Beyond Rivalry

4  MAY is ... a riotous day?

>>> 121 years since the Haymarket Square Riot (1886), in Chicago, IL. A bomb was thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally; the police responded by firing, killing several people and injuring dozens more. The demonstration of 1,500 Chicago workers has been organized by German-born labor radicals to protest the killing of a striker by the Chicago police the day before at the McCormick Reaper plant. This riot set off a national wave of xenophobia; hundreds of foreign-born radicals and labor leaders were rounded up. Eventually eight men were convicted of being part of the bombing, and on 11 Nov. 1887, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, August Spies, and Albert Parson were executed by the state by hanging. Louis Lingg committed suicide on the eve of his execution. In 1893, the three still-living activists were pardoned because their guilt was deemed unclear.

Sources: Chicago Public Library: The Haymarket Affair Digital Collection / LOC: Chicago Anarchists on Trial / This Day in History /

>>>  37 years since twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on anti-war protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others (1970), permanently paralyzing one. "The burst of gunfire came about 20 minutes after the guardsmen broke up a noon rally on the Commons, a grassy campus gathering spot, by lobbing tear gas at a crowd of about 1,000 young people." Troops apparently opened fire after they were shot at by a sniper, though there doesn't seem to have been a sniper or any gunfire prior to that. The guard has been called in and martial law has been declared after students, angered by the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, burned the campus's Army Reserve Officers Training Corps building to the ground. 

Those killed that day were: Allison Krause, 19 years old; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20; Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20; and William K. Schroeder, 19.

Source:  NYT article on Kent State shootings: 4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops / Kent State University Libraries and Media Services' May 4 Collection /Kent May 4 Center / The Kent State Shooting: A Chronology (from William A. Gordon's book, Four Dead in Ohio: Was There a Conspiracy at Kent State?)