August Spies		Louis Lingg
	Adolph Fischer		Samuel Fielden
	Albert Parsons		Oscar Neebe
	George Engel		Michael Schwab

Haymarket Links

• Illinois Labor History Society
  the organization that owns the monument.
• Haymarket Massacre Internet Memorial [defunct 2002]
• The Haymarket Massacre Archive
• Anarchist Images
  source of the small portraits on this page.

References

• Adelman, William J. Haymarket Revisted, Chicago: Illinois Labor History Society, 1976.
• Powers, Joe and Rogovin, Mark, et al. The Day Will Come Chicago: Illinois Labor History Society, 1994. This booklet is available in the cemetery office.

More Monument Pictures

• Missing Piece - Showing bronze leaves originally at base of monument, now missing. Photo courtesy of Anarchist Images.
• Back of monument, showing bronze plaque with Altgeld's words of pardon. Photo courtesy of Anarchist Images.

"The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today." --A.Spies

The Massacre

Demonstrations and marches by workers demanding an eight hour day took place in Chicago in early May, 1886. Business tycoons, police, and the newspaper establishment were becoming increasingly fearful. On May 3rd, August Spies, publisher of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, addressed a crowd of McCormick Reaper plant workers. Police under Captain Bonfield arrived and fired on the crowd, killing two.

George Engel, Adolph Fischer and other activists met that night to plan a mass meeting for the next night in protest of the killings. 20,000 flyers were distributed to promote the meeting. Although 2,500 had assembled, due to poor planning, no speeches were made until August Spies climbed atop a wagon at 8:30. Albert Parsons was next to speak after Spies, followed by Samuel Fielden.

Mayor Carter Henry Harrison attended the meeting briefly, then left, seeing that it was peaceful. Captain Bonfield disobeyed the mayor's orders and sent his men to disperse the crowd. A force of 176 police attacked the remaining workers - only about two hundred - using a military formation.

An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb into the police, where it exploded, killing policeman Mathias Degan and wounding several others. The police began shooting into the demonstrators. At least four workers were killed, and six police - most shot accidentally by their fellows.

The Martyrs

In the days that followed, numerous raids took place without warrants on the homes and offices of labor activists. As the identity of the bomb-thrower would never be known, the speakers at the meeting and its organizers were arrested instead. Albert Parsons had escaped to Wisconsin, but willingly turned himself in to stand trial with his comrades. Eight men were tried under Judge Joseph Gary, who was firmly anti-labor. Gary allowed the prosecution to make any statements they wished, and frighten the jurors by showing them bombs, while the defendant's lawyers were not allowed to bring in vital evidence. Seven of the defendants were sentenced to hang, with Oscar Neebe given fifteen years in prison.

Appeals by the defense delayed the hanging for over a year. The seven were scheduled to hang on November 11, 1887. The day before the execution, November tenth, Governor Oglesby commuted the sentences of Saumel Fielden and Michael Schwab to life inprisonment. The remaining prisoners were to be hanged the next day. Louis Lingg cheated the executioner and killed himself in his cell by biting down on a dynamite blasting cap. August Spies, Adolph Fischer, Aulbert Parsons, and George Engel, were hanged on November 11th, known as "Black Friday".

The bodies of the five martyrs were returned to their families. On November 13th, thousands of workers marched with the bodies to a downtown railroad station, then accompanied them on the train to German Waldheim Cemetery, where the five were buried together in this plot.

The Monument

The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument was erected in 1893 by the Pioneer Aid and Support Association, an organization begun by Lucy Parsons, Albert's widow. It features a granite shaft and two bronze figures - a woman as Justice placing a crown of laurels on the brow of a fallen worker, while preparing to draw a sword. Sculptor Albert Weinert designed this monument based on a verse from the French ahthem, the "Marseillaise", which the five had sung before the hangings.

On the front of the monument are the last words of August Spies: "The day will come...".

The monument was dedicated June 25, 1893. Thousands of workers and visitors to the World's Columbian Exposition marched to the downtown train station and then rode to the cemetery. Floral tributes had been sent by several nations, and red bunting decorated the monument and speakers' platform. Speeches were made in English, German, Polish and Bohemian, and an orchestra played the Marseillaise.

The following day, Illinois Governor Altgeld pardoned the three survivors: Neebe, Schwab and Fielden. Michael Schwab died in 1898 and Oscar Neebe in 1916, and were both buried here beside their comrades. Samuel Fielden, who died in 1922, is the only one of the eight not buried in Waldheim.

On May 2, 1971, the last surviving member of the Pioneer Aid and Support Society, Irving Abrams, presented the deed to the monument to the Illinois Labor History Society. Every year on the sunday closest to May 4, and the anniversary of Black Friday, November 11th, labor organizations come to this monument to pay tribute to their heroes.