May 1st: The Story of How May Day Became A Holiday for Workers

The story goes back to May 1st 1886 when some 200,000 U. S. workmen engineered a nationwide strike for an eight-hour day. The May 1, 1886, labor action wasn’t just any strike—it was part of what became known as the "Haymarket affair". On May 1 of that year, Chicago (along with other cities) was the site of a major union demonstration in support of the eight-hour workday.

Here’s how TIME of 1938 summed it up:

"A few minutes after ten o’clock on the night of May 4, 1886, a storm began to blow up in Chicago. As the first drops of rain fell, a crowd in Haymarket Square, in the packing house district, began to break up. At eight o’clock there had been 3,000 persons on hand, listening to anarchists denounce the brutality of the police and demand the eight-hour day, but by ten there were only a few hundred. The mayor, who had waited around in expectation of trouble, went home, and went to bed. The last speaker was finishing his talk when a delegation of 180 policemen marched from the station a block away to break up what remained of the meeting. They stopped a short distance from the speaker’s wagon. As a captain ordered the meeting to disperse, and the speaker cried out that it was a peaceable gathering, a bomb exploded in the police ranks. It wounded 67 policemen, of whom seven died. The police opened fire, killing several men and wounding 200, and the Haymarket Tragedy became a part of U. S. history."

In 1889, the International Socialist Conference declared that, in commemoration of the "Haymarket affair", May 1 would be an international holiday for labor, now known in many places as 'International Workers’ Day.

Source: http://time.com/3836834/may-day-labor-history/