May 4, 1886: They Haymarket Bombing -- also known as the Haymarket Affair, the Haymarket Massacre, and the Haymarket Riot -- takes place.
Haymarket Square was bounded by Lake Street, Des Plaines Street, Randolph Street and Halsted Street, 4 blocks west of the Chicago River. It was known as a produce market, and as a site for political demonstrations.
Which was the case on May 4, 1886. It started out as a peaceful rally, in support of workers who were striking for an 8-hour workday. The day before, police had fired onto demonstrators, killing 1 and injuring a few others.
As a light rain fell, August Spies, a 30-year-old native of Hesse, Germany who was publishing a radical newspaper, stood on an open wagon on the Des Plaines Street side, addressed a crowd, whose estimates ranged from 600 to 3,000, not counting uniformed police officers. Also in attendance was the Mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, a cousin of William Henry Harrison (President of the United States for a month before dying in 1841) and Benjamin Harrison (elected President in 1888). Spies stated that the mission of the rally was to peacefully support the strikers and their cause.
Next to speak was Albert Parsons, 37, from Montgomery, Alabama, and also publisher of a radical newspaper. He spoke for an hour. Apparently, his speech was considerably weaker than Spies' was, causing the Mayor to leave in boredom. He wouldn't even be a witness to what happened later. As he left, he told the police to leave the demonstrators alone.
The last speaker was Samuel Fielden, a 39-year-old English Socialist. As the rain got harder, and more people began to leave, his speech, over the course of 20 minutes, "grew wilder and more violent as he proceeded," according to an article in The New York Times. Those who stayed grew agitated.
So when Fielden was finished, the police tried to disperse the crowd. And someone -- to this day, never definitively identified -- threw a dynamite bomb at the police. The explosion killed 8 officers; and 4 civilians, wounding dozens of others.
The 8 dead policeman: Mathias Degan, 34; John Barrett, also 34; George Miller, 28; Timothy Flavin, 27; Michael Sheehan, 29; Thomas Redden, 50; Timothy Sullivan, 51; and Nels Hansen, 50. Hansen was of Danish descent, the rest, like the vast majority of big-city policemen in America at that point, where of Irish descent or immigrants from Ireland.
The investigation convinced one potential suspect to rat his co-conspirators out, and, on June 4, 7 men were indicted, not for throwing the bomb -- no one was ever charged with that -- but for being accessories to the murder of Officer Degan. Spies and Fielden were among them, but were the only 2 of the 7 who were at the scene at the time of the explosion. Parsons and Adolph Fischer were at the scene, but left before the explosion.
Also arrested, but not at the Square at all that day, were Michael Schwab, Spies' assistant editor; Louis Lingg, who was believed to have made the bomb; and George Engel.
Spies, Fischer, Schwab, Lingg and Engel were immigrants from Germany. Fielden was an immigrant from England. Only Parsons was born in the U.S., and only Fielden and Parsons were raised speaking English, and could speak it without a German accent. So the Haymarket Affair pitted not only native-born vs. immigrant, but immigrant groups vs. others.
The trial began on June 21. On August 11, a verdict was reached. Take a wild guess as to what it was. All were convicted, and all were sentenced to death.
On November 10, 1887, the day before the 7 men were to be executed, Governor Richard J. Oglesby of Illinois commuted the sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life in prison.
He did not do so for Lingg, who, upon hearing this, committed suicide in his cell. Someone had smuggled in a blasting cap that he held in his mouth like a cigar. Unfortunately for him, he lived for 6 hours with half his face blown off. He would have been better off accepting his hanging, which would have ended his life within a minute. He was 23 years old.
The next day, November 11, 1887, Spies, 31; Fischer, 29; Engel, 51; and Parsons, 39, were taken to the gallows. At a time when "The Internationale," composed in 1871, had not yet been accepted as the worldwide anthem of left-of-center politics, they sang what then was, the French national anthem, "Le Marseillaise."
With the noose around his neck, Spies yelled to the crowd, "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!" Engel and Fischer yelled out, "Hurrah for anarchism!" Parsons never got any last words out, as the 4 men were then hanged.
In 1893, Governor John P. Altgeld of Illinois pardoned Fielden and Schwab, and they were released after 6 years. Schwab's health had already been compromised, and he died in 1898, age 44. Fielden bought a ranch in Colorado, and prospered there until he died in 1922, just before his 75th birthday.
The Haymarket Affair is often considered a landmark moment in the history of the American labor movement. It was not: Little progress was made for years. Various industries established 8-hour workdays over the years to come, but it wasn't until 1916, when Congress passed the Adamson Act, that it became nationwide.
Since the late 1950s, the western edge of the Square has been taken up by Interstate 90. It opened as the Northwest Expressway in 1960, and was renamed the John F. Kennedy Expressway shortly after the 35th President was assassinated in 1963.
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May 4, 1886 was a Tuesday. The only team sport in America that was professional was baseball. In the National League:
* The New York Giants lost to the Philadelphia Quakers, 11-4 at Recreation Park in Philadelphia. The Quakers became the Philadelphia Phillies in 1890.
* The Boston Beaneaters beat the Washington Nationals, 8-3 at the Swampoodle Grounds in Washington. The Beaneaters eventually became the Braves. This version of the Washington Nationals folded after the 1889 season. The Swampoodle neighborhood of D.C. no longer exists: Union Station was built on the site in 1907.
* The St. Louis Maroons beat the Chicago White Stockings, 6-5 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The White Stockings would become the Cubs. The Maroons could not compete with the local team in the American Association, and folded after the 1889 season.
Speaking of the American Association, these games were played there on that day:
* The New York Metropolitans lost to the Baltimore Orioles, 10-3 at the original Polo Grounds, at 111th Street and 5th Avenue. Yes, the Metropolitans were called "the Mets" for short. They ran out of money and folded in 1887. Their name was revived for the 1962 National League expansion team: To this day, the corporate name of the New York Mets is "Metropolitan Baseball Club, Incorporated."
This version of the Baltimore Orioles joined the NL in 1892; won its Pennant in 1894, 1895 and 1896; but lost money in 1899, and were contracted. They bear no connection to the current American League team of the same name.
* The Brooklyn Grays beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-1 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. The Grays would join the NL in 1890, and would eventually become the Dodgers. This version of the Athletics folded after "the Players' League War" of 1890, and bears no relationship to the AL team of the same name founded in 1901.
* The St. Louis Browns beat the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, 14-7 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Soon, the Alleghenys would make a transaction that would be publicly called "nothing but piratical." The team ran with the name, and became the Pittsburgh Pirates. (The alliteration helped.) They joined the NL in 1887.
The Browns did so in 1892, after the AA collapsed, and eventually became the Cardinals. As with the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Stockings, an AL team adopted the NL team's former name.
* And the Cincinnati Red Stockings beat the Louisville Colonels, 5-2 at League Park in Cincinnati. The Reds-to-be joined the NL in 1892. The Colonels were contracted after the 1899 season.
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