The following speech was given at our May Day Cook-Out on Saturday, May 3, 2025.
History of May Day
In October of 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions declared that May 1st, 1886 would be the last day that anyone worked over 8 hours in a working day. And that if this goal had not been achieved, a general strike would begin. The day came, so the workers struck.
On May 3rd of 1886, workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company on the West Side of Chicago stood outside their plant as part of this general strike, while scabs hired by the company worked inside. At the sound of a bell, the scabs tried to leave the plant, and the striking workers became enraged at the sight of them. The workers charged the scabs, and the police, who were sent to protect the scabs, opened fire on the crowd of striking workers. Two workers were shot dead in the street. August Spies, an anarchist and a trade unionist who spoke at the rally and tried to calm the striking workers, later testified,
“I was very indignant. I knew from experience of the past that this butchering of people was done for the express purpose of defeating the eight-hour movement.”
A flurry of organizing by anarchists and trade unionists followed, and a rally was to be held the next day, May 4th, as a response to the police killings. It was to be held at Haymarket Square, and August Spies was again to take the stage and speak.
“There seems to prevail the opinion in some quarters that this meeting has been called to inaugurate a riot, hence these warlike preparations on the part of so-called ‘law and order.’ However, let me tell you at the beginning that this meeting has not been called for any such purpose. The object of this meeting is to explain the general situation of the eight-hour movement and to throw light upon various incidents in connection with it.”
A few other speakers addressed a crowd of around 2,000. With rainy skies and an already set sun, the crowd dwindled, and Reverend Samuel Fielden finished his speech. Not content to allow the gathering to remain peaceful, the cops arrived in force to break up the crowd of workers. A bomb, thrown from behind the line of police, landed between the crowd of workers and the police, and detonated, killing a cop and injuring a few more. The police opened fire, and the workers, not ones to be caught lacking, exchanged gunfire. Nearly all sources agree that it was the police who opened fire, reloaded and then fired again, killing at least four and wounding as many as 70 people. 7 cops were killed in the exchange.
In the aftermath, the state sought the blood of even more workers. It wanted to hang those who spoke at the rally, and even of those who were not in attendance at all. They did not have in hand the bomb thrower, who most likely was an agent provocateur in the first place.
7 men were sentenced to death: Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Michael Schwab, and Methodist Pastor Samuel Fielden. An eighth, Oscar Neebe, was sentenced to 15 years. 2 sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, 1 man took his life to cheat the hangman’s rope, and the last four, Spies, Parsons, Engel, and Fischer, became martyrs on November 11, 1887.
During trial, August Spies said,
“[I]f you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement — the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery, the wage slaves, expect salvation — if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon which you stand.”
In the aftermath, a wave of red terror swept across the country. Anarchist and immigrant newspapers were raided, union halls were burned, strikes ended and—for a moment—it seemed that this incident rung in the end of the 8-hour work day movement. The fact is that despite police repression, newspaper incitement to hysteria, and organization of the possessing classes, which followed the throwing of the bomb on May 4, the Chicago workers only united their forces and stiffened their resistance.
The conservative and radical central bodies, the socialists and the anarchists, the single taxers and the reformers, the native born and the foreign born (Germans, Bohemians, and Scandinavians) all got together for the first time in the summer following the Haymarket Affair. The Knights of Labor doubled its membership, reaching 40,000 in the fall of 1886. In the years that followed, they continued the fight for an 8-hour work day, and eventually won.
At the first congress of the Socialist International in Paris in 1890, it was decided that May 1st would be declared International Workers’ Day, in commemoration, not only of the martyrs of Haymarket, but also of the everlasting principle, that working people across the globe have within all of them a spark, that no matter the machinations of the owners or of the state, our flame will rise.
Mission Statement of the Southern Workers Assembly
This event today was put on by the Roanoke Workers’ Assembly, a chapter of the Southern Workers Assembly. I will now read to you some select quotes from the SWA Handbook to give you a sense of what the SWA is about, and its mission:
We are the Southern Workers Assembly. We seek to organize the unorganized working class across the South. We are the bedrock of our communities. We are a social movement, a voluntary organization fighting for social justice. Many of us are also members of unions, churches, and other local organizations.
