Friday will mark the first day of May, and workers around the world will be observing the holiday known as “May Day.”
Those observances will also occur in Chicago, with some students taking field trips to rallies honoring the sacrifices of workers who pushed for better wages and shorter working hours during the 1800s.
Here’s what to know about the observance of May Day.
What is “May Day?”
According to a history compiled by UCLA, “May Day” stems from the labor movement that blossomed in the late 1800s, with workers trying to reduce their work hours from up to 20 hours a day to eight hours a day.
Those demands, along with demands for better wages and working conditions, continued into the 1880s when a powerful union established May 1, 1886 as a day for a general strike to push for the eight-hour work day.
Four years later, May Day, or “International Worker’s Day,” was observed around the world for the first time.
Is May Day a federal holiday?
While May Day is observed as a holiday in numerous countries, including Greece, Grance, China and India, it is not a federal holiday in the United States.
Rather, the United States honors the achievements of the labor movement on Labor Day, observed on the first Monday of September.
What is Chicago’s connection to the observance?
According to Britannica, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (later to be known as the American Federation of Labor, or AFL) declared that May 1, 1886 would be the date from which an eight-hour work day would constitute a legal day’s labor.
As that deadline approached, labor organizers advocated for an organized mass strike to be held on the date, drawing hundreds of thousands of strikers in communities across the U.S.
Among the largest of those gatherings occurred in Chicago, where tens of thousands of workers took to the streets in a series of work stoppages.
A few days later on May 4, 1886, a rally at Haymarket Square ended with an explosion and gunfire after an unknown individual threw a homemade bomb into a group of advancing police, killing one officer and severely wounding several others.
Gunfire then ensued, with historians unable to reach agreement on whether demonstrators or police fired first.
Whatever the case, seven police officers died and at least four workers were killed.
Seven individuals who had taken part in the planning of the rally at the Haymarket were eventually convicted and sentenced to death.A total of four were eventually executed on November 11, 1887.
The first observance of May Day, or International Worker’s Day, took place in 1890, four years after the general strike and the deaths at the Haymarket.
Will Chicago schools be closed on May Day?
As part of an agreement reached between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union, schools will be in class for a full day’s session on Friday, but it will also be an official civic day of action, with students permitted to take excused absences to take a “field trip” to a pro-labor rally in Union Park.
“This agreement preserves the classroom time students deserve and respects our staff and families who must be able to trust CPS to uphold the academic school year calendar,” CPS CEO/Superintendent Dr. Macquline King said in a statement. “At the same time, the agreement honors the proud history of civic action in Chicago and beyond.”
Under Illinois law, students age 12 and older are permitted one excused absence to attend a “civic day of action,” with several CPS schools planning on field trips to the rally.
Approximately 45 schools will participate with field trips, according to CPS officials.
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