Adolph Fischer | |
---|---|
Born | 1858 |
Died | |
Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
Occupation | Printer |
Criminal status | Executed |
Conviction(s) | Conspiracy to commit murder |
Criminal penalty | Death |
Adolph Fischer (1858 – November 11, 1887) was an anarchist and labor union activist tried and executed after the Haymarket Riot.
Adolph Fischer immigrated to the United States in 1873 at the age of 15. He became an apprentice compositor in a printing shop in Little Rock, Arkansas. Later, in 1879, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he joined the German Typographical Union and in 1881, married Johanna Pfauntz (they had three children – one daughter and two sons). Adolph and his wife moved in 1881 to Nashville, Tennessee, where he worked for his brother as a compositor for Anzeiger des Südens, a journal for German immigrants. [1]
In 1883, he moved his family to Chicago, where he became a compositor at the Arbeiter-Zeitung , a pro-labor newspaper run by August Spies and Michael Schwab. It was around then that he also joined the International Working People's Association and the Lehr und Wehr Verein, a radical offshoot which was formed to teach workers to defend themselves.
After the riot at the McCormick Reaper Plant on May 3, 1886, Fischer attended a meeting at Greif's Hall, on Lake Street, to formulate a response. This was the infamous "Monday Night Conspiracy" which prosecution used to prove foreknowledge of the bombing the following day. Also in attendance were George Engel and Godfried Waller, who chaired the meeting and who later testified for the state in return for immunity (Waller was also arrested after the bombing).
The meeting concluded with a plan for a meeting the following night in the Haymarket. Fischer was charged with printing handbills to announce the meeting. The first handbills, which were printed in English and German, contained the line "Workingmen, arm yourselves and appear in full force." [2] Spies, who had been invited to speak at the meeting refused unless this line was removed, so Fischer prepared another circular without the offending line. [3]
Fischer attended the Haymarket meeting the following night and listened to speeches by Spies, Albert Parsons, and Samuel Fielden. Towards the end of Fielden's speech, he went to a local saloon, Zepf's Hall, which is where he was when the bomb and resulting riot occurred. After the commotion, he went home. He was arrested the following day. According to police he had in his possession at the time of his arrest, a loaded revolver, a sharpened file and a fulminating cap, used to detonate bombs.
The evidence presented against Fischer at trial consisted mainly of his role in the Monday Night Conspiracy and his role in printing the Haymarket circulars. His membership in the Lehr und Wehr Verein was also highlighted. Waller testified that Fischer had been the one who proposed the Haymarket meeting (Fischer claimed it was Waller) and that they should be ready to attack the police should there be any trouble. [4] He also testified that Fischer had given him a bomb the year previously, which he stated used against the police. [5] Another witness claimed that Fischer was standing with the bomb thrower at the time of the bombing. [6]
Fischer was convicted with the rest of the eight and, except for one who were given prison sentences, was sentenced to death by hanging. [7]
After two of his fellow defendants wrote to Illinois governor, Richard James Oglesby, Fischer pointedly refused to ask for clemency. He was hanged on November 11, 1887, along with Spies, Parsons and George Engel. His last words were, "Hurrah for anarchy! This is the happiest moment of my life!" [8]
He and most of the other Haymarket martyrs are buried at the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument in Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.
After Adolph's death, his wife Johanna and children returned to the St. Louis area, living near her brother Rudolph Pfountz in Maplewood, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri.
The Knights of Labor, officially the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, was an American labor federation that was active in the late 19th century, especially the 1880s. It operated in the United States as well in Canada, and had chapters also in Great Britain and Australia. Its most important leader was Terence V. Powderly. The Knights of Labor promoted the social and cultural uplift of the worker, and demanded the eight-hour day. In some cases it acted as a labor union, negotiating with employers, but it was never well organized or funded. It was notable in its ambition to organize across lines of gender and race and in the inclusion of both skilled and unskilled labor. After a rapid expansion in the mid-1880s, it suddenly lost its new members and became a small operation again. The Knights of Labor had served, however, as the first mass organization of the white working class of the United States.
