Haymarket Riot 11/20/08

This is Haymarket square, where the Haymarket riot occurred. On May Day 1886, the workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. in Chicago began a strike in the hope of gaining a shorter work day. On May 3, police were used to protect strikebreakers and a scuffle broke out; one person was killed and several others injured. The following day, May 4, a large rally was planned by anarchists leaders to protest the so-called police violence. It didn’t take long before a pipe bomb was thrown into the police lines; the explosion took the lives of seven policemen and injured more than 60 others. The police fired into the crowd of workers, killing four. Hundreds of workers were held; some were beaten during questioning and a number of forced confessions were obtained. In the end, eight anarchists were put on trial and seven were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Four were hanged in November 1887, one committed suicide and three were later pardoned by Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld.