The United States is a nation built by working people from coast to coast. Every city and town, every road and dam was built by our multiracial, multinational working class. May Day, International Workers Day, commerates an American tragedy that took place in 1886.
When the industrial revolution rolled across the U.S., Chicago became a center of industrial production because of its location and access to various forms of transportation. From the late 1880s, Chicago also became a destination for workers and their families seeking jobs and a better life. Working-class whites from Appalachia, blacks fleeing the oppressive segregationist South, impoverished farmers and newly-arrived immigrants all made their way to Chicago to work the city’s factories, mills and slaughterhouses.
One of the most important events in the history of the international working class happened in Chicago in May 1886. Workers striking for an eight-hour day were beaten by police on May 1 of that year. A protest rally on May 3 ended when a bomb tossed by an unidentified person killed several workers and police. In the wake of the “Haymarket Incident�, eight labor radicals were rounded up and framed for the murder of the police. Four were hanged on November 11, 1887. Another died mysteriously in his cell the night before. Three others were later pardoned by order of the Governor of Illinois.
The 2nd International Workingmen’s Association led by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels commemorated the Haymarket martyrs and the struggle for the eight-hour day by making May 1 International Workers Day. It is celebrated worldwide to this day. The Haymarket Martyrs and other heroes of the U.S. working class are buried at Waldheim Cemetery (Forrest Home) in Chicago.
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