From the Smithsonian American Art Inventory site:
"The monument commemorates workers' struggle to achieve the eight-hour workday and the 1886 rally in Haymarket Square that led to the hangings of four leaders of the fight for workers' rights and suicide death of another. On May 4, 1886, a group of workers gathered in Haymarket Square in Chicago to protest police brutality against strikers at the South Side McCormick Reaper Factory. At the conclusion of the meeting, police marched in and demanded an end to the gathering. An unknown assailant threw a bomb into the crowd, and police shots rang out. Several police officers and protesters were killed or wounded. Police later apprehended eight anarchists, four of whom would be executed.
In Dec. 1887, the Pioneer Aid and Support Association was incorporated with the purpose of "providing for the families of the executed men and of erecting a monument to their memory," The PASA, headed by Lucy Parsons, was comprised of members of the Amnesty Association, the Defense Committee and the Central Labor Union. They raised $6,000 towards the cost of the memorial. A design competition was held in Oct. 1890, and on Feb. 14, 1892, the commission was awarded to Albert Weinert. His idea for the figures was based on a verse from the French national anthem La Marseillaise (The Marseilles).
The monument marks the grave site of the Haymarket martyrs--Spies, Fischer, Parsons, Linng and Engel. German Waldheim Cemetery, with its nondiscrimination policy, was the only cemetery in the Chicago area that would accept their remains. The dedication ceremony on June 25, 1893 was attended by over 8,000 people. Floral tributes came from unions in England, France and Belgium. The platform of the monument was covered with the crimson banner of the Architectural Ironworkers Union No. 2, the blue flag of the Brewery Workers Union, the red banners of the Turnverein Clubs, and the American flag. On May 2, 1971, the Pioneer Aid and Support Association turned over the title to the newly-formed Illinois Labor Historical Society.
The monument was officially designated a National Historic Landmark on Feb. 18, 1997.
Dimensions:
Granite shaft: approx. H. 16 ft.
Inscription:
Founder's mark appears.
(On upper step, below figures:) 1887 (bronze palm leaves below) (On next step below figures, gallows speech of August Spies:) "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voice you are throttling today." (On back of monument, names of martyrs: August Spies, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg, and George Engel). (A bronze plaque lists the names of Schwab, Neebe and Fielden who were not hanged and later pardoned).
(A bronze plaque at top of shaft inscribed with excerpt from Governor Peter Altgeld's pardon:) These charges are of a personal character, and while they seem to be sustained by the record of the trial and the papers before me and tend to show that the trial was not fair, I do not care to discuss the features of the case any further, because it is not necessary. I am convinvced that it is clearly my duty to act in this case for the reasons already given, and I, therefore, grant pardon to Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab this 26th Day of June, 1893."
The site is a National Historic Landmark:
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Interestingly, labor activists leave their buttons on the monument as a show of solidarity.