The Haymarket Affair
For many, America is not just the country they happen to live in but also it is a place of freedoms, liberties and independencies and even a refuge for some people. In 1886 though, a group of people attempted to share their opinion in Haymarket Square, Chicago, which led to a dangerous riot and a series of trials with convictions and executions. Throughout the affair, innocent lives were lost, people were wrongly accused, and the judicial system was revealed as flawed. Throughout the trial, Constitutional rights were overlooked in the name of prejudice and because of fear, just to please the public. The Haymarket Affair involved a violent riot caused by overbearing police officers; it also involved unfair trials
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At the close of trial proceedings, the judge informed the jury that they could find the eight accused to be guilty even if the crime was committed by someone who was not charged. He also said that it was not necessary for the state to know the identity of the bomber or to prove that the bomber had read any of the articles or poster of the charged anarchists. Though the judge, prosecutor, and jury can be considered misguided in their bias and actions of injustice, some of the witnesses against the accused are widely acknowledged as liars. In comparison to the eyewitnesses of the defendants, every part of their details went against those of the witnesses of the police.
Though the defendants faced prejudice and discrimination, they kept on with their cases and appeals until the verdicts were determined. The attorneys of the accused were Black and Swett. Along with the allegation that Grinnell’s witnesses were lying, the defending lawyers said that none of the eight had intended for any form violence and they even offered proof that some of the accused were not even near Haymarket Square on May 4th. Furthermore along with their apparent innocence, six of the eight were not present when the bomb went off, and the two that were there, Spies and Samuel Fielden were both in plain view of the crowd and police. Despite the logic of the defendant’s case, passion and prejudice led the jury to conclude that the bombing was a direct result of a deliberate conspiracy.
On August 20,
In South Braintree, Massachusetts, two men were tried and convicted of a crime because of their ethnic background. A robbery at the Slater-Morrill Shoe Factory had taken place. As the payroll distributors were exiting, two men attacked them, snatching a box containing the money. The men leaving the factory were both shot and killed, while the two attackers escaped in a getaway car. The two suspected attackers, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, faced discrimination inside and out of the courts. In the end, both even faced the deadly electric chair. To this day, it is undetermined who the robbers are. However, many factors prevented Sacco and Vanzetti from getting a fair trial. Injustice within the courts, panic during the Red Scare, and
In the State of Wisconsin with the trial of Jamie Covington we found him guilty of first degree murder. Jamie ment to shoot Dallas because dallas was always above him and better. Dallas forgot his keys one evening and he went through the window because he forgot his keys, he claims that he had gone through the window before and he didn't think anything would happen. This is why everyone is being questions to see if he was guilty or no, which he is guilty. During this case the lawyers questioned many people, but their stories weren't adding up. They talked to Ronnie Cecop, Casey Kramer, and Lane Smith they were on the defence side. Then Morgan Dexter, Blair Allen, and Jamie Covington where the prosecution. Most of the people on the prosecution side were very nervous, didn't know some answers, but on the other side the people on the defence side knew every question and didn't seem nervous. All of these people had their strengths and weaknesses.
This dueling document, “Two Sides of Haymarket,” includes the two view. Which explains on the topic presented by a verdict of a murder and a judge who gives their own opinion about the laws that the people need to follow. In this article there is a clear explanation of the accident, which led to arrest and conviction of eight people for the murder of police officer Mathias J. Degan. Who died as a result of the explosion of a pipe bomb at a labor rally organized by anarchists in the Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 04,1886.
In recent years, there has been an attack on a basic American right, a right so fundamental and deeply rooted that it defines the basis of American culture. With the ever growing and sweeping power of the U.S. government, society is beginning to feel like this right has been crushed and forgotten. Wars were fought and people sacrificed their lives in the name of protecting the right worth dying for. What defined one’s livelihood, gave one a personhood, ensured democracy, promoted labor, and maximizes the happiness of the people will all come crumbling down. What was once an indicator of the elite leaders of a democratic society has become nothing more than a pawn in a political game.
Since the very beginning of the nation’s history, America has strongly upheld the right of its citizens to practice free speech. As working conditions in the United States only grew worse in the 20th century, more laborers exercised their rights to free speech in efforts to gain the respect they deserved in the workplace. The Boston Police Strike of 1919 proves as a perfect example of workers’ efforts to improve the setting of their employment. On September 9th, groups of policemen all facing the same plight gathered to protest the dreadful circumstances they faced in the workplace, many struggling with the poor salaries and unacceptable environment they faced in their jobs. In wake of the protest, Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge made
However, even though there was evidence pointing to these four men as the perpetrator, the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover at the time, dragged its feet in the investigation and held evidence back. This was due to the fact that Hoover wasn’t fond of Martin Luther King and some circles say that he personally believed the bombing to have been committed by people interested in gaining sympathy for the civil rights cause. Whatever the case may be, it wasn’t until 1977 that a conviction could be obtained for just one of the men accused of the bombing. The bombing itself had the effect of uniting all of the civil rights organizations in the South and also giving a face, four faces to be precise, to the rest of the nation as a kind of message about the evils of racism.
