[Editor's note: Peter Linebaugh wrote this piece, in cuneiform, sometime back in a late-Soviet epoch of some previous millennium. We recycle, in warm digits.]

"The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day"

Peter Linebaugh

A Beginning

The Soviet government parades missiles and marches soldiers on May
Day. The American government has called May First "Loyalty Day" and
associates it with militarism. The real meaning of this day has been
obscured by the designing propaganda of both governments. The truth of May
Day is totally different. To the history of May Day there is a Green side
and there is a Red side.

Under the rainbow, our methodology must be colorful. Green is a
relationship to the earth and what grows therefrom. Red is a relationship
to other people and the blood spilt there among. Green designates life with
only necessary labor; Red designates death with surplus labor. Green is
natural appropriation; Red is social expropriation. Green is husbandry and
nurturance; Red is proletarianization and prostitution. Green is useful
activity; Red is useless toil. Green is creation of desire; Red is class
struggle. May Day is both. THE GREEN

Once upon a time, long before Weinberger bombed north Africans,
before the Bank of Boston laundered money, or Reagan honored the Nazi war
dead, the earth was blanketed by a broad mantle of forests. As late as
Caesar's time a person might travel through the woods for two months
without gaining an unobstructed view of the sky. The immense forests of
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America provided the atmosphere with oxygen and
the earth with nutrients. Within the woodland ecology our ancestors did
not have to work the graveyard shift, or to deal with flextime, or work
from Nine to Five. Indeed, the native Americans whom Captain John Smith
encountered in 1606 only worked four hours a week. The origin of May Day
is to be found in the Woodland Epoch of History.

In Europe, as in Africa, people honored the woods in many ways.
With the leafing of the trees in spring, people celebrated "the fructifying
spirit of vegetation," to use the phrase of J.G. Frazer, the
anthropologist. They did this in May, a month named after Maia, the mother
of all the gods according to the ancient Greeks, giving birth even to
Zeus.

The Greeks had their sacred groves, the Druids their oak worship,
the Romans their games in honor of Floralia. In Scotland the herdsman
formed circles and danced around fires. The Celts lit bonfires in hilltops
to honor their god, Beltane. In the Tyrol people let their dogs bark and
made music with pots and pans. In Scandinavia fires were lit and the
witches came out.

Everywhere people "went a-Maying" by going into the woods and
bringing back leaf, bough, and blossom to decorate their persons, homes,
and loved ones with green garlands. Outside theater was performed with
characters like "Jack-in-the-Green" and the "Queen of the May." Trees were
planted. Maypoles were erected. Dances were danced. Music was played.
Drinks were drunk, and love was made. Winter was over, spring had
sprung.

The history of these customs is complex and affords the student of
the past with many interesting insights into the history of religion,
gender, reproduction, and village ecology. Take Joan of Arc who was burned
in May 1431. Her inquisitors believed she was a witch. Not far from her
birthplace, she told the judges, "there is a tree that they call 'The
Ladies Tree' - others call it 'The Fairies Tree.' It is a beautiful
tree, from which comes the Maypole. I have sometimes been to play with the
young girls to make garlands for Our Lady of Domremy. Often I have heard
the old folk say that the fairies haunt this tree...." In the general
indictment against Joan, one of the particulars against her was dressing
like a man. The paganism of Joan's heresy originated in the Old Stone Age
when religion was animistic and hamans were women and men.

Monotheism arose with the Mediterranean empires. Even the most
powerful Roman Empire had to make deals with its conquered and enslaved
peoples (syncretism). As it destroyed some customs, it had to accept or
transform others. Thus, we have Christmas Trees. May Day became a day to
honor the saints, Philip and James, who were unwilling slaves to Empire.
James the Less neither drank nor shaved. He spent so much time praying
that he developed huge callouses on his knees, likening them to camel legs.
Philip was a lazy guy. When Jesus said "Follow me" Philip tried to get
out of it by saying he had to tend to his father's funeral, and it was to
this excuse that the Carpenter's son made his famous reply, "Let the dead
bury the dead." James was stoned to death, and Philip was crucified head
downwards. Their martyrdom introduces the Red side of the story, even
still the Green side is preserved because, according to the Floral
Directory, the tulip is dedicated to Philip and bachelor buttons to
James.

