May 4, the awful Haymarket Square Bombing in Chicago
A
bomb
killed
seven
Chicago,
Illinois,
USA,
police
officers as they
attacked
and
assaulted
demonstrators at a labor
rally
-
men and
women
protesting police
brutality the previous
day at
McCormick Reaper Works.
Policeman
Mathias J Degan
was
killed almost instantly and
seven other
policemen later
succumbed to
injuries; four others besides
died.
Earlier in the
day there had been anarchists addressing the
crowd, so the
crime was
slated
home to proponents of the
political
ideology of
anarchy,
despite the
fact that no
evidence for such a
link could be
demonstrated.
A frame-up ensued and all the men targeted by the police were found guilty: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg and George Engel were given the death penalty; Oscar Neebe, Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab were sentenced to life imprisonment. On November 10, 1887, Lingg committed suicide by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth. The following day, Parsons, Spies, Fisher and Engel were executed.
Eventually those
convicted of the
crimes were
pardoned by the
State of Illinois after a worldwide protest at a frame-up.
Unfortunately, this did not occur in the lifetime of all the victims of the
police revenge. On
June
26,
1893, Neebe, Fielden, and Schwab,
Haymarket
anarchists not already
hanged by the State of Illinois the previous day, were pardoned by Illinois
governor, John Peter Altgeld. The show
trial and
convictions were a travesty,
but
conservative
reaction to Altgeld's
action effectively ended his political
career. The Haymarket
case gained
worldwide
attention for the labor
movement, and
sparked off the
tradition of
May Day labor
rallies in many
cities
around the
world.
In 1889, a 9-foot tall bronze statue of a Chicago policeman was erected near the site of the riot, becoming a subject of debate and derision. After being moved from its original location, it was blown up at least twice by the Weather Underground before being moved to the lobby of police headquarters.
More Haymarket Square Riot, at Wikipedia Haymarket Affair Downunder
More on Haymarket The Dramas of Haymarket Haymarket chronology
Pip Wilson posted item above at 5:57 PM | Permalink
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