The rally itself was not spectacular at all, with fewer than 2,500 people attending compared to the predicted 20,000 people. The meeting had to be delayed for an hour and backup speakers were brought in at the last minute because the scheduled speakers never showed up. By the time police arrived on the scene, there were only 200 people left, the majority, including many of the speakers, having already left. This was when the previously peaceful protest turned violent.
An unidentified protester threw a dynamite bomb at the policemen, causing them to panic and fire at random. In the darkness, they shot and killed workers as well as their own men. In the end, seven police officers were dead and 60 injured, with four to eight civilians killed and 30 to 40 injured. However, only one of the seven police killed was a direct result of the bomb, the others having been shot by other policemen.
The result of this riot was a heightened fear of immigrants and labor activists throughout the United States. Labor leaders were rounded up and arrested without warrants and pro-labor newspapers were shut down. In the following days, eight men, chosen at random from the labor leaders in the area of the riot, were tried and convicted for planning the attack on the police. The jury was biased and there was little to no evidence to prove they had done so. In fact, many of the eight men had not appeared at the rally and the man who was said to have thrown the bomb even had witnesses proving he was a mile away at the time. Four men were hanged, one killed himself, and three were eventually pardoned in 1893 by the Illinois governor.
This incident widely affected public opinion and support for the labor movement. For some, this increased hatred or distrust of labor activists. The Knights of Labor were not proven to have taken a part in the event, but this group was blamed and suspicion that they were involved even caused many supporters of the labor movement to join a different organization, the American Federation of Labor. For others, the eight men who were convicted became martyrs and a symbol of the injustices workers faced at the time.
http://www.illinoislaborhistory.org/the-haymarket-affair/
https://www.britannica.com/event/Haymarket-Riot
http://www.history.com/topics/haymarket-riot
Shawn, I thought you did a great job describing the Haymarket Square Riots and their effects on the popular attitudes towards labor. I found this topic extremely interesting, as it seemed weird to me that even though the majority of the population were worker and laborers who could benefit from these movements, the general public was against these types of movements. Or at least, after these riots. One interesting bit of information I found while reading the textbook was that the industrialists actually used the Haymarket Square Riots and others to paint the labor movements in a bad light, and this perhaps contributed to the public negativity towards the unions. I wonder if the industrialists hadn't taken these actions, would the feelings still be the same?
ReplyDeleteI thought this post was able to give a lot of information on the events leading up to the haymarket square riot as well as the effects afterwards. I definitely thought that it is interesting how different people used this event to prove different things, depending on what they believed in or what they supported. People who supported the labor movement saw these workers as heroes and martyrs, while others used this as an opportunity to show how dangerous immigrants can be. This relates a lot to almost everything in history, as an event can be interpreted in many different ways depending on how the historian/textbook wants to portray it.
ReplyDeleteWhile we have read about the Haymarket Riot in both the textbook and some documents, I'm not sure I completely understood this event until I read your post, which did a great job discussing the event in a clear way. I think it's interesting to compare this kind of police violence event to modern day events where police officers are fatally shooting people without a full understanding of the event. Just like these events, which most would consider something relatively new, the Haymarket Riots all the way back in the late 1800s included confused officers firing on citizens of unknown guilt, resulting in deaths. Also, this event similarly drew national attention and attracted the media. Ever since the Haymarket Riot, it has been a symbol to many of the horrors of police brutality, with the statue having been blown up multiple times, looted, hit by cars, and more (http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-history-cop/2017/05/the-chicago-haymarket-riot-police-memorial-statue-a-tumultuous-history-of-its-own/) as recently as the '70s.
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