1886
The Haymarket Square Riot
At Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, a bomb is thrown at a
squad of policemen attempting to break up a labor rally. The police responded
with wild gunfire, killing several people in the crowd and injuring dozens
more.
The demonstration, which drew some 1,500 Chicago workers, was
organized by German-born labor radicals in protest of the killing of a striker
by the Chicago police the day before. Midway into the rally, which had thinned
out because of rain, a force of nearly 200 policemen arrived to disperse the
workers. As the police advanced toward the 300 remaining protesters, an
individual who was never positively identified threw a bomb at them. After the
explosion and subsequent police gunfire, more than a dozen people lay dead or
dying, and close to 100 were injured.
The Haymarket Square Riot set off a national wave of xenophobia,
as hundreds of foreign-born radicals and labor leaders were rounded up in
Chicago and elsewhere. A grand jury eventually indicted 31 suspected labor
radicals in connection with the bombing, and eight men were convicted in a
sensational and controversial trial. Judge Joseph E. Gary imposed the death
sentence on seven of the men, and the eighth was sentenced to 15 years in
prison. On November 11, 1887, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, August Spies, and
Albert Parson were executed.
Of the three others sentenced to death, one committed suicide on
the eve of his execution and the other two had their death sentences commuted
to life imprisonment by Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby. Governor Oglesby
was reacting to widespread public questioning of their guilt, which later led
his successor, Governor John P. Altgeld, to pardon fully the three activists
still living in 1893.