MikeDunnAuthorToday in Labor History December 10, 1865: August Spies, anarchist labor organizer and Haymarket martyr was born. As he was led to the gallows (1887), he shouted, "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today." In 1883, he was a leader in the Revolutionary Congress, in Pittsburgh, that launched the International Working People's Association in America.
On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers went on strike across the U.S. to demand the eight-hour workday. In Chicago, Albert and Lucy Parsons led a peaceful demonstration of 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue. It was the world’s first May Day/International Workers’ Day demonstration—an event that has been celebrated ever since, by nearly every country in the world, except for the U.S. Two days later, August Spies, addressed striking workers at the McCormick Reaper factory. Chicago Police and Pinkertons attacked the crowd, killing at least one person. On May 4, anarchists organized a demonstration at Haymarket Square to protest that police violence. The police ordered the protesters to disperse. Somebody threw a bomb, which killed at least one cop. The police opened fire, killing another seven workers. Six police also died, likely from “friendly fire” by other cops. The authorities went on a witch hunt, rounding up most of the city’s leading anarchists and radical labor leaders, including Albert Parsons and August Spies. They executed four of them in 1887, including Parsons and Spies.
Read more about the Haymarket affair here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #AugustSpies #haymarket #EightHourDay #execution #deathpenalty #prison #Revolution
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