The purpose of the Southern Workers Assembly is to organize rank-and-file workers to achieve a level of worker power through building organization in all kinds of workplaces, uniting them in assemblies, and exercising sufficient power through collectively bargaining contracts with employers, workplace mobilizations, labor and community solidarity, and independent political action.
The Southern Workers Assembly organizes to fight for better working conditions, a living wage, and a society that empowers workers to benefit all and protect the earth.
The Southern Workers Assembly (SWA) was organized in 2012. The North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, UE Local 150 and Black Workers for Justice, initiated the process. Organizing the South was part of UE150’s organizing perspective when it affiliated with the United Electrical Workers National Union (UE) in 1997.
The SWA founding conference opposed the hosting of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, for the still current ban on collective bargaining rights for public workers in North Carolina (sound familiar?), a law which was written and passed by an all white legislature in 1959.
The Charlotte Chapter of UE150, which had been organizing for over 8 years without formal recognition, organized weekly informational pickets outside City Hall the entire summer. The aim was to draw the attention of the thousands attending the DNC to conditions faced by Charlotte city workers who were denied collective bargaining rights. Their immediate demands were a pay increase and safety for city workers, and for Charlotte to use some of the $50 million federal grant it received for hosting the DNC for those purposes. Some of the founding members of the SWA included:
- UE locals 150, 160, and 170
- International Longshore Association Local 1422
- United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1208
- Unite-Here Local 23
- Black Workers for Justice
- United Campus Workers-CWA Local 3865
In 2019, the SWA set up a system of weekend long schools to develop strategy and train workers in organizing. 6 have been held so far. On June 13-15*, the SWA will be hosting an action summit in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a continuation of these schools.
*At time of speech, this event hadn’t occurred yet. You can read about our experience at the June 2025 SWA Action Summit here.
As The South Goes, So Goes The Nation
The U.S. South plays a special role in shaping systemic racism and anti-labor policies. With a workforce of 44 million people, only 1 out of every 20 workers is unionized. Compare this to one northern state: New York has a workforce of 10 million people and 1 out of every 5 workers are unionized.
The South has the highest concentration of anti-labor laws. This began with the racist slave codes, followed by Jim Crow laws that undermined Black Reconstruction after the Civil War, enforcing segregation and allowing land-owning capitalists to maintain power. “Right-to-work” laws began in 1947 as a section of the federal Taft-Hartley Act.
57% of Black Americans and 40% of Latin Americans live in the South. Together they make up over 40% of the population in the South. The South is a region with low wages, low union density, a history of racist segregation and strong conservative racist politics. It has attracted major corporations seeking to escape organized labor. States outside of the South promoting the passage of right-to-work laws argue that these laws give the South an unfair advantage in attracting companies and for economic recovery.
The South is also increasingly central to the national and world economy. The first 10 years following the passage of NAFTA saw a large shift of industries to the South. For more than a decade now, nine Southern states have contributed a larger share to the US economy than the Rust Belt states that dominated US industry in the 20th century.
For example, a Smithfield plant located in Tar Heel North Carolina, processes 35-hundred hogs daily, making it the world’s largest hog slaughtering plant,and the worlds largest pork producer.
The economic and social costs to the working class in the South have included underdeveloped communities, environmental racism, negative health effects, gentrification, lack of decent affordable housing and land loss for Black farmers. In the past, when unionization efforts were made in the South, they were often attacked as outside intrusions into Southern communities. This characterization was promoted by corporate, government, and racist anti-union forces.
We cannot allow these forces to win out. We must connect with each other and stand against the tide of propaganda and evil that emanates from the ownership class and their stooges. Please, look around you today and form relationships. Us, here in this space, are the mortar that will build unions in the South. Build worker power in the South. Build a better future for the South. We must break the bonds that have kept the South chained for hundreds of years.
We must be free, and the working class in the South must be organized!
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