Episode 2 of 5

McCormick Plant Incident

When: May 3, 1886
Where: McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant, Chicago
Part of: Event of 1886: A general strike begins in the United States, which escalates on May 4 into the

Police killed two strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant in Chicago on May 3, 1886, escalating tensions.

A rally was held at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant on the West Side of Chicago. Police opened fire on the crowd as it surged to the gate to confront strikebreakers, killing two strikers. This incident occurred the day before the Haymarket rally.

Sources

Haymarket affair Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-08

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.