Haymarket Public garden

The May 4th 1886, the gathering of anarchists and activists working with Haymarket Public garden , Chicago, was transformed into drama. An unknown attacker launched a bomb on the mass of police, by killing one on the blow. In the chaos which resulted from it, seven agents were killed, and the damage in the public high. The event was to stigmatize forever the anarchistic movement like violent one and made of Chicago a hot spot of the social struggles of planet.

This gathering wanted to be above all pacifist, to answer repression that the workers in strike of the factories Mc Cormick had undergone a few days before. It was also integrated in the claim for the eight hours day of daily work, for which a general strike mobilizing 340.000 workers had been launched. A call in the newspaper The Alarm invited the workers to come armed, but with an only one aim of Autodéfense, to prevent carnages as it, alas, had occurred of it at the time of good of others strikes.

After the Attack, eight men were stopped, shown murders of Haymarket. The judgments were probably carried out in a partial, being anarchistic leaders opposed to the behavior of political elite, financial and commercial way of Chicago. Their goal was not to change the world by randomly thrown bombs, but by a work of conscientisation of the long-term workers. Many people estimated that they were condemned because they were not criminal, but anarchistic.

These eight men were: August Spies (hung), Albert Parsons (hung), George Engel (hung), Adolph Fischer (hung), Louis Lingg (condemned to death; commits suicide in prison), Michael Schwab (condemned to perpetuity; pardoned in 1893), Oscar Neebe (pardoned and slackened in 1893) and Samuel Fielden (released in 1893).

With reading

The Bomb , novel of Frank Harris appeared in 1908, recalls the course of the events according to the assumption that Rudolph Schnaubelt, member of the anarchistic group of Louis Lingg but not stopped, would be the launcher of the bomb. An online version is available in English.

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