The rise & decline of international & US workers' day parades Op-Ed

by Dr. Victor Devinatz

Since 1890, May Day (May 1), also known as International Workers’ Day or International Labor Day, has been celebrated by workers, trade unions and labor activists around the globe. While not commemorated in the United States, this holiday’s origins emerged from Chicago events of 1886. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions supported a proposal that trade unions strike on May 1, 1886, to attain the eight-hour workday. Some 500,000 workers struck in U.S. cities, with 80,000 demonstrators marching down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue in what has been deemed the world’s first May Day parade.

On May 3, 1886, at the McCormick Harvester plant in Chicago, police fired into a crowd, killing four and injuring many, leading to a May 4 Haymarket Square meeting to protest police violence, where an exploding bomb killed one policeman (six died later). Eight trade union activists were found guilty of inciting murder. Four of them were hung (although their involvement was unproven), one committed suicide and three others were granted clemency by Illinois Gov. John Peter Altgeld, who said they did not receive a fair trial.

In honor of the Haymarket martyrs and the eight-hour workday demonstrations on May 1, 1886, the first International Workers’ Day was celebrated on May 1, 1890, after the 1889 Marxist International Socialist Congress in Paris declared it a holiday. History shows the rise and decline of U.S. International Workers’ Day celebrations has been directly related to the U.S. Left’s strength in trade unions and society.

For example, the 1891 New York City (NYC) May Day parade drew 15,000 marchers, organized by the Central Labor Federation (CLF) and the Socialist Labor Party (SLP). Several thousand, including 150 children who labored in sweatshops affiliated with the United Hebrew Trades (UHT), carried signs reading, “We want children in schools instead of in shops!” and “We want eight hours, sixteen are too much!” Although the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) initially commemorated May Day, by the late 1890s, the AFL withdrew its support because of the SLP’s, and after 1901, the Socialist Party of America’s (SPA) domination of the holiday. The AFL officially refused to back May Day celebrations in 1903, although more radical trade unions and labor activists continued to support the holiday. This resulted in the AFL promoting Labor Day rather than May Day as the U.S. trade union movement’s preferred holiday, which led to May Day celebrations becoming more tightly connected to the Left.

With the SPA’s membership and strength peaking from 1910 to 1920, increased participation and attendance at May Day parades reflected this power. Organized by the SPA, the CLF and the UHT, the 1910 NYC May Day parade drew some 60,000 marchers, including 10,000 women who had participated in the successful 1909 garment strike. In 1911, some 500,000 persons, mostly from NYC’s Lower East Side, observed that year’s May Day parade.

The 1917 Russian Revolution resulted in the 1919 SPA split; the leftwing left to form two Communist parties. By the early 1920s, there were far fewer members in these three left-wing groups than in the pre-1919 SPA. With the 1919 “Red Scare,” there were some May Day parades, but they were attacked by police. Others were cancelled, including the one in NYC. In 1929, the NYC May Day parade resumed and included only 10,000 marchers, far smaller than those held at the SPA’s apex.

As SPA and Communist Party USA (CPUSA) membership increased during the Great Depression, so did May Day parades’ size. SPA and CPUSA turned out 20,000 in the joint 1934 NYC May Day parade, with more than 100,000 observers. Because of Hitler’s threat, participants carried banners reading, “Down with Fascism!” At the Union Square meeting after the parade, there were demands for unemployment insurance and for a shorter workday with no decrease in pay. In 1936, the two parties held another united May Day parade in NYC with between 250,000 and 300,000 marchers from 150 different trade unions, the SPA and the CPUSA. Several participating unions were affiliated with the recently-formed Committee for Industrial Organization, of which the CPUSA exerted significant influence. The New York Times referred to the parade as “one of the largest and most orderly parades in the history of the event.”

With the rise of the Cold War and McCarthyism in the late 1940s, the CPUSA came under vigorous assault, which negatively impacted May Day parade participation. On May Day 1951, CPUSA-led trade unions conducted a NYC parade, which The New York Times characterized as “the shortest parade in years.” Under such inhospitable conditions, it was difficult for May Day parades to survive.

For a revival of U.S. May Day commemorations, a viable Left within both the U.S. trade unions and the nation must be reborn. Until then, the only U.S. workers’ holiday will remain Labor Day which, unfortunately, no longer celebrates U.S. workers’ contributions for many people, but instead marks the end of summer.

Dr. Victor G. Devinatz is Distinguished Professor of Management, specializing in labor relations, and was the Hobart and Marian Gardner Hinderliter Endowed Professor (2014-2015) at Illinois State University. He can be contacted at vgdevin@ilstu.edu.

The Haymarket Memorial located at 175 N. Desplaines St. (T. River photo).