Timothy Messer-Kruse | |
---|---|
Born | March 13, 1963 |
Occupation | Historian |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
Academic work | |
Main interests | Labor history |
Timothy F. "Tim" Messer-Kruse (born March 13,1963) is an American historian who specializes in American labor history. His research into the 1886 Haymarket affair led him to reappraise the conventional narrative about the evidence presented against those brought to trial. [1] He has also written on banking history and race relations in the United States.
Messer-Kruse attended University of Wisconsin-Madison,where he received his bachelor's degree in History &South Asian Studies in 1988,his master's degree in U.S. History in 1990,and his doctorate in 1994. In 1995 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Labor History at University of Toledo,becoming an Associate Professor in 2000 and Associate Director of the Humanities 2000 Program in 2002. In 2003 he was named Chair of the department. In 2006,he was appointed Professor of History and Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at Bowling Green State University.
In the early 2000s Messer-Kruse was prompted to study the original court documents from the Haymarket affair trials. Despite the prevailing belief that little or no evidence was presented at trial,he noted that evidence had been presented over the course of six weeks. He published his findings in books and academic papers including The Haymarket Conspiracy . Messer-Kruse and editors of Wikipedia were subsequently involved in a conflict over the content and editing procedure of the Wikipedia article on the Haymarket affair. [2] In 2012,Messer-Kruse described his experiences in the Chronicle of Higher Education , [3] on the NPR podcast On The Media , [4] in The Atlantic , [5] and on National Public Radio. [6]
Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons was an American labor organizer,radical socialist and anarcho-communist. She is remembered as a powerful orator. Parsons entered the radical movement following her marriage to newspaper editor Albert Parsons and moved with him from Texas to Chicago,where she contributed to the newspaper he famously edited,The Alarm.
August Vincent Theodore Spies was an American upholsterer,radical labor activist,and newspaper editor. Spies is remembered as one of the anarchists in Chicago who were 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.
Adolph Fischer was an anarchist and labor union activist tried and executed after the Haymarket Riot.
Paul Avrich was a historian of the 19th and early 20th century anarchist movement in Russia and the United States. He taught at Queens College,City University of New York,for his entire career,from 1961 to his retirement as distinguished professor of history in 1999. He wrote ten books,mostly about anarchism,including topics such as the 1886 Haymarket Riot,1921 Sacco and Vanzetti case,1921 Kronstadt naval base rebellion,and an oral history of the movement.
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was an Irish Fenian leader and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
Anarchism in the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements,growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century,the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.
The Preparedness Day Bombing was a bombing in San Francisco,California,United States,on July 22,1916,of a parade organised by local supporters of the Preparedness Movement which advocated American entry into World War I. During the parade a suitcase bomb was detonated,killing ten and wounding 40 in the worst terrorist attack in San Francisco's history.
Louis Lingg was a German-born American anarchist who died by suicide while in jail after being convicted and sentenced to hang as a member of a criminal conspiracy behind the Haymarket Square bombing. Lingg died by suicide in his cell with an explosive shortly before his scheduled execution. Lingg later received a posthumous pardon by the Governor of Illinois,who stated that Lingg had been wrongly convicted.
Dyer Daniel Lum was an American anarchist,labor activist and poet. A leading syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s,Lum is best remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.
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 affair 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. It began as a peaceful rally 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 several 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 gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians;dozens of others were wounded.
The Immigration Act of 1903,also called the Anarchist Exclusion Act,was a law of the United States regulating immigration. It codified previous immigration law,and added four inadmissible classes:anarchists,people with epilepsy,beggars,and importers of prostitutes. It had minimal impact and its provisions related to anarchists were expanded in the Immigration Act of 1918.
The Alarm was an anarchist newspaper published in the American city of Chicago during the 1880s. The weekly was the most prominent English-language anarchist periodical of its day. The paper was famously edited by Albert Parsons,who was wrongfully executed in response to the Haymarket affair of 1886.
Marie Le Compte was an American journal editor and anarchist who was active during the early 1880s.
The International Workingmen's Association in the United States of America took the form of a loose network of about 35 frequently discordant local "sections," each professing allegiance to the London-based IWA,commonly known as the "First International." These sections were divided geographically and by the language spoken by their members,frequently new immigrants to America,including those who spoke German,French,Czech,as well as Irish and "American" English-language groups.
The Haymarket Conspiracy:Transatlantic Anarchist Networks is a 2012 book by historian Timothy Messer-Kruse on the Haymarket affair and the origins of American anarchism.
Freie Arbeiter Stimme was a Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper published from New York City's Lower East Side between 1890 and 1977. It was among the world's longest running anarchist journals,and the primary organ of the Jewish anarchist movement in the United States;at the time that it ceased publication it was the world's oldest Yiddish newspaper. Historian of anarchism Paul Avrich described the paper as playing a vital role in Jewish–American labor history and upholding a high literary standard,having published the most lauded writers and poets in Yiddish radicalism. The paper's editors were major figures in the Jewish–American anarchist movement:David Edelstadt,Saul Yanovsky,Joseph Cohen,Hillel Solotaroff,Roman Lewis,and Moshe Katz.
Lizzie Holmes was an American anarchist,writer,and organizer of Chicago's working women during the late 19th century in the United States. She was a key figure in Chicago's labor movement in the years just preceding the Haymarket affair,during which she worked with and played a leading role in a range of unions including the Knights of Labor and the International Working People's Association. Prior to becoming a labor organizer,she worked as a school teacher and music instructor in Ohio.
Justus H. Schwab (1847–1900) was the keeper of a radical saloon in New York City's Lower East Side. An emigre from Germany,Schwab was involved in early American anarchism in the early 1880s,including the anti-authoritarian New York Social Revolutionary Club's split from the Socialist Labor Party and Johann Most's entry to the United States.