It was the time of world war 1, in August 1918, there was a group of immigrants who were Russian, they was arrested in New York City and they were charged because they were disrespectful to the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a crime to use abusive language to the government of the United States. Or to the prosecution of the war. Their offense hand out pamphlets that complained the U.S. military's recent deployment of troops to Russia and that, in one case, supported a factories producing military goods. A few months later, the group which included a young rebel named Jacob Abrams was strained, sentenced, and was sent to prison for 15 to 20 years. Their beliefs were hardly unique. Unluckily, during the war to make the world safe for equality the federal government legislated some of the most severe boundaries on civil liberties at home in the country's history in 1919 and 1920, the attorney general reported 877 beliefs under the 1918 Sedition Act and other similar federal laws. In March 1919, while Abrams and his countrymen were appealing their case, the Supreme Court heard two other First Amendment cases dealing with the beliefs of antiwar socialists Scheck v. United States and Debs v. United States.
In Ferguson, Missouri there was a shooting that resulted in law enforcement siding the oppressor rather than the 18-year old whose life was taken in the incident. Michael Brown’s killer never faced consequences for his actions, which resulted in a protest that practiced civil disobedience, but resulted in violence by the people destroying the community of Ferguson. Many protesters used this event as a chance to speak up because they were always silenced. These people couldn’t understand the consequences of their actions. Many feared saying anything that the individual had witnessed because signs
You're not gonna tell me you believe that phony story about losing the knife, and that business about being at the movies. Look, you know how these people lie! It's born in them! I mean what the heck? I don't even have to tell you. They don't know what the truth is! And lemme tell you, they don't need any real big reason to kill someone, either! No sir! [Juror 10, page 51] This type of prejudice offended many of the other jurors, especially Juror 5 who is of similar race to the accused.
The story goes through and have the characters each tell us what knowledge they know and we as readers are left in the end to decide who is the one who actually killed the Samurai. We as readers are supposed to use our knowledge we retain from reading to make a decision on who the perpetrator is. Yet in the story the court is also trying to use their knowledge from what they have just heard to make a decision on who is guilty we don’t get to hear the verdict because the author like I said before wants us to use what we had learned from all of the stories and figure it out our self and discuss what we think is
The United States has obtained a respectable and honorable reputation, in which other countries have a tendency to envy. However, certain events embedded within the nation’s past, such as the Salem witch trials and red scare, are often overlooked. These events symbolize times of despair, weakness, and slander, to which the essence of the events is nearly identical. The Salem witch trials can be closely compared to McCarthyism and the red scare, based on the similarities of suspicion, accusation, and prosecution. Despite the difference of roughly two hundred and sixty years, the outcome of such uprisings has remained unchanged. The morals discovered during the Salem witch trials failed to reach the minds of those behind the House of Un-American Activities, and other political figures, such as Joseph McCarthy. The fundamentals of suspicion sparked such events of terror and inhumanity.
Black, the defendants’ attorney, picked up Parson and his wife from an apartment building not far from the court house. Parson had been in hiding since the attack and it was never deserved as to where he went. The police say he went to Arkansas, but it was never confirmed to be true. Parson as well as the other defendants pleaded not guilty to the accusations because the evidence against them was almost extremely weak. Although they prosecutors had little evidence the grand jury convicted the men for conspiracy of murder. It was not hard for the jury to make this conclusion since a majority of the accused men were Russian immigrants, and at the time they were being labeled as terrorist across the nation. Despite being accused Parson and Spies spent the night in a cell together laughing and looking back on how they never gave up on what they believed in.
The heart of the American Judicial System is the determination of the innocence or guilt of the accused. At the beginning of the play, the jurors all feel that the man is guilty for murdering his father and they all wanted to convict him without carrying out a detailed discussion. The persistence of juror eight, however, plays a significant role in ensuring that the correct and fair verdict is delivered. The judicial system maintains that the defendant does not have an obligation to prove his innocence. The fact is not clear to everyone as Juror 8 reminds Juror 2 about it. The fact is a key element of the judicial system and assists in the process of coming up with a verdict. The defendant is usually innocent until proven guilty. Another element of the judicial system that comes out in the play is for a verdict to stand it must be unanimous. Unanimity ensures that the
Through the various primary sources, a theme of hypocrisy is introduced, revealing the constant contradiction of freedom in America during the 19th century. This theme is exemplified in “America”, a poem written by James Whitfield. The poem begins with the lines, “America, it is to thee, / Thou boasted land of liberty, - / It is to thee I raise my song, / Thou land of blood, and crime, and wrong” (Whitfield “America” 1- 4). Within the first four lines of the poem, Whitfield introduces the notion that America, albeit boasting of freedom, is truly a land of wrongdoing. This idea is further enhanced later in the poem, as it is mentioned, “Oh no; they fought, as they believed, / For the inherent rights of man; / But mark, how they have been deceived / By slavery’s accursed plan” (Whitfield “America” 37 -
Many ideas are important within the American culture, but to the American sense of patriotism, freedom is most fundamental. The idea of freedom is central to the American politics – which is at times referred to as liberty. Since the birth of the nation, freedom has been the vocabulary of the American language and its importance cannot be underestimated. The Declaration of Independence, for instance, ranks liberty as an inalienable right. On the other hand, the Constitution reckons that it purposes to protect civilians’ liberty. The importance of freedom has even stretched further than the political arena and has prompted the birth of civil rights movements and other activist protests. The Cold War and the Civil War were all for the cause of freedom. The importance that Americans attach to freedom can also be demonstrated from the erection of statues, banishment of slavery, use of liberty poles and a right to vote for adults. For many years, women and the African Americans have for a long time fought against denial and infringement of their freedom . However, given the importance that Americans affiliate to freedom in the conceptualization of their country, it has been the subject of modifications over the course of years especially before the Revolutionary War.