Chicago's German-Jewish Labor History
Sun, Oct 11
|Haymarket Memorial
From Haymarket to the 1910 Garment Strike
Time & Location
Oct 11, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Haymarket Memorial, 151-169 N Desplaines St, Chicago, IL 60661, USA
About the Event
How did a group of immigrant teenage girls start one of the largest labor strikes in Chicago's history? What did the execution of four men by the State of Illinois twenty-five years earlier have to do with this strike? Why did Jewish activists gather in old German beer halls in the early 1900s?
Learn the answers to these questions and more on Chicago Shpatz's new tour, "Chicago's German-Jewish Labor History," commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Chicago and led by Ben Schacht and Matthew Schlerf. This guided tour of Randolph Street will use methods of street theater and historical reenactment to illustrate how Jewish immigrants and activists moved from the background of the 1886 Haymarket Affair to the foreground of the 1910 Chicago Garment Strike.
Topics covered include the political and industrial revolutions of 1848, German and Jewish immigration to Chicago, the Civil War and the Great Chicago Fire, the use of…