The farmers, workers, and child-bearers (laborers) of the Middle Ages had hundreds
of holy days which preserved the May Green, despite the attack on peasants
and witches. Despite the complexities, whether May Day was observed by
sacred or profane ritual, by pagan or Christian, by magic or not, by
straights or gays, by gentle or calloused hands, it was always a
celebration of all that is free and life-giving in the world. That is the
Green side of the story. Whatever else it was, it was not a time to
work.

Therefore, it was attacked by the authorities. The repression had
begun with the burning of women and it continued in the 16th century when
America was "discovered," the slave trade was begun, and nation-states and
capitalism were formed. In 1550 an Act of Parliament demanded that
Maypoles be destroyed, and it outlawed games. In 1644 the Puritans in
England abolished May Day altogether. To these work-ethicists the festival
was obnoxious for paganism and worldliness. Philip Stubs, for example, in
Anatomy of Abuses (1585) wrote of the Maypole, "and then fall they to
banquet and feast, to leape and daunce about it, as the Heathen people did
at the dedication of their Idolles." When a Puritan mentioned "heathen" we
know genocide was not far away. According to the excellent slide show at
the Quincy Historical Society, 90% of the Massachusetts people, including
chief Chicatabat, died from chicken pox or small pox a few years after the
Puritans landed in 1619. The Puritans also objected to the unrepressed
sexuality of the day. Stubs said, "of fourtie, threescore, or an hundred
maides going to the wood, there have scarcely the third part of them
returned home again as they went."

The people resisted the repressions. Thenceforth, they called
their May sports, the "Robin Hood Games." Capering about with sprigs of
hawthorn in their hair and bells jangling from their knees, the ancient
charaders of May were transformed into an outlaw community, Maid Marions
and Little Johns. The May feast was presided over by the "Lord of
Misrule," "the King of Unreason," or the "Abbot of Inobedience."
Washington Irving was later to write that the feeling for May "has become
chilled by habits of gain and traffic." As the gainers and traffickers
sought to impose the regimen of monotonous work, the people responded to
preserve their holyday. Thus began in earnest the Red side of the story of
May Day. The struggle was brought to Massachusetts in 1626.

THOMAS MORTON OF MERRY MOUNT

In 1625 Captain Wollaston, Thomas Morton, and thirty others sailed
from England and months later, taking their bearings from a red cedar tree,
they disembarked in Quincy Bay. A year later Wollaston, impatient for
lucre and gain, left for good to Virginia. Thomas Morton settled in
Passonaggessit which he named Merry Mount. The land seemed a "Paradise" to
him. He wrote, there are "fowls in abundance, fish in multitudes, and I
discovered besides, millions of turtle doves on the green boughs, which sat
pecking of the full, ripe, pleasant grapes that were supported by the lusty
trees, whose fruitful load did cause the arms to bend."

On May Day, 1627, he and his Indian friends, stirred by the sound
of drums, erected a Maypole eighty feet high, decorated it with garlands,
wrapped it in ribbons, and nailed to its top the antlers of a buck. Later
he wrote that he "sett up a Maypole upon the festival day of Philip and
James, and therefore brewed a barrell of excellent beare." A ganymede sang
a Bacchanalian song. Morton attached to the pole the first lyric verses
penned in America which concluded.

With the proclamation that the first of May

At Merry Mount shall be kept holly day

The Puritans at Plymouth were opposed to the May Day. they called
the Maypole "an Idoll" and named Merry Mount "Mount Dagon" after the god of
the first ocean-going imperialist, the Phoenicians. More likely, though the Puritans were the imperialist, not Morton, who
worked with slaves, servants, and native Americans, person to person.
Everyone was equal in his "social contract." Governor Bradford wrote,
"they allso set up a Maypole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days
together, inviting the Indean women for thier consorts, dancing and
frisking together (like so many faires, or furies rather) and worse
practise."