Joseph Easton Gary was an American lawyer and judge in the state of Illinois. He served over 40 years as a judge of the Superior Court of Cook County, including eight years as judge of the Illinois Appellate Court for the Cook County district. He infamously presided over the trial of eight anarchists for their alleged role in the Haymarket Riot, and sentenced seven of them to death despite a lack of a clear connection to the bomber.
Lucy E. Parsons was an American social anarchist and later anarcho-communist. Her early life is shrouded in mystery: she herself said she was of mixed Mexican and Native American ancestry; historians believe she was born to an African American slave, possibly in Virginia, then married a black freedman in Texas. In addition to Parsons, she went by different surnames during her life including Carter, Diaz, Gonzalez and Hull. She met Albert Parsons in Waco, Texas, and claimed to have married him although no records have been found. They moved to Chicago together around 1873 and Parsons' politics were shaped by the harsh repression of the Chicago railroad strike of 1877. She argued for labor organization and class struggle, writing polemical texts and speaking publicly at events. She joined the International Workingmen's Association and later the Knights of Labor, and she set up the Chicago Working Women's Union with her friend Lizzie Swank and other women.
Albert Richard Parsons was a pioneering American socialist and later anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist. As a teenager, he served in the military force of the Confederate States of America in Texas, during the American Civil War. After the war, he settled in Texas, and became an activist for the rights of former slaves, and later a Republican official during Reconstruction. With his wife Lucy Parsons, he then moved to Chicago in 1873 and worked in newspapers. There he became interested in the rights of workers. In 1884, he began editing The Alarm newspaper. Parsons was one of four Chicago radical leaders controversially convicted of conspiracy and hanged following a bomb attack on police remembered as the Haymarket affair.
August Vincent Theodore Spies was an American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor. An anarchist, Spies was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder following a bomb attack on police in an event remembered as the Haymarket affair. Spies was one of four who were executed in the aftermath of this event.
George Engel was a labor union activist executed after the Haymarket riot, along with Albert Parsons, August Spies, and Adolph Fischer.
Michael Schwab was a German-American labor organizer and one of the defendants in the Haymarket Square incident.
Sigmund Zeisler (1860–1931) was a German-Jewish U.S. attorney born in Austria and known for his defense of radicals in Chicago in the 1880s. His wife was the famed concert pianist Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler.
Louis Lingg was a German-born American anarchist who was convicted as a member of the criminal conspiracy behind the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing. Lingg was sentenced to die by hanging, but shortly before his execution, he committed suicide in his cell using an explosive.
Oscar William Neebe I was an anarchist, labor activist and one of the defendants in the Haymarket bombing trial, and one of the eight activist remembered on May 1, International Workers' Day.
Samuel "Sam" Fielden was an English-born American Methodist pastor, socialist, anarchist and labor activist who was one of eight convicted in the 1886 Haymarket bombing.
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The Arbeiter-Zeitung, also known as the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, was a German-language, radical newspaper started in Chicago, Illinois, in 1877 by veterans of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. It continued publishing through 1931. It was the first working-class newspaper in Chicago to last for a significant period, and sustained itself primarily through reader funding. The reader-owners removed several editors over its run due to disagreements over editorial policies.
The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument is a funeral monument and sculpture located at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Dedicated in 1893, it commemorates the defendants involved in labor unrest who were blamed, convicted, and executed for the still unsolved bombing during the Haymarket Affair (1886). The monument's bronze sculptural elements are by artist Albert Weinert. On February 18, 1997, the monument was designated a National Historic Landmark.
The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The rally began peacefully in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, the day after the events at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, during which one person was killed and many workers injured. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing retaliatory gunfire by the police caused the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.
Canute R. Matson became Cook County Sheriff in the aftermath of the 1886 Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago.
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The International Working People's Association (IWPA), sometimes known as the "Black International," and originally named the "International Revolutionary Socialists", was an international anarchist political organization established in 1881 at a convention held in London, England.
There are several monuments to commemorate the Haymarket affair.
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