Joe Hill

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Joe Hill
Born October 7, 1879
Gävle, Sweden
Died November 19, 1915
Occupation Songwriter, labor activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World
For the horror writer, see Joe Hill (writer).

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

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[edit] Early life and IWW 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 IWW newspaper Industrial Worker, identifying himself as a member of the Portland, Oregon IWW local.

Hill rose in the IWW organization and travelled widely organizing workers under the IWW 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"). Other notable songs written by Hill include "The Tramp", "There Is Power in a Union", "Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones--Union Scab".

[edit] Trial and execution

Joe Hill was an itinerant worker, who moved around the west, hopping freight trains, going from job to job. Early 1914 found Hill working as a tram laborer at the Silver King Mine in Park City, Utah, not far from Salt Lake City.

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 bandannas. Arling had drawn a handgun 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, and the elder Morrison had been a police officer, possibly creating many enemies.

On the same evening, Joe Hill appeared on the doorsteps of a local doctor with a bullet wound. Hill said that he had been shot in an argument over a woman, whom he refused to name. The doctor reported that Hill was armed with a pistol.

Considering Morrison's past as a police officer, several men he had arrested were at first considered suspects; twelve people were arrested in the case before Hill was arrested and charged with the murder. A red bandanna 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. He said that when he was shot, his hands were over his head, and the bullet hole in his coat--four inches below the bullet wound in his back-- seemed to support this claim. Hill did not testify at his trial, but his lawyers pointed out that four other people were treated with bullet wounds in Salt Lake City that same night, and that the lack of robbery and Hill's unfamiliarity with Morrison left him with no motive.[1]

The prosecution, for its part, produced a dozen eyewitnesses who said that the killer resembled Hill, including Merlin Morrison, the victims' son and brother, who said "that's not him at all" upon first seeing Hill, but later identified him as the murderer. The jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of murder.[2]

An appeal to the Utah Supreme Court was unsuccessful. The lawyer representing Hill during the appeal declared: "The main thing the state had on Hill was that he was an IWW and therefore sure to be guilty. Hill tried to keep the IWW out of [the trial]... but the press fastened it upon him."[3]

In a letter to the court, Hill continued to deny that the state had a right to inquire into the origins of his wound, leaving little doubt that the judges would affirm the conviction. In an article for the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Hill wrote: "Owing to the prominence of Mr Morrison, there had to be a 'goat' and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all, an IWW, had no right to live anyway, and was therefore duly selected to be 'the goat'."[4]

The case turned into a major media event. President Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller, and Sweden all became involved in a bid for clemency. It generated international union attention, and critics charged that the trial and conviction were unfair. Much later[citation needed] 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 IWW leader, saying, "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize."[5]

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

[edit] Remains

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 IWW 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 IWW 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.

One small packet of ashes was scattered at a 1989 ceremony which unveiled a monument to IWW coal miners buried in Lafayette, Colorado. Six unarmed strikers were machine gunned by a Colorado state police force in 1927 in the (first) Columbine Massacre. Until 1989 the graves of five of these men were unmarked. Another famous Wobbly, Carlos Cortez, scattered Joe Hill's ashes on the graves at the commemoration.[6]

[edit] Influence and tributes

Hill was memorialized in a tribute poem written about him c. 1930 by Alfred Hayes titled "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", sometimes referred to simply as "Joe Hill".[7] 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"
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.
  • Phil Ochs wrote and recorded a different, original song called "Joe Hill"[1], using a traditional melody found in the song "John Hardy," which tells a much more detailed story of Joe Hill's life and death, and includes the lines that have since been associated with Ochs' own life and death, "It's the life of a rebel that he chose to live; It's the death of a rebel that he died". Ochs' song concludes with Hill's words, "This is my last and final will; Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill, Good luck to all of you."
  • After Phil Ochs' death, Billy Bragg reworked the Hayes-Robinson song as "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night".
  • Frank Tovey sings about Joe Hill in his song 'Joe Hill' from the 1989 album 'Tyranny and the Hired Hand'. In this song he uses some of the words from the Alfred Hayes poem.
  • Bob Dylan claims that Hill's story was one of his inspirations to begin writing his own songs. His song "I dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" is loosely based around the story and Robinson's version.
  • 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 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 Hill's songs into Swedish.
  • Gibbs M. Smith wrote a biography "