Merry Mount became a refuge for Indians, the discontented, gay
people, runaway servants, and what the governor called "all the scume of
the countrie." When the authorities reminded him that his actions violated
the King's Proclamation, Morton replied that it was "no law." Miles
Standish, whom Morton called "Mr. Shrimp," attacked. The Maypole was cut
down. The settlement was burned. Morton's goods were confiscated, he was
chained in the bilboes, and ostracized to England aboard the ship "The
Gift," at a cost the Puritans complained of twelve pounds seven shillings.
The rainbow coalition of Merry Mount was thus destroyed for the time being.
That Merry Mount later (1636) became associated with Anne Hutchinson, the
famous mid-wife, spiritualist, and feminist, surely was more than
coincidental. Her brother-in-law ran the Chapel of Ease. She thought that
god loved everybody, regardless of their sins. She doubted the Puritans'
authority to make law. A statue of Robert Burns in Quincy near to Merry
Mount, quotes the poet's lines,

A fig for those by law protected!

Liberty's a glorious feast!

Courts for cowards were erected,

Churches built to please the priest.

Thomas Morton was a thorn in the side of the Boston and Plymouth
Puritans, because he had an alternate vision of Massachusetts. He was
impressed by its fertility; they by its scarcity. He befriended the
Indians; they shuddered at the thought. He was egalitarian; they proclaimed
themselves the "Elect". He freed servants; they lived off them. He armed
the Indians; they used arms against Indians. To Nathaniel Hawthorne, the
destiny of American settlement was decided at Merry Mount. Casting the
struggle as mirth vs. gloom, grizzly saints vs. gay sinners, green vs.
iron, it was the Puritans who won, and the fate of America was determined
in favor of psalm-singing, Indian-scalpers whose notion of the Maypole was
a whipping post.

Parts of the past live, parts die. The red cedar that drew Morton
first to Merry Mount blew down in the gale of 1898. A section of it, about
eight feet of its trunk became a power fetish in 1919, placed as it was
next to the President's chair of the Quincy City Council. Interested
parties may now view it in the Quincy Historical Museum. Living trees,
however, have since grown, despite the closure of the ship-yards.

ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC

In England the attacks on May Day were a necessary part of the
wearisome, unending attempt to establish industrial work discipline. The
attempt was led by the Puritans with their belief that toil was godly and
less toil wicked. Absolute surplus value could be increased only by
increasing the hours of labor and abolishing holydays. A parson wrote a
piece of work propaganda called Funebria Florae, Or the Downfall of the May
Games. He attacked, "ignorants, atheists, papists, drunkards, swearers,
swashbucklers, maid-marians, morrice-dancers, maskers, mummers, Maypole
stealers, health-drinkers, together with a rapscallion rout of fiddlers,
fools fighters, gamesters, lewd-women, light-women, contemmers of
magistracy, affronters of ministry, disobedients to parents, misspenders of
time, and abusers of the creature, &c."

At about this time, Isaac Newton, the gravitationist and machinist
of time, said work was a law of planets and apples alike. Thus work ceased
to be merely the ideology of the Puritans, it became a law of the universe.
In 1717 Newton purchased London's hundred foot Maypole and used it to prop
up his telescope.

Chimney sweeps and dairy maids led the resistance. The sweeps dressed up as
women on May Day, or put on aristocratic perriwigs. They sang songs and
collected money. When the Earl of Bute in 1763 refused to pay, the
opprobrium was so great that he was forced to resign. Milk maids used to
go a-Maying by dressing in floral garlands, dancing and getting the
dairymen to distribute their milk-yield freely. Soot and milk workers thus
helped to retain the holyday right into the industrial revolution.

The ruling class used the day for its own purposes. Thus, when
Parliament was forced to abolish slavery in the British dominions, it did
so on May Day 1807. In 1820 the Cato Street conspirators plotted to
destroy the British cabinet while it was having dinner. Irish, Jamaican,
and Cockney were hanged for the attempt on May Day 1820. A conspirator
wrote his wife saying "justice and liberty have taken their flight... to
other distant shores." He meant America, where Boston Brahmin, Robber
Baron, and Southern Plantocrat divided and ruled an arching rainbow of
people.

