Today in Labor History December 6, 1889: The trial of the Chicago Haymarket anarchists began amidst national and international outrage and protest. None of the men on trial had even been at Haymarket Square when the bomb was set off. They were on trial because of their anarchist political affiliations and their labor organizing for the 8-hour work-day. 4 were ultimately executed, including Alber Parsons, husband of future IWW founding member Lucy Parsons. One, Louis Ling, cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell. The Haymarket Affairs is considered the origin of International Workers Day, May 1st, celebrated in virtually every country in the world, except for the U.S., where the atrocity occurred. Historically, it was also considered the culmination of the Great Upheaval, which a series of strike waves and labor unrest that began in Martinsburg, West Virginia, 1877, and spread throughout the U.S., including the Saint Louis Commune, when communists took over and controlled the city for several days. Over 100 workers were killed across the U.S. in the weeks of strikes and protests. Communists and anarchists also organized strikes in Chicago, where police killed 20 men and boys. Albert and Lucy Parsons participated and were influenced by these events. I write about this historical period in my Great Upheaval Trilogy. The first book in this series, Anywhere But Schuylkill, came out in September, 2023, from Historium Press. Check it out here: https://www.thehistoricalfictioncompany.com/it/michael-dunn and https://michaeldunnauthor.com/
Today in Labor History November 5, 1916: The Everett Massacre occurred in Everett, Washington. 300 IWW members arrived by boat in Everett to help support the shingle workers’ strike that had been going on for the past 5 months. Prior attempts to support the strikers were met with vigilante beatings with axe handles. As the boat pulled in, Sheriff McRae called out, “Who’s your leader?” The Wobblies answered, “We’re all leaders!” The sheriff pulled his gun and said, “You can’t land.” A Wobbly yelled back, “Like hell we can’t.” Gunfire erupted, most of it from the 200 vigilantes on the dock. When the smoke cleared, two of the sheriff’s deputies were dead, shot in the back by their own men, along with 5-12 Wobblies on the boat. Dozens more were wounded. The authorities arrested 74 Wobblies. After a trial, all charges were dropped against the IWW members. The event was mentioned in John Dos Passos’s “USA Trilogy.”
Today in Labor History October 4, 1884: Japanese writer Jun Tsuji was born. He was a Dadaist, nihilist, Epicurean and shakuhachi musician. Early in his life, he was influenced by the works of Tolstoy, Kōtoku Shūsui's socialist anarchism, and the literature of Oscar Wilde and Voltaire. Later, he became a follower of Stirner’s individualist anarchism. His works were censored by the authorities and he was harassed by the police. His former wife, anarcho-feminist Itō Noe, was murdered by the military police in the Amakasu Incident in 1923, when the military police murdered her and lover, Ōsugi Sakae, an informal leader of the Japanese anarchist movement, along with Ōsugi's six-year-old nephew. During the weeks that followed the great Kantō earthquake, authorities and vigilantes arrested, beat, tortured thousands of dissidents, and murdered an estimated 6,000.
Today in Labor History August 30, 1948: Fred Hampton revolutionary activist and chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party was born. He founded the antiracist, anti-class Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that included Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. In December 1969, the Chicago police & FBI drugged Hampton, shot him and killed him in his bed during a predawn raid. They sprayed more than 90 gunshots throughout his apartment. They also killed Black Panther Mark Clark and wounded several others. In January 1970, a jury concluded that Hampton's and Clark's deaths were justifiable homicides.
Stephen King refers to Hampton in his novel “11/22/63” (2012). In that book, a character suggests that if you could travel back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination, it could have a ripple effect that also prevented Hampton's assassination.
Today in Labor History August 23, 1909: IWW strikers boarded a streetcar in McKees Rock, Pennsylvania looking for scabs, during the Pressed Streetcar Strike, in the Mckees Rock borough of Pittsburgh. A deputy sheriff shot at them and was killed in the return fire. A gun battle ensued that killed 12-26 workers. IWW cofounder, William Trautman, led the Wobbly contingent during the strike. He later wrote a novel, “Riot,” based on the strike. After the authorities arrested Trautman during the strike, Big Bill Haywood and Joe Ettor came to organize the strikers.
Pressed Streetcar employed 6,000 people, mostly immigrant, from 16 different ethnic backgrounds. It was the second largest streetcar manufacturer in the country. Working conditions were horrendous, even by Pittsburgh standards. Locals referred to it as the slaughterhouse. The local coroner estimated that workers were dying at a rate of one per day, mostly by cranes. Slavic immigrants complained that company officials forced their wives and daughters to perform sexual favors in exchange for debts owed to the company for food and rent.