On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded at a Chicago labor rally, wounding dozens of policemen, seven of whom eventually died. A wave of mass hysteria swept the country, leading to a sensational trial, that culminated in four controversial executions, and dealt a blow to the labor movement from which it would take decades to recover. Historian James Green recounts the rise of the first great labor movement in the wake of the Civil War and brings to life an epic twenty-year struggle for the eight-hour workday. Blending a gripping narrative, outsized characters and a panoramic portrait of a major social movement, Death in the Haymarket is an important addition to the history of American capitalism and a moving story about the class tensions at the heart of Gilded Age America.
The long form poem is a practice of poetics in joy, gratitude, sadness, resilience and pain. This literary work serves as a practice of self-reflection and accountability in the wake of the prison system. This poem is dirge work acknowledging unjust atrocities, but reveling in our human resilience.
The true story of a woman’s fight for her brother’s life—and her own: “Essential for those interested in the U.S. justice system” (Library Journal). On September 21, 2011, Troy Anthony Davis was put to death by the State of Georgia. Davis’s execution was protested by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, and Pope Benedict XVI, Pres. Jimmy Carter, and fifty-one members of Congress all appealed for clemency. Davis’s older sister, Martina, a former Army flight nurse who had served in the Gulf War, was one of Davis’s strongest advocates—despite the fact that she was battling liver and metastatic breast cancer and died just weeks after her brother’s death by lethal injection. This book, coauthored by Martina and writer Jen Marlowe, tells the intimate story of an ordinary man caught up in an inexorable tragedy. From his childhood in racially charged Savannah; to the confused events that led to the 1989 shooting of a police officer; to Davis’s sudden arrest, conviction, and two-decade fight to prove his innocence, I Am Troy Davis takes us inside a broken legal system where life and death hang in the balance. It is also an inspiring testament to the unbreakable bond of family and the resilience of love, and reminds us that even when you reach the end of justice, voices from across the world can rise together in chorus and proclaim, “I am Troy Davis.” “Martina Correia’s heroic fight to save her brother’s life while battling for her own serves as a powerful testament for activists.” —The Nation “Should be read and cherished.” —Maya Angelou, author and civil rights activist
Erik Olin Wright, one of the most important sociologists of his time, takes readers along on his intimate and brave journey toward death, and asks the big questions about human mortality. From the renowned Marxist sociologist and educator Erik Olin Wright, Stardust to Stardust is a curated collection of writings from the months of his treatment and hospitalization for acute myeloid leukemia. This combination of personal narrative with Wright’s analytical perspective results in a deeply complex, philosophical meditation on death and the meaning of existence.
Winner of the 2017 J. Anthony Lukas PrizeShortlisted for the 2017 Hurston/Wright Foundation AwardFinalist for the 2017 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in JournalismLonglisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction On an average day in America, seven children and teens will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, award-winning journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost during one such day. It could have been any day, but he chose November 23, 2013. Black, white, and Latino, aged nine to nineteen, they fell at sleepovers, on street corners, in stairwells, and on their own doorsteps. From the rural Midwest to the barrios of Texas, the narrative crisscrosses the country over a period of twenty-four hours to reveal the full human stories behind the gun-violence statistics and the brief mentions in local papers of lives lost. This powerful and moving work puts a human face-a child's face-on the "collateral damage" of gun deaths across the country. This is not a book about gun control, but about what happens in a country where it does not exist. What emerges in these pages is a searing and urgent portrait of youth, family, and firearms in America today.
This is the first paperback edition of a moving appraisal of the infamous Haymarket bombing (May 1886) and the trial that followed it--a trial that was a cause célèbre in the 1880s and that has since been recognized as one of the most unjust in the annals of American jurisprudence. Paul Avrich shows how eight anarchists who were blamed for the bombing at a workers' meeting near Chicago's Haymarket Square became the focus of a variety of passionately waged struggles.