Two bands of that rainbow came from English and Irish islands. One
was Green. Robert Owen, union leader, socialist, and founder of utopian
communities in America, announced the beginning of the millennium after May
Day 1833. The other was Red. On May Day 1830, a founder of the Knights of
Labor, the United Mine Workers of America, and the Wobblies was born in
Ireland, Mary Harris Jones, a.k.a., "Mother Jones." She was a Maia of the
American working class.

May Day continued to be commemorated in America, one way or
another, despite the victory of the Puritans at Merry Mount. On May Day
1779 the revolutionaries of Boston confiscated the estates of "enemies of
Liberty." On May Day 1808 "twenty different dancing groups of the wretched
Africans" in New Orleans danced to the tunes of their own drums until
sunset when the slave patrols showed themselves with their cutlasses. "The
principal dancers or leaders are dressed in a variety of wild and savage
fashions, always ornamented with a number of tails of the small wild
beasts," observed a strolling white man.

THE RED: HAYMARKET CENTENNIAL

The history of the modern May Day originates in the center of the
North American plains, at Haymarket, in Chicago - "the city on the make" -
in May 1886. The Red side of that story is more well-known than the Green,
because it was bloody. But there was also a Green side to the tale, though
the green was not so much that of pretty grass garlands, as it was of
greenbacks, for in Chicago, it was said, the dollar is king.

Of course the prairies are green in May. Virgin soil, dark, brown,
crumbling, shot with fine black sand, it was the produce of thousands of
years of humus and organic decomposition. For many centuries this earth
was husbanded by the native Americans of the plains. As Black Elk said
theirs is "the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of
us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four- leggeds and the wings of the
air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their
father is one Spirit." From such a green perspective, the white men
appeared as pharaohs, and indeed, as Abe Lincoln put it, these prairies
were the "Egypt of the West".

The land was mechanized. Relative surplus value could only be
obtained by reducing the price of food. The proteins and vitamins of this
fertile earth spread through the whole world. Chicago was the jugular vein.
Cyrus McCormick wielded the surgeon's knife. His mechanical reapers
harvested the grasses and grains. McCormick produced 1,500 reapers in
1849; by 1884 he was producing 80,000. Not that McCormick actually made
reapers, members of the Molders Union Local 23 did that, and on May Day
1867 they went on strike, starting the Eight Hour Movement.

A staggering transformation was wrought. It was: "Farewell" to the
hammer and sickle. "Goodby" to the cradle scythe. "So long" to Emerson's
man with the hoe. These now became the artifacts of nostalgia and
romance. It became "Hello" to the hobo. "Move on" to the harvest stiffs.
"Line up" the proletarians. Such were the new commands of civilization.

Thousands of immigrants, many from Germany, poured into Chicago
after the Civil War. Class war was advanced, technically and logistically.
In 1855 the Chicago police used Gatling guns against the workers who
protested the closing of the beer gardens. In the Bread Riot of 1872 the
police clubbed hungry people in a tunnel under the river. In the 1877
railway strike, Federal troops fought workers at "The Battle of the
Viaduct." These troops were recently seasoned from fighting the Sioux who
had killed Custer. Henceforth, the defeated Sioux could only "Go to a
mountain top and cry for a vision." The Pinkerton Detective Agency put
visions into practice by teaching the city police how to spy and to form
fighting columns for deployment in city streets. A hundred years ago
during the street car strike, the police issued a shoot-to-kill order.

McCormick cut wages 15%. His profit rate was 71%. In May 1886
four molders whom McCormick locked-out was shot dead by the police. Thus,
did this 'grim reaper' maintain his profits.

Nationally, May First 1886 was important because a couple of years
earlier the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United
States and Canada, "RESOLVED... that eight hours shall constitute a legal
day's labor, from and after May 1, 1886.

On 4 May 1886 several thousand people gathered near Haymarket
Square to hear what August Spies, a newspaperman, had to say about the
shootings at the McCormick works. Albert Parsons, a typographer and labor
leader spoke net. Later, at his trial, he said, "What is Socialism or
Anarchism? Briefly stated it is the right of the toilers to the free and
equal use of the tools of production and the right of the producers to their product." He was followed by
"Good-Natured Sam" Fielden who as a child had worked in the textile
factories of Lancashire, England. He was a Methodist preacher and labor
organizer. He got done speaking at 10:30 PM. At that time 176 policemen
charged the crowd that had dwindled to about 200. An unknown hand threw a
stick of dynamite, the first time that Alfred Nobel's invention was used in
class battle.

