Tompkins Square Riot (1874)

The Tompkins Square Park Riot occurred on January 13, 1874 when police crushed a demonstration involving thousands of unemployed in New York City's Tompkins Square Park, located in the East Village. [cite book |author=Gordon, Michael Allen |title=The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870-1871 |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=1993 |page=p. 203]

Background

The riot occurred in the midst of the Panic of 1873, a depression that began in 1873 and lasted for several years.cite book |title=Street Justice: A History of Political Violence in New York City |author=Johnson, Marilynn S. |publisher=Beacon Press |year=2003 |pages=p. 30-31] Demonstrators were demanding that Mayor William F. Havemeyer establish a public works program to generate employment opportunities. The group of immigrant workers and Socialists had organized a mass meeting, with a permit approved by the city but then revoked the night before the meeting.

The riot

Over 7,000 workers gathered in Tompkins Square Park anyway on January 13, 1874. This was the largest demonstration that New York City had ever seen.cite book |title=Labor Movement in the United States |publisher=International Publishers Co. |author=Foner, Philip S. |year=1979 |pages=p. 448] Political leaders viewed the group with suspicion, associating them with communism.

The police dispersed the crowd from the park with brutal force, beating people with clubs.

Samuel Gompers described the events and his experiences, "mounted police charged the crowd on Eighth Street, riding them down and attacking men, women, and children without discrimination. It was an orgy of brutality. I was caught in the crowd on the street and barely saved my head from being cracked by jumping down a cellarway." [cite book |title=Seventy Years of Life and Labor |author=Gompers, Samuel |publisher=E. P. Dutton & Company |year=1925 |pages=p. 32-34]

Aftermath

John Swinton, editor at the "New York Sun", described police actions as an "outrage" in statements that were later published as a pamphlet.

References