Episode 1 of 5

General Strike Begins

Name: General Strike Begins
Start: 1886-05-01
Location: United States

When: May 1, 1886
Where: United States
Part of: Event of 1886: A general strike begins in the United States, which escalates on May 4 into the

Labor unions prepared for a general strike to enforce the eight-hour workday, as resolved by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1884.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions set May 1, 1886, as the date for the eight-hour standard. As this date approached, unions prepared for a general strike. On May 1, thousands of workers struck and rallied across the United States, singing the anthem 'Eight Hour'.

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.