Albert Parsons
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Albert Richard Parsons (June 24 1848 - 11 November 1887) was a radical socialist activist, hanged under doubtful circumstances following a bomb attack on police at the Haymarket Riot.
Parsons was born in Montgomery, Alabama. He fought in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He later regretted his support for slavery and personally apologized to the black nanny who raised him as an orphan. Living in Texas, he married Lucy Waller,a black woman who also became famous as an activist as Lucy Parsons, and was forced by the Ku Klux Klan to leave the South and move to Chicago.
There he became a radical Republican, labor activist and finally a founding member of the International Working People's Association (IWPA). Albert Parsons became recording secretary of the Chicago Eight-Hour League in 1878, and was appointed a member of a national eight-hour committee in 1880.
On May 1, 1886, Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, with his wife Lucy Parsons and two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in what is regarded as the first-ever May Day Parade, in support of the eight-hour day. Over the next few days 340,000 laborers joined the strike.
Parsons addressed a rally at Haymarket Square on May 4th. At the end of the event, after Parsons left and as the audience was already drifting away, police requested the crowd to disperse. At that point a bomb thrown into the square exploded, killing four policemen.
Seven men were arrested. Parsons turned himself in to stand in solidarity with his comrades.
There were witnesses to testify that none of the eight threw the bomb. However, all were found guilty and sentenced to death.
Three asked for clemency and were pardoned by the Illinois Governor. Of the remaining five, Louis Lingg killed himself in his cell with a cigar bomb but Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887.