In the last few decades of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th century, Chicago was a hotbed of labor unrest. Chicago industry was notorious for it's bad treatment of workers (later graphically depicted in "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair), and Chicago as a city was openly hostile to the labor movement.
On May 1, 1886, coordinated strikes and demonstrations were held nationwide, to demand an eight-hour workday for industrial workers. These demonstrations were controversial everywhere, but in Chicago they took an ugly turn just a few days later.
Striking workers and those supporting them gathered in Haymarket Square on May 4th, which was located at 151-199 N. Des Plaines Street in Chicago. Police arrived to disperse the peaceful assembly, but a bomb was thrown into the ranks of the police. The police opened fire, workingmen evidently returned fire, and seven policemen and an unknown number of workingmen were killed.
The bomb thrower was unidentified, but that didn't stop police from arresting eight men--all of them well known anarchists or labor activists who publicly criticized police behavior after the riots: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Oscar Neebe, Louis Lingg, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden.
News of their arrests made headlines around the world.
Meanwhile, just a few miles from the site of the riot, the citizens of Chicago were being entertained by an early version of the Chicago Cubs. The team was still known as the White Stockings at the time, and they played at a ballpark known as West Side Park (Congress, Loomis, Harrison, and Throop streets). It's diamond pointed away from the lake, and the grandstand held 16,000 fans.
During the worker demonstrations they were on the road in Kansas City and St. Louis—-and the afternoon before the Haymarket Square riot on May 4th, they lost their first game of the young season.
They didn't lose many more.
That 1886 team won the National League behind three Hall of Famers, Cap Anson (photo), George King Kelly, and John Clarkson. Anson, called "Cap" because he was the captain of the team, still holds several Cubs records including most runs, most doubles, most hits, most RBI, and highest batting average. Kelly won the batting title in 1886 with a .388 average, and Clarkson won 36 games—which is pretty good, but nothing compared to the previous year (1885) when he won 53 games.
Another member of that 1886 team was Billy Sunday, who later became an evangelist preaching against the evils of Chicago. (The town that Billy Sunday could not shut down.) Sunday preached against the evils of alcohol and prostitution, but Chicago had another dark side that soon became evident to the rest of the world.
With scant evidence against the accused, prosecutors put them on trial for the more general charge of inciting violence instead. The entire labor movement was considered at fault for this incident, and these eight men were the symbols of it. They were convicted by a jury of businessmen.
Of the eight men convicted for the crime, four were put to death. A fifth committed suicide in prison. The other three were later pardoned by Illinois Governor John Altgeld (photo), who considered the trial a gross miscarriage of justice.
The Haymarket trial was followed closely by the entire world, and became a symbol of worker's rights. It is considered to have been an important influence on the origin of international May Day observances for workers.
The site of the incident was designated as a Chicago Landmark on March 25, 1992.
