The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists

I've started reading TheTrial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age, by Timothy Messer-Kruse.

In case you missed it in history class, the Haymarket Affair involved some socialist-anarchists who were tried and hanged for an 1886 incident, during which a bomb tossed with deadly effect at a bunch of policemen.

It happened right here in Chicago.

The standard story is those convicted were framed by authorities looking to crush the radical labor movement.

But the author, a professor of history, revisited the original source documents - which had recently been digitized, but had remained unstudied by scholars. He says he found the standard story was wrong, and that there was much of evidence of guilt.

In his introduction, the author explains how he got interested in the case:

Ten years ago, while I was teaching a labor history course, one of my students raised her hand and asked, "Professor, if it is true, what it says in our textbook, that there was 'no evidence whatsoever connecting them withthe bombing,' then what did they talk about in the courtroom for six weeks?" I had no answer for her because I had never though of the question this way.

Six weeks would be a long sprawl
for a trial with no evidence at all.