Martyrdom and Memory: Contested Memory, Labor Politics, and Uncertainty at the 1986 Chicago Haymarket Affair Centennial

Through April and May 1986, the Illinois Labor History Society, the city of Chicago, and various unions throughout the city held a centennial celebration for the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair. Dubbed the “trial of the century,” the trial of eight Chicago anarchists for their supposed role in the Haymarket bombing remains one of the most controversial in American legal history. The trial was called a sham by labor unions and radicals around the world. Despite insufficient evidence of the bomber’s identity, the court ruled against the anarchist defendants. Five of the anarchists were scheduled to hang on November 11, 1887. While one cheated the hangman, four were hanged as scheduled on the morning of November 11.

The Haymarket episode served as a rallying cry for working-class movements across the world. The development of International Workingmen’s Day, or May Day, as a worker’s holiday and day of action began with the Second International in 1889. In the decades after, May Day celebrations popped up around the world and across sectarian lines. The more radical of these working-class movements, namely those Marxist or anarchist in nature, prioritized action and the future. Other groups, such as trade unions, favored looking to the past and celebrating their accomplishments. Conflicting perceptions of the Haymarket Martyrs and their legacy clashed at the Haymarket Centennial.

This presentation will show how the conflicting memories of radical groups, trade unions, the government, and labor educators skirmished during the centennial celebration in Chicago. Looking at how memory affected labor partisans will show how memory informed their perceptions of their present and their prescriptions for their futures. This presentation, then, seeks to place these conflicts in the context of increasing uncertainty within the American labor movement as deindustrialization, austerity politics, and globalization worked to remake the lives of workers worldwide.