Haymarket Eyewitness

In the aftermath of Haymarket, first-hand accounts quickly took shape among participants with resounding ties to Chicago’s troubling social and economic climate. Strikers and police officers alike traditionally understood how their post-Haymarket testimonies centered around trying to understand what had happened that night. Emphasis on these expectations often led both groups to discuss Haymarket with other eyewitnesses separately. However, despite these shared efforts, the pre-Haymarket tensions between both parties soon proved these narratives more versatile than absolute accounts. Strikers contended in their accounts that the police had instigated the violence in Haymarket Square that night. Police officers, on the other hand, asserted that they only utilized force once the strikers became violent …show more content…
Their frequent use of these public spaces often directly led them into violent encounters with police who sought to stop them for “disturbing” the peace. These previous experiences, thus, led many strikers to claim the police had brought violence to their peaceful protest in Haymarket. Additionally, through their solidarity, strikers likewise sought testimonies from non-striking eyewitnesses to further prove their claim of innocence. All of the non-striking eyewitnesses jointly agreed that the crowd did not fire at the police, who later became deemed credible witnesses by police. This reality meant that many strikers observed Haymarket as a peaceful protest that only turned violent when the police intervened. Many strikers soon utilized this claim in their defenses of the several labor organizations’ leaders arrested in the days following Haymarket. Unfortunately, despite their shared efforts, these strikers found their leaders’ lives placed in the law’s hands as they went to trial for their supposed

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