-
8 hour work day
Coordinated strikes and demonstrations are held nationwide, to demand an eight-hour workday for industrial workers -
striker down
McCormick Reaper Works factory strike; unarmed strikers, police clash; several strikers are killed -
haymarket riot
A meeting of workingmen is held near Haymarket Square; police arrive to disperse the peaceful assembly; a bomb is thrown into the ranks of the police; the police open fire; workingmen evidently return fire; police and an unknown number of workingmen killed; the bomb thrower is unidentified -
may 5-6
Widespread public outrage and shock in Chicago and nationwide; police arrest anarchist and labor activists, including seven of the eight eventual defendants -
break away
Albert Parsons fled the city only to surrender himself on June 21 -
31 indicted
The grand jury indicts 31, charged with being accessories to the murder of policeman Mathias J. Degan; eight are chosen to stand trial: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Oscar Neebe, Louis Lingg, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden -
june 21-july15
Jury selection commences; 981 citizens are questioned during the voir dire process; the resultant panel of twelve are largely businessmen, clerks or salesmen; the jurors, like the public at large, hold preconceived notions about the defendants' connection to the bombing -
July 16- August 11
Trial testimony begins; 227 testify including 54 members of the Chicago Police Department and the defendants Fielden, Schwab, Spies and Parsons; the defendants are prosecuted not as perpetrators but as responsible for instigating the violence; a guilty verdict and death sentence are considered inevitable -
15 years for Neebe
The jury convicts the defendants and sentences Neebe to fifteen years in the penitentiary and the others to death by hanging -
October 7, 8, 9
The convicted deliver speeches to the court before sentencing