Guide to Further Reading

There are numerous studies of Haymarket and related events, a list of which follows below.  These include the Dramas of Haymarket curator Carl Smith's Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief:  The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bombing, and the Model Town of Pullman.  The leading history of Haymarket is Paul Avrich's The Haymarket Tragedy.  See also Henry David's classic account in The History of the Haymarket Affair:  A Study in the American Social-Revolutionary and Labor Movements.  Bruce Nelson's Beyond the Martyrs:  A Social History of Chicago's Anarchists, 1870-1900, and Richard Schneirov's Labor and Urban Politics:  Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago are excellent and richly researched studies of the social and political contexts in which Haymarket is one of many developments.  On the German working-class community in Chicago and America, see the several outstanding collections of documents and essays edited by Hartmut Keil and John B. Jentz. 

William Adelman's Haymarket Revisited is a wonderful overview and guide for those who wish to explore the living heritage of Haymarket in Chicago today.  Dave Roediger and Franklin Rosemont's The Haymarket Scrapbook, published in Haymarket's centennial year, is a superb compendium of primary and secondary materials.  There are also several compelling biographies of some of the major Haymarket figures, including Carolyn Ashbaugh's Lucy Parsons:  American Revolutionary, and Harry Barnard's "Eagle Forgotten":  The Life of John Peter Altgeld.  Ashbaugh's work more generally provides a view of the important role of women in the history of Haymarket.  In addition, the Chicago Historical Society devoted the Summer 1986 issue of its magazine, Chicago History (Vol. XV, No. 2), to Haymarket. 

For print transcriptions of portions of the trial and related legal proceedings, see Bernard Kogan, The Chicago Haymarket Riot, John D. Lawson's American State Trials, and Michael J. Schaack's Anarchy and Anarchists.  The fullest documentation of the legal proceedings is the Chicago Historical Society's Haymarket Affair Digital Collection, which is linked to this site. Although the Haymarkret Affair Digital Collection is the most extensive repository of Haymarket materials in general, several other libraries have significant holdings in closely related areas.  At the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, for example, are the papers of defendant Albert Parsons, and documents and artifacts from the trial that once belonged to State's Attorney Julius Grinnell are in the Beinecke Library at Yale University.  The Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and both the Illinois State Historical Library and the Illinois State Archives also have significant Haymarket materials.

The fullest bibliography is Robert W. Glenn, The Haymarket Affair:  An Annotated Bibliography.

Adelman, William.  Haymarket Revisited.  Chicago:  Illinois Labor History Society, 1976.

Ashbaugh, Carolyn.  Lucy Parsons:  American Revolutionary.  Chicago:  C. H. Kerr, 1976.

Avrich, Paul.  The Haymarket Tragedy.  Princeton, N.J.:  Princeton University Press, 1984.

Barnard, Harry.  “Eagle Forgotten”:  The Life of John Peter Altgeld.  Indianapolis:  The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1938.

Bruce, Robert V.  1877:  Year of Violence.  Indianapolis:  The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1959.

David, Henry.  The History of the Haymarket Affair:  A Study in the American Social-Revolutionary and Labor Movements.  New York:   Farrar & Rinehart, 1936. 

Debakis, Melissa.  "Martyrs and Monuments of Chicago:  The Haymarket Affair."  Prospects 19 (1994), 99-133.

Dell, Floyd.  “Socialism and Anarchism in Chicago.”  Chicago:  Its History and Its Builders.  Vol. 2, pp. 361-405.  Ed. Seymour Currey.  Chicago:  S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912.

Flinn, John J.  History of the Chicago Police.  Chicago:  Police Book Fund, 1887.

Foner, Philip S.  The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs.  New York:  Humanities Press, 1969.

Glenn, Robert W.  The Haymarket Affair:  An Annotated Bibliography.  Westport, Conn.:  Greenwood Press, 1993.

Keil, Hartmut, ed.  German Workers' Culture in the United States 1850 to 1920.  Washington:  Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988.

Keil, Hartmut & John B. Jentz, eds.  German Workers in Chicago:  A Documentary History of Working-Class Culture from 1850 to World War I.  Urbana:  University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Keil, Hartmut & John B. Jentz., eds.  German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850-1910:  A Comparative Perspective.  DeKalb (Ill.):  Northern Illinois University Press, 1983.

Kogan, Bernard R.  The Chicago Haymarket Riot:  Anarchy on Trial.  Boston:  D.C. Heath, 1959.

Lawson, John D., ed.  “The Trial of the Chicago Anarchists:  August Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Oscar Neebe for Conspiracy and Murder.  Chicago, Illinois.  1886.”  American State Trials.  Vol. 12, pp. 1-316.  St. Louis:  F.H. Thomas Law Book Company, 1919.

Lum, Dyer.  A Concise History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists in 1886.  Condensed from the Official Record.  Chicago:  Socialistic Publishing Company, n.d.

Nelson, Bruce.  Beyond the Martyrs:  A Social History of Chicago's Anarchists, 1870-1900.  New Brunswick, N.J.:  Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Roediger, Dave & Franklin Rosemont, eds.  Haymarket Scrapbook.  Chicago:  Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1986.

Schaack, Michael J.  Anarchy and Anarchists:  A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe.  Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and in Deed.  The Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy, and the Detection and Trial of the Conspirators.  Chicago:  F.J. Schulte & Company, 1889.

Schneirov, Richard.  Labor and Urban Politics:  Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864-97.  Urbana:  University of Illinois Press, 1998.

Smith, Carl.  Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief:  The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Spies, August, et. al.  The Accused and the Accusers.  The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists in Court.  Chicago:  Socialistic Publishing Society, n.d.