At a celebration in Chicago’s Haymarket Square honoring the 110-year anniversary of the uprising, author and journalist Studs Terkel (“Working”) speaks to the assembled crowd: “You know why you’re working 8 hours a day? Because four guys in Chicago got hanged, FOR YOU!”
Starting May 1, 1886, labor unions across the United States began a general strike in support of the 8-hour workday. On May 3, police in Chicago shot into a crowd and killed several workers striking at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company Plant. In response, activists gathered on May 4 at Haymarket Square for another day of demonstrations. Upon the arrival of police, an unidentified person threw a bomb, inciting the police to pull their firearms against the crowd. Several policemen and workers were killed, and there was immediate public backlash against the “riot” and the labor movement. The leaders of the event were defended unsuccessfully against charges of murder and inciting violence by the great Clarence Darrow. Four of them were hanged. In the immediate years that followed, Haymarket seemed to have been great setback for the labor movement. However, in 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld recognized the great injustice that had occurred and pardoned all of the defendants. Eventually, the Haymarket Affair came to be acknowledged as the single most important event in U.S. labor history and the birth of the modern labor movement.