The Haymarket Digital Collection

"Welcome to the Haymarket Affair Digital Collection. The Chicago Historical Society has created this digital collection to provide on-line access to its primary source materials relating to the Haymarket Affair, a controversial moment in Chicago's past and a pivotal event in the early history of the American labor movement."

"The digital collection presents images of key documents and artifacts in their historical context with a minimum of interpretive information. Much like the witness testimony and exhibits introduced during the Haymarket trial, these primary sources are pieces of evidence which enable the user to reconstruct and interpret the historical events to which they relate."

Today we go back to the days when, much like these days, there was another growing international terrorist threat begining to shake the world with bombs and assassinations. In those days they were the anarchists.

This is a story about what happened when police fired into a crowd of unarmed strikers, later to be followed by a clash between police, socialists, anarchists, and workers at a meeting. Someone threw a bomb, and anarchists were blamed, tried, and convicted. These were the early days of the labor movement, as well as that of socialists and anarchists. This site doesn't go into it, but this was the begining of decades of violent activity by anarchists that would reach well into the 20th century.