Haymarket

Haymarket

Author: Martin Duberman
Desc: On the night of May 4 1886 during a peaceful demonstration of labor activists in Haymarket Square in Chicago a dynamite bomb was thrown into the ranks of police -trying to disperse the crowd. The officers immediately opened fire killing a number of protestors and wounding some two hundred others. Albert Parsons was the best-known of those hanged; Haymarket is his story. Parsons humanist and autodidact was an ex-Confederate soldier who grew up in Texas in the 1870s and fell in love with Lucy Gonzalez a vibrant outspoken black woman who preferred to describe herself as of Spanish and Creole descent. The novel tells the story of their lives together of their growing political involvement of the formation of a colorful circle of "co-conspirators"-immigrants radical intellectuals journalists advocates of the working class-and of the events culminating in bloodshed. More than just a moving story of love and human struggle more than a faithful account of a watershed event in United States history Haymarket presents a layered and dynamic revelation of late nineteenth-century Chicago and of the lives of a handful of remarkable individuals who were willing to risk their lives for the promise of social change.