly in the Great Uprising of 1877, when the Chicago police shot people in the streets, they became revolutionaries and called themselves anarchists by 1886. Parsons was a very, very good organizer. He was probably one of the key people in the whole eight-hour movement in Chicago, and so was his comrade August Spies, who was the man who edited this daily German newspaper, this anarchist newspaper.

AMY GOODMAN: And where had August Spies come from?

JAMES GREEN: He was from the forests of Germany. He grew up in a relatively privileged family background, and he, too, came to America, and what he saw here radicalized him actually, and also hearing speeches of people talking about the evils of capitalism, as they experienced. They were both rather independent men, tradesmen. Parsons was a printer. Spies was an upholsterer, and yet they identified themselves with the cause of the masses of immigrants in the city of Chicago. So when they heard about this killing by the police, they called a rally the next night on May 4th in the Haymarket Square, which is where workers had always gathered for political events, and they wanted it to be a peaceful rally. Everything so far had been peaceful in the eight-hour strikes, and, indeed, the rally was peaceful. The mayor of Chicago came and said, “I don't hear any talk of throwing bombs. I don't hear any threats.”

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, Albert Parsons wasn’t even going to be there, right? He had been somewhere else.

JAMES GREEN: Right, he was planning to go somewhere else, and, in fact, he wasn’t even expecting trouble, so he brought Lucy and his two children, Albert, Jr. and Lulu, and later on, in the defense, they said, “Well, how could a man be advocating violence with innocent people around?” And so, the rally was winding down. It was about 10:30 in the evening. It started to rain. In fact, Albert and Lucy left the rally for the warmth of a nearby saloon, and just as the rally was winding down, a large force of police marched on the square where the rally was taking place.

AMY GOODMAN: Haymarket Square.

JAMES GREEN: Haymarket Square, about 176 police. The police captain had actually disobeyed the orders of the mayor, who said, “The rally is peaceful. There’s no need to disperse it.” The police captain acted on his own, marched right up to them and said, “You must disperse,” and the speaker said, “But we are peaceful.” And he said, “You must disperse anyway.” And as the speaker was coming down from the wagon, someone – and to this day, we don't know who it was – threw a bomb that landed into the ranks of the police. One officer was killed immediately. Six others later died. The police were panicked, of course, almost hysterical. They’d never expected anything like this, began firing, probably shot, you know, each other, shot people in the crowd, and in the end, seven police died and at least three of the demonstrators. Many, many people were wounded, and this was the tragic, violent Haymarket Riot and had enormous consequences for what happened in labor history afterwards.