Jonathan P. Baird

As we approach another May Day, the origins of that holiday remain largely unknown. Almost no one knows this holiday dedicated to international labor solidarity came out of the Unites States. That history got buried and remains untold. Growing up, I mostly remember May Day as a Soviet celebration with big parades in Red Square. Missiles, tanks and troops paraded before authoritarian leaders like Leonid Breshnev.

May Day, the international workers’ day, has such a different start-up story. In the late nineteenth century, the American working class constantly struggled to gain the 8-hour day. Workers toiled six days a week, for 60 to 70 hours. Factory workers often had 80 to 100 hour a week schedules. Conditions were very unsafe. There was no OSHA. Death and severe workplace injuries were common.

In 1884, a national federation of unions announced a campaign to establish an 8-hour workday by May 1, 1886. Rank and file workers poured into the Knights of Labor, then the largest labor organization in the U.S., passed resolutions and set up committees to prepare for a general strike to demand the 8-hour day.

In April 1886, thousands started demonstrating for reduced work hours. Chicago was the heart of the movement. 1000 brewers reduced their hours from 16 to 10 hours a day. Bakers who formerly worked 14 to 18 hours won a 10 hour day. Furniture workers won the 8-hour day for 10 hours pay.

The strike movement raised additional demands besides the 8-hour day, A six point Manifesto drafted by Albert Parsons and August Spies, two revolutionary leaders of the movement, demanded “equality without distinction to sex or race”. Many workers saw the political dimension of the struggle. The fight was a class struggle of the workers as a class against the employers as a class.

On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers in 11,562 establishments all over the country went out on strike. Every railroad in Chicago shut down and most industries in Chicago were paralyzed. By May 3, more and more workers were joining the strike. That day, however, the police fired on a crowd that was attacking strike breakers at the McCormack Harvester Works, killing four and seriously wounding many.

Organizers called a rally for the next day in Haymarket Square in Chicago to protest police brutality. It was rainy and only around 1200 people attended. As the rally was almost ready to break up and only about 300 people were still there, someone threw a bomb into the ranks of the police, killing one and wounding about 70. Seven later died. To this day no one knows who threw the bomb. The police responded by firing into the crowd, killing one and also wounding many more.

Haymarket justified an intense round of red scare repression. Cops rounded up hundreds of radicals, meetings were broken up and the Socialist press was seized. The authorities called out the Militia to break up any labor gatherings which were deemed “dangerous’. Employers organized in associations to blacklist strikers and institute yellow dog contracts forcing workers to swear they would never join a union.

The police arrested eight anarchist leaders. The evidence against them was their ideas. There was virtually no evidence tying the defendants to the crime. Only one of the eight, Samuel Fielden, was even at Haymarket when the bomb exploded. After a trial, a jury found them all guilty and four were sentenced to death. A year later, the four, Albery Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer and George Engel were hanged.

The executions aroused people all over America. While the repression dampened union organizing, many felt class anger. For years after, there were memorial events for the Haymarket martyrs all across the country.

Haymarket is widely considered the origin event of International Workers’ Day. The events of 1886 linked May Day in the minds of workers with the struggles and sacrifices for a better life. In 1888, the American Federation of Labor called for a massive demonstration to be held on May 1, 1890 calling again for the 8-hour day.

In 1889, the Paris Congress of the Second International (an international organizations of Socialist Parties and trade unions) adopted a resolution making May Day an international holiday. They called on workers everywhere to demonstrate international labor solidarity and to fight for the 8-hour day. Demonstrations and strikes on May 1, 1890 accompanied this new holiday. From this time on, May Day was firmly established as a workers’ holiday.

Workers and people on the left in America celebrated May Day for years. In the 1930’s, May Day drew together the struggles of the U.S. working class against unemployment and for industrial unionism, against Jim Crow racism and for full equality, and against fascist aggression and for peace.

Since at least the 1950’s, the American ruling class has done an effective job disappearing May Day as a workers’ holiday. In 1928 President Hoover set aside May Day as Child Health Day. In the later 1940’s-early 1950’s, McCarthyism terrorized people on the left ruining many lives in the process. In 1958 Congress designated May 1 as Loyalty Day. Then President Nixon made May 1st Law Day.

Part of the effort to erase May Day was the creation of Labor Day in September. Congress first passed that legislation in June 1894. May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and it is unofficially celebrated in many more. Labor Day is not celebrated outside the U.S. except in Canada. It is an apolitical excuse for a three day weekend and a pale shadow of May Day.

In our era, I think May Day should be resurrected as a worker holiday. It is so much more than a celebration of spring, maypoles and fertility. Workers fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today. Our ruling class in 2026 doesn’t want workers to remember that.