When you're 3,500 pages into 8,000-pages of court documents...

Hi everyone. So, for those of you who are curious, the next episode of Whose America? will focus on the development of big business in the late-19th century, the impact of industrial-era technology on individuals, institutions, and society, and specifcally the labor wars of Chicago. Chicago was the site of perhaps the most famous event in American labor history - the trial of a group of anarchists charged with conspiring to murder police officers and spark a revolution. The mainstream narrative of the “Haymarket Affair” has it that the anarchists were obviously innocent scapegoats, railroaded by a biased judge, prosecutor, jury, and press merely for expressing their political beliefs. This is what you’ll find in any textbook or work about the incident or the labor movement in general. I have always believed that, and have always considered Chicago anarchist leaders like Albert Parsons to be heroes and martyrs.

But as I bore down on the history of the incident, some holes started to appear in the official narrative. So I learned that the trial transcript and relevant documents had been digitized and uploaded in recent years, and dove into the roughly 8,000 pages of affidavits and trial transcripts. This sounds worse than it is, because, as my well-used account with the Public Access to Electronic Court Records (PACER) can attest, I actually enjoy this stuff. Well, I’m nearing the halfway point, and I have been forced to rethink the episode from its foundations. Virtually all of the main points brought up as examples of bias and official injustice are turning out to be either false or else have been presented in a deeply-flawed and biased way. The misrepresentations, ommissions, and straight-up fabrications are so many, and so bad, that I am convinced that none of the writers of the mainstream histories of the event actually went through the trouble to read the original documents (which, again, were only recently digitized… until a few years ago, you had to go sit in an obscure Chicago archive and read them on-site). So, it is still up in the air exactly how this episode will go… The original plan was to use the Chicago labor wars as an approach to the development of the American West, big business and finance capitalism, etc, and to cover everything from the 1886 Haymarket incident to the 1893 Pullmantown strike. I still might end up doing that. But in breaking down the truth about the Haymarket Affair, I will be challenging 130 years of so-called scholarship on the issue, so I may end up just focusing on that. Alternatively, I might go with the original idea, and do the full dissection of the Haymarket trial for subscribers here on the Substack.

Anyway, reading through thousands of pages of old trial transcripts doesn’t exactly inspire one to write on anything else, so I figured I’d answer some of your questions.

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Question from subscriber Turn:

Hi Darryl,

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Some questions:

1) Do you consider yourself an historian, a writer, or a podcaster first?

2) What is your mother's maiden name?

3) How much of a government/CIA/glowie op do you think the Floyd riots were? Like percentage? Certain cities more than others?

4) What was the first concert you attended?

5) Not a question but fun fact: a coworker of mine's dad did plumbing work for Jim Jones in Indianapolis and got stiffed. Apparently Jones was well known for this amongst the contractors in Indy.

6) What was the make and model of your first car?

Thanks!

Answer: Bro, why are you drilling me on questions pulled straight from the typical list of password reset questions on any website? My mother’s maiden name? The model of my first car? Do people actually fall for this?

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Question from subscriber Chungus:

When are you and Jocko gonna do an Unraveling again?

Answer: Soon. I would like to blame our hiatus on Jocko’s busy schedule (he is extremely busy and hard to pin down), but really it’s been my fault recently. I burned myself out getting the last Whose America podcast done, and since then I’ve spent most of my time reading through the aforementioned trial transcripts - which doesn’t exactly lend itself to coming up with Unraveling episodes (at least until I’m done with it). But we will get back to it very soon. Both of us have been thinking/talking about it. Since I’m buried in historical research for the podcast and Substack, we might do some more contemporary topics, but we’ll get it done soon.

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Question from subscriber Boomhower:

Have you heard anything from your boy Tucker? You two should collaborate on something.

Answer: Tucker and I keep in touch via text message, but I try not to abuse the privilege too much. I have recently talked to him about doing a long-form sit-down with either Jocko or both me and Jocko, and he was very enthusiastic about wanting to do it. Just a matter of carving out a time that works for everyone involved.

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Question from subscriber M S:

When will the recommended books list on your website be posted?

Answer: Have you been talking to my wife? She’s been telling me to pull off the shelf books I’ve used for various episodes so that she can type of a list for me, but I haven’t done it yet. When she sees this, she’s gonna say, “I told you so.” I’ll tell you what, I’ll at least get started on it this week. In the meantime, here are a few recommendations from among the books I’ve read for the next Whose America? episode: