Joe Hill

Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, and also known as Joseph Hillström (October 7, 1879 – November 19, 1915) was a Swedish-American labor activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies. He was executed for murder after a controversial trial. After his death he became the subject of a folksong.

Early life and I.W.W. activity

Hill was born in Gävle, a town in the province of Gästrikland, Sweden. He emigrated to the United States in 1902, where he became a migrant laborer, moving from New York City to Cleveland, Ohio, and eventually to the West Coast. He was in San Francisco, California, at the time of the 1906 earthquake. Hill joined the Wobblies around 1910, when he was working on the docks in San Pedro, California. In late 1910 he wrote a letter to the I.W.W. newspaper, Industrial Worker, identifying himself as a member of the Portland, Oregon I.W.W. local.

Hill rose in the I.W.W. organization and travelled widely organizing workers under the I.W.W. banner, writing political songs and satirical poems, and making speeches. He coined the phrase "pie in the sky" which appeared in his song "The Preacher and the Slave" (a parody of the then well known hymn "In the Sweet Bye and Bye"):

Trial and execution

Joe Hill was an itinerant worker, who moved around the west, hopping freight trains, going from job to job, cause to cause and union local to union local. Early 1914 found Hill working as a tram laborer at the Silver King Mine in Park City, Utah, not far from Salt Lake City. It must be remembered that Colorado and Utah were not union friendly states with the former continuing to have strikes in this time period and union men blacklisted. Bill Haywood very nearly went down on an alleged murder charge in neighbouring Idaho in 1907.

On January 10, 1914, John G. Morrison and his son Arling were killed in their Salt Lake City butcher store by two armed intruders masked in red bandanas. Arling had drawn a shotgun from behind the counter and wounded one of the masked men before being killed. The police first thought it was a crime of revenge, for nothing had been stolen. On the same evening, Joe Hill appeared on the doorsteps of a local doctor with a bullet wound. Hill said that he had been wounded defending a woman. The doctor noticed that Hill was armed with a pistol.

Hill was arrested for Morrison's death. Morrison had once been a police officer, and several men he had arrested were at first considered suspects, but they were not pursued. A red bandana was found in Hill's room. The pistol, purported to be in Hill's possession at the doctor's office, was not found. Hill resolutely denied that he was involved in the robbery and killing of Morrison, but he refused to testify at his trial, and was convicted of murder. An appeal to the Utah Supreme Court was unsuccessful, and it is uncertain whether appeals for mercy organized by the I.W.W. did his case any good.

The case generated international attention, and critics charged that the trial and conviction were unfair. Much later the state of Utah declared that under their law today, Joe Hill would not have been executed based on the evidence presented at his trial. Hill was executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915, and his last word was "Fire!". Just prior to his execution, he had written to Bill Haywood, an I.W.W. leader, saying, "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize."Zinn, 335.

His will, which was eventually set to music by Ethel Raim, read:

My will is easy to decide,

For there is nothing to divide,

My kin don't need to fuss and moan-

"Moss does not cling to a rolling stone."

My body? Ah, If I could choose,

I would to ashes it reduce,

And let the merry breezes blow

My dust to where some flowers grow.

Perhaps some fading flower then

Would come to life and bloom again.

This is my last and final will,

Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill

Hill's body was sent to Chicago, where it was cremated. This was fitting, as he had joked that he would not be caught dead in Utah. His ashes were purportedly sent to every I. W. W. local. In 1988 it was discovered that an envelope had been seized by the U. S. Postal Service in 1917 because of its "subversive potential." The envelope, with a photo affixed captioned, "Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915," as well as its contents, was deposited at the National Archives. After some negotiations, the last of Hill's ashes (but not the envelope that contained them) was turned over to the I. W. W. in 1988. The weekly In These Times ran notice of the ashes and invited readers to suggest what should be done with them. Suggestions varied from enshrining them at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington DC to Abbie Hoffman's suggestion that they be eaten by today's "Joe Hills"-like Billy Bragg and Michelle Shocked. Bragg indeed did swallow a small bit of the ashes and still carries Shocked's share for eventual completion of Hoffman's last prank. The majority of the ashes was cast to the wind in the US, Canada, Sweden, Australia, and Nicaragua. The ashes sent to Sweden were only partly cast to the wind. The main part was interred in the wall of a union office in Landskrona, a minor city in the south of the country, with a plaque commemorating Hill. That room is now the reading room of the local city library.

Influence and tributes

Joe Hill is remembered for his devotion to union organizing and his many clever song lyrics, some of which continue to be sung.

Hill is also remembered from a tribute poem written about him c. 1930 by Alfred Hayes entitled "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", although sometimes referred to simply as "Joe Hill"Hampton, W: Guerilla Minstrels. Tennessee. Hayes's lyrics were turned into a song in 1936 by Earl Robinson. The usual lyrics to the song go:

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,

Alive as you and me.

Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"

"I never died" said he,

"I never died" said he.

"In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,

him standing by my bed,

"They framed you on a murder charge,"

Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,"

Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."

"The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,

they shot you Joe" says I.

"Takes more than guns to kill a man"

Says Joe "I didn't die"

And standing there as big as life

and smiling with his eyes.

Says Joe "What they can never kill

went on to organize,

went on to organize"

From San Diego up to Maine,

in every mine and mill,

where working-men defend their rights,

it's there you find Joe Hill,

it's there you find Joe Hill!

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,

alive as you and me.

Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"

"I never died" said he,

"I never died" said he.

The radical Swedish socialist leader, Ture Nerman (1886 – 1969), wrote a biography of Joe Hill. For the project, Nerman did the first serious research about Hill's life story, including finding and interviewing Hill's family members in Sweden. Nerman, who was a poet himself, also translated most of Joe Hill's songs into Swedish.

Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger often performed this song and are associated with it, along with renowned Irish folk group The Dubliners. Their version, scored by Phil Coulter and sung by Luke Kelly, offers a stirring mix of Coulter's simple piano accompanient and Kelly's gravelly voice. Joan Baez's Woodstock performance of "Joe Hill" in 1969 is the most well-known recording.

Phil Ochs has also written and performed a song about Joe Hill, and in his turn was the subject of a rewritten version of the song by Billy Bragg.

Bob Dylan claims that Hill's story was one of his inspirations to begin writing his own songs.

Wallace Stegner published a fictional biography called Joe Hill in 1969.

Joe Hill was also depicted in the 1971 movie Joe Hill, directed by Bo Widerberg. ^*

In 1990 Smithsonian Folkways released "Don't Mourn - Organize!: Songs Of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill." This compilation featured the likes of 'Haywire Mac' McClintock and Cisco Houston performing his songs as well as narrative interludes from Utah Phillips, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and others.

The Swedish hardcore band Refused named their LP from 1996 Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent after his song and textbook, published 1909 by the I.W.W.

There is a song about Joe Hill in the late 2005 release - A singsong and a scrap - put out by Chumbawamba entitled By and By.

Notes

References

Fellow Workers. Philips, Utah and Difranco, Ani. Righteous Babe Records, NY, 1999.
"Joe Hill--The man and the Myth" Gibbs Smith.
"We Shall Be all: A History of the IWW" Melvyn Dubrosky
"Where the Fraser River Flows: the IWW in BC" Mark Leier.
'Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World.'' Buhle, Paul and Schulman, Nicole, eds. Verso, NY, 2005.

External links

Joe Hill | Joe Hill | Joe Hill | Joe Hill