All hell broke lose, many were killed, and the rest is history.

"Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards," was the
Sheriff's dictum. It was followed religiously across the country.
Newspaper screamed for blood, homes were ransacked, and suspects were
subjected to the "third degree." Eight men were railroaded in Chicago at a
farcical trial. Four men hanged on "Black Friday," 11 November 1887.

"There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than
the voices you strangle today," said Spies before he choked.

MAY DAY SINCE 1886

Lucy Parsons, widowed by Chicago's "just-us," was born in Teas.
She was partly Afro-American, partly native American, and partly Hispanic.
She set out to tell the world the true story "of one whose only crime was
that he lived in advance of his time." She went to England and encouraged
English workers to make May Day an international holiday for shortening the
hours of work. Her friend, William Morris, wrote a poem called "May
Day."

WORKERS

They are few, we are many: and yet, O our Mother,

Many years were wordless and nought was our deed,

But now the word flitteth from brother to brother:

We have furrowed the acres and scattered the seed.

EARTH

Win on then unyielding, through fair and foul weather,

And pass not a day that your deed shall avail.

And in hope every spring-tide come gather together

That unto the Earth ye may tell all your tale.

Her work was not in vain. May Day, or "The Day of the Chicago
Martyrs" as it is still called in Meico "belongs to the working class and
is dedicated to the revolution," as Eugene Debs put it in his May Day
editorial of 1907. The A. F. of L. declared it a holiday. Sam Gompers
sent an emissary to Europe to have it proclaimed an international labor
day. Both the Knights of Labor and the Second International officially
adopted the day. Bismarck, on the other hand, outlawed May Day. President
Grover Cleveland announced that the first Monday in September would be
Labor Day in America, as he tried to divide the international working
class. Huge numbers were out of work, and they began marching. Under the
generalship of Jacob Coey they descended on Washington D. C. on May Day
1894, the first big march on Washington. Two years later across the world
Lenin wrote an important May Day pamphlet for the Russian factory workers
in 1896. The Russian Revolution of 1905 began on May Day.

With the success of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution the Red side of
May Day became scarlet, crimson, for ten million people were slaughtered in
World War I. The end of the war brought work stoppings, general strikes,
and insurrections all over the world, from Mexico to Kenya, from China to
France. In Boston on May Day 1919 the young telephone workers threatened
to strike, and 20,000 workers in Lawrence went on strike again for the
8-hour day. There were fierce clashes between working people and police in
Cleveland as well as in other cities on May Day of that year. A lot of
socialists, anarchists, bolsheviks, wobblies and other "I-Won't- Workers,"
ended up in jail as a result.

This didn't get them down. At "Wire City," as they called the
federal pen at Fort Leavenworth, there was a grand parade and no work on
May Day 1919. Pictures of Lenin and Lincoln were tied to the end of broom
sticks and held afloat. There speeches and songs. The Liberator supplies us with
an account of the day, but it does not tell us who won the Wobbly-Socialist
horseshoe throwing contest. Nor does it tell us what happened to the
soldier caught waving a red ribbon from the guards' barracks. Meanwhile,
one mile underground in the copper mines of Bisbee where there are no
national boundaries, Spanish-speaking Americans were singing "The
International" on May Day.

In the 1920s and 1930s the day was celebrated by union organizers,
the unemployed, and determined workers. In New York City the big May Day
celebration was held in Union Square. In the 1930s Lucy Parsons marched in
Chicago at May Day with her young friend, Studs Terkel. May Day 1946 the
Arabs began a general strike in Palestine, and the Jews of the Displaced
Persons Camps in Landsberg, Germany, went on hunger strike. On May Day
1947 auto workers in Paris downed tools, an insurrection in Paraguay broke
out, the Mafia killed six May Day marchers in Sicily, and the Boston Parks
Commissioner said that this was the first year in living memory when
neither Communist nor Socialist had applied for a permit to rally on the
Common.

