Haymarket Trial
Poets involved
What happened
In Chicago, eight anarchist labor organizers were tried for murder after a bomb was thrown at police during a rally at Haymarket Square, killing seven officers. No evidence connected any of the defendants to the bombing, but the trial was conducted in an atmosphere of hysteria with a hostile judge and jury. Four defendants were hanged, one committed suicide, and three were eventually pardoned by Governor John Peter Altgeld in 1893.
Literary impact
The Haymarket trial and executions became one of the most referenced events in American labor poetry, inspiring poems by Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and the radical poet Emma Goldman's circle. The trial's injustice influenced the tradition of American protest poetry that links legal persecution to class struggle, and the Haymarket martyrs became symbols in the poetry of the international labor movement, from William Morris in England to Spanish poets who referenced anarchist martyrs.
Source: Wikipedia
