His research into the 1886 Haymarket affair led him to reappraise the conventional narrative that the trial was a miscarriage of justice, arguing to the contrary it was fairly conducted by standards of the era.
In 2006, he was appointed Professor of History and Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at Bowling Green State University.
In the early 2000s Messer-Kruse was prompted to study the original court documents from the Haymarket affair trials.
He published his findings in books and academic papers including The Haymarket Conspiracy.
[2] In 2012, Messer-Kruse described his experiences in the Chronicle of Higher Education,[3] on the NPR podcast On The Media,[4] in The Atlantic,[5] and on National Public Radio.