1968 was a good year for May Day. Allen Ginsberg was made the
"Lord of Misrule" in Prague before the Russians got there. In London
hundreds of students lobbied Parliament against a bill to stop Third World
immigration into England. In Mississippi police could not prevent 350
Black students from supporting their jailed friends. At Columbia
University thousands of students petitioned against armed police on campus.
In Detroit with the help of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, the
first wildcat strike in fifteen years took place at the Hamtramck Assembly
plant (Dodge Main), against speed-up. In Cambridge, Mass., Black leaders
advocated police reforms while in New York the Mayor signed a bill
providing the police with the most sweeping "emergency" powers known in
American history. The climax to the '68 Mai was reached in France where
there was a gigantic General Strike under strange slogans such as

Parlez a vos voisins!

L'Imagination prend le pouvoir!

Dessous les paves c'est la plage!

On May Day in 1971 President Nixon couldn't sleep. He order 10,000
paratroopers and marines to Washington D.C. because he was afraid that some
people calling themselves the May Day Tribe might succeed in their goal of
blocking access to the Department of Justice. In the Philippines four
students were shot to death protesting the dictatorship. In Boston Mayor
White argued against the right of municipal workers, including the police,
to withdraw their services, or stop working. In May 1980 we may see Green
themes in Mozambique where the workers lamented the absence of beer, or in
Germany where three hundred women witches rampaged through Hamburg. Red
themes may be seen in the 30,000 Brazilian auto workers who struck, or in
the 5.8 million Japanese who struck against inflation.

On May Day 1980 the Green and Red themes were combined when a
former Buick auto-maker from Detroit, one "Mr. Toad," sat at a picnic table
and penned the following lines,

The eight hour day is not enough;

We are thinking of more and better stuff.

So here is our prayer and here is our plan,

We want what we want and we'll take what we can.

Down with wars both small and large,

Except for the ones where we're in charge:

Those are the wars of class against class,

Where we get a chance to kick some ass..

For air to breathe and water to drink,

And no more poison from the kitchen sink.

For land that's green and life that's saved

And less and less of the earth that's paved.

No more women who are less than free,

Or men who cannot learn to see

Their power steals their humanity

And makes us all less than we can be.

For teachers who learn and students who teach

And schools that are kept beyond the reach

Of provosts and deans and chancellors and such

And Xerox and Kodak and Shell, Royal Dutch.

An end to shops that are dark and dingy,

An end to Bosses whether good or stingy,

An end to work that produces junk,

An end to junk that produces work,

And an end to all in charge - the jerks.

For all who dance and sing, loud cheers,

To the prophets of doom we send some jeers,

To our friends and lovers we give free beers,

And to all who are here, a day without fears.

So, on this first of May we all should say

That we will either make it or break it.

Or, to put this thought another way,

Let's take it easy, but let's take it.

LAW DAY/U.S.A.

Yet, May Day was always a troubling day in America; some wished to
forget it. In 1939 Pennsylvania declared it "Americanism Day." In 1947
Congress declared it to be "Loyalty Day." Yet, these attempts to hide the
meaning of the day have never succeeded. As the Wobblies say, "We Never
Forget."

Like in 1958, at the urging of Charles Rhyne, proclaimed May First
"Law Day/U.S.A." As a result the politicians had another opportunity for
bombast about the Cold War and to tout their own virtues. Senator Javits,
for instance, took a deep historical breath in May 1960 by saying American
ideas were the highest "ever espoused since the dawn of civilization.
Governor Rockefeller of New York got right to his point by saying that the
traditional May Day "bordered on treason." As an activity for the day
Senator Wiley recommended that people read Statute Books. In preaching on
"Obedience to Authority" on May Day 1960, the Chaplain of the Senate
believed it was the first time in the 20th century that the subject had
been addressed. He reminded people of the words carved on the courthouse
in Worcester, Massachusetts: "Obedience to Law is Liberty." He said God is
"all law" and suggested we sing the hymn, "Make Me a Captive, Lord, and
Then I shall be Free." He complained that TV shows made fun of cops and
husbands. He said God had become too maternal.

Beneath the hypocrisy of such talk (at the time the Senate was
rejecting the jurisdiction of the World Court), there were indications of
the revolt in the kitchens. In addition to the trumpeting Cold War
overtones, frightened patriarchal undertones were essential to the Law Day
music. Indeed, it attempted to drown out both the Red and the Green.
Those who have to face the law and order music on a daily basis, the
lawyers and the orderers, also have to make their own deals.

Among the lawyers there are conservatives and liberals; they are
generally ideologues. On Law Day 1964 the President of the Connecticut Bar
wrote against civil rights demonstrators, "corrupt" labor unions, "juvenile
delinquency," and Liz Taylor! William O. Douglas, on the other hand on Law
Day 1962 warned against mimicking British imperialism and favored
independence movements and the Peace Corps by saying "We need Michigan-in-
Nigeria, California-in-the-Congo, Columbia-in-Iran" which has come true, at
least judging by what's written on sweat shirts around the world. Neither
the conservative nor the liberal, however, said it should be a holiday for
the lawyers, nor did they advocate the 8- hour day for the workers of the
legal apparatus. In Boston only the New England School of Law, the Law and
Justice Program at UMass., and the College of Public and Community Service
celebrate the Green and the Red.

Among the orderers (the police) Law Day isn't much of a holiday
either. Yet, police, men and women, all over the United States owe a lot
to May Day and the Boston police. It is true that more than 1,000 Boston
men of blue lost their jobs owing to Calvin Coolidge's suppression of the
Boston police strike of 1919. They had been busy earlier in the summer
during May Day. At the same time there were lasting gains: a small pay
increase ($300 a year), shorter hours (73-90 a week had been the norm), and
most important, free uniforms!

AN ENDING

Where is the Red and Green today? Is it in Mao's Red Book? or in
Col. Khadafy's Green Book? Some perhaps. Leigh Hunt, the English essayist
of the 19th century, wrote that May Day is "the union of the two best
things in the world, the love of nature, and the love of each other."
Certainly, such green union is possible, because we all can imagine it, and
we know that what is real now was once only imagined. Just as certainly,
that union can be realized only by red struggle, because there is no gain
without pain, as the aerobiticians say, or no dreams without
responsibility, no birth without labor, no green without red.

The children used to celebrate May Day. I think schools stopped
encouraging them sometime around when "Law Day" was created, but I'm not
sure. A correspondent from East Arlington, Mass., writes that in the late
1940s, "On any given Saturday in May, anywhere from 10-30 children would
dress up in crepe paper costumes (hats, shirts, &c.); we would pick baskets
of flowers and parade up and down several streets (until the flowers ran
out!) The whole time we would be chanting, 'May Party, May Party, rah,
rah, rah!'. A leader would be chosen, but I don't remember how. (Probably
by throwing fingers out). Then, we would parade up to Spy Pond at the edge
of the Center off Lake Street and have a picnic lunch." This correspondent
now teaches kindergarten. "In recent years," she continues, "I have always
decorated a May Pole for my kindergarten class (they do the decorations
actually), and we would dance around it. It would always attract
attention from the older children."

RESEARCH

The best way to learn more is to participate in May Day activities and to
talk to your neighbours. Using your library's newspaper collection, talking
to school teachers, and getting people to talk about their childhood, their
strikes, and their working conditions are good ways too. For those who
wish to read more, here are a few suggestions.

William Adelman, HAYMARKET REVISITED (Illinois Labor History Society,
1976);
Charles Francis Adams, THREE EPISODES IN MASSACHUSETTS HISTORY
(1894);
William Bradford, HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION 1620-1647;
Jeremy
Brecher, Strike! (1972);
R. Chambers, THE BOOK OF DAYS: A MISCELLANY OF
POPULAR ANTIQUITIES (1864);
Henry David, THE HISTORY OF THE HAYMARKET
AFFAIR (1936);
J.G. Frazer, THE GOLDEN BOUGH: A STUDY OF COMPARATIVE
RELIGION (1890);
James R. Green and Hugh Donahue, BOSTON'S WORKERS: A
LABOR HISTORY (The Public Library, 1979);
Jane Hatch, THE AMERICAN BOOK OF
DAYS (1976);
William Hone, THE EVERY-DAY BOOK (1824);
Thomas Morton, THE
NEW ENGLISH CANA