Currently reading "Death in the Haymarket:

A Story of Chicago, The First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America", by James Green.

I mean, like...astonshing. For years the people fought to have an 8 hour work week and people were denied basic rights. The straight-laced people in that city were horrified that the immigrants thought they had a "right to work", and hated their beer gardens and the fact that women could actually be a part of anything besides staying home or working forever in a factory. The people that advocated for rights were really young to start out, 20 years old (Spies and Parsons). The immigrants knew how to have fun and to bound with others. I'm reading this and I'm thinking...not much has changed in attitudes in this country towards immigrants or others from other nations.

After having read "Devil in the White City", and now this, I'm wanting to visit Chicago some day. Actually, I had planned a train trip 10 years ago but it would've taken too long to get there from Los Angeles. Also, back in the day, Chicago was the candy making capital of the USA because of the cold winters. (Or so that book "The Empire of Chocolate" claimed)

It's called the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument in the Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, IL (formerly known as the German Waldheim Cemetery). It is considered to be the "true" Haymarket monument.

It is inscribed with the last words of August Spies, "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today." George Engle, Aulbert Parsons, Spies, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg are buried in the plot that contains the statue. Later, 2 of the surviving men who were sent to prison over the protest, Michael Schwab and Oscar Neebe, were buried there when they died later.

Emma Goldman is also buried there, near the Haymarket memorial. As are a number of noted laber activists, socialists and anarchists. So many, that the area around the memorial was once jokingly referred to as "the Communist Plot" (maybe the only one that ever truly exsisted!).

For more info, check out this website:
http://www.graveyards.com/IL/Cook/foresthome/
Scroll down to the section labeled "German Waldheim Cemetery (Forest Home Northeast)" and click on the thumbnails of the Haymarket Monument to go to those pages (The first in the series is in the 2nd row, two from the left).

If you ever decide to visit our little corner of the Midwest, I suggest coming in the spring (the city can get really hot in summer, not as hot as So. California, but uncomfortable to tourist around in) or the fall (before the winter sets in).

* Special thanks to my favorite Northsider, Chicago native and Dem O.B. for telling me about this.

Interstate 55, between St. Louis, MO and Chicago.

Coal miner victims from the so-called Virden Riot were refused burial at other cemeteries, so the union purchased land for a cemetery in Mt. Olive, IL. Mother Jones asked to be buried there. Later, an important magazine with articles on progressive thought was named after her.


From the internets ---

As Muslims go to Mecca, there is a shrine in Illinois that deserves a pilgrimmage by all labor-minded persons. It is the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois.

It offers no miraculous visions or cures; but each one who visits will be touched, for this is the resting place of that "grandmother of agitators," Mary "Mother" Jones; and this is a place filled with the spirit of good union men. They are the coal miners she called "her boys," among whom she asked to be buried at the time of her death in 1930, at the age of 100.*

I passed thu Chicago once on an airline and went outside the terminal to have a smoke in the very cold air of winter so I could say I was in Chicago. It was like 5 below zero or something and I was headed back to sunny Santa Monica.

the following: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/094170212X/002-4757626-9824839?v=glance&n=283155

It's an oral history of people in the IWW, especially during the Depression. Since we have all those battles to fight all over again, it's a great place to learn tactics as well as a fantastic read.

I can't recommend it highly enough. It is OUR history, the history of our class instead of the history of armies and unofficial royalty we found in our high school history books.

Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women
by Richard Owen Boyer, Herbert M. Morais

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0916180018/sr=8-1/qid=1155053124/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8369516-3535145?ie=UTF8

. . . a gripping, eye-opening, well-documented account of the American labor movement from its beginnings through to the mid-1950s. It brings alive the great figures and achievements of working class struggle that have been distorted by or excised from mainstream histories.

I think stories like these are intentionally kept out of kids history books on purpose. Can't have them thinking for themselves or standing up for the down-trodden to rise up and fight for the rights of man.

are very illuminating

very enjoyable. The labor struggle is such an important part of our history in America and yet it goes without mention in our high school history classes.

I was pretty mad that I hadn't heard about it. Nothing changes, people are still fighting for a decent wage and vacation...what a hoot in the USA. Must not rest, can't afford to rest, must work till I drop dead on the job. And that's what happened to my dad. Died on the job and he had less than a year to retire.