*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the Haymarket Affair and trials *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "That night I could not sleep. Again I lived through the events of 1887. Twenty-one months had passed since the Black Friday of November 11, when the Chicago men had suffered their martyrdom, yet every detail stood out clear before my vision and affected me as if it had happened but yesterday. My sister Helena and I had become interested in the fate of the men during the period of their trial. The reports in the Rochester newspapers irritated, confused, and upset us by their evident prejudice. The violence of the press, the bitter denunciation of the accused, the attacks on all foreigners, turned our sympathies to the Haymarket victims." - Emma Goldman Although it's no longer well known as a flashpoint, few things were as controversial during the late 19th century as the Haymarket Affair. Depending on one's perspective, the riots and the violence that ensued were the result of anarchist terrorists attacking law enforcement authorities with a homemade bomb that was detonated during a large public event, killing a police officer and wounding several more. Others who were more sympathetic to the plight of the people protesting for better working conditions that night in Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886 portray it as a peaceful rally that was marred by a heavy handed response attempting to disperse the protesters. What is clear is that the moments following the explosion were characterized by confusion and bedlam, as some people ran away and others ran toward the site. By the time the shooting was done, nearly a dozen lay dead, including a number of police officers, and makeshift hospitals were soon overwhelmed. Citizens in the area began to cry out for justice, and police detectives poured through the city, making arrests and questioning thousands. As word spread about the attack, cities around the country went on high alert, concerned that they could be next. It was soon determined that a traditionally anti-American group was responsible for the attack, and many threatened mob violence against anyone who looked like they might be involved with the group. The press egged on those in the public with cries for revenge and justice. Eventually, the suspected perpetrators' trial began, a sensational event followed closely by many across the nation. Tensions ran high as those involved were prosecuted and defended, and when the jury convicted 8 anarchists of conspiracy and some of them were sentenced to death, many rejoiced while others cried out that Lady Justice had miscarried the case. Lost amidst the violence was the fact that the protests that culminated with the Haymarket Affair had come in response to previous labor strikes across the country, and controversial police shootings of some workers on strike, which took on a discriminatory undertone because many of the laborers were immigrants facing poor working conditions. It was against this backdrop that political anarchists also got involved, which muddled things and ultimately brought blowback against immigrant communities after the Haymarket Affair. More importantly, workers and those advocating on their behalf were galvanized by the events to push for what they considered much needed reforms, many of which would come over the next few decades. As professor William J. Adelman put it, "No single event has influenced the history of labor in Illinois, the United States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket Affair. It began with a rally on May 4, 1886, but the consequences are still being felt today." Chicago has since commemorated both the workers and the police with various memorials and plaques.
Her loving father's major concern is the struggle for better working conditions in factories and mills. Her mother thinks mostly of the terrible injury she has received in a sewing factory. Therefore Dinah Bell must care for herself. But not only herself. She and two other children, Austrian immigrants who do not mind that Dinah is the child of former slaves, not only work twelve-hour days to help support their families with the three dollars a week they each earn, but they do even more. All five families that depend on them for food live together in one rat-and-roach infested room in a Chicago tenement. The children steal, though they hate being thieves. Other concerns vanish, however, when in the spring of 1886, Dinah's father is taken prisoner by the dreaded Pinkertons -- detectives who help factory owners get rid of unions and their organizers. Now, Dinah must find where her father is being held and free him. On May first there is a march of eighty thousand workers, demonstrating for an eight-hour day. The march is why Mr. Noah Bell has been taken prisoner, and the march and its aftermath, the Haymarket Riot, put Dinah in constant danger. Yet she is determined to succeed. Her father must be freed. Once again Harriette Gillem Robinet portrays likeable children, with their needs and struggles, against a background of real events in American history. The result is an exciting story that reveals important truths about the American past.
On the night of May 4, 1886, during a peaceful demonstration of labor activists in Haymarket Square in Chicago, a dynamite bomb was thrown into the ranks of police -trying to disperse the crowd. The officers immediately opened fire, killing a number of protestors and wounding some two hundred others. Albert Parsons was the best-known of those hanged; Haymarket is his story. Parsons, humanist and autodidact, was an ex-Confederate soldier who grew up in Texas in the 1870s, and fell in love with Lucy Gonzalez, a vibrant, outspoken black woman who preferred to describe herself as of Spanish and Creole descent. The novel tells the story of their lives together, of their growing political involvement, of the formation of a colorful circle of "co-conspirators"-immigrants, radical intellectuals, journalists, advocates of the working class-and of the events culminating in bloodshed. More than just a moving story of love and human struggle, more than a faithful account of a watershed event in United States history, Haymarket presents a layered and dynamic revelation of late nineteenth-century Chicago, and of the lives of a handful of remarkable individuals who were willing to risk their lives for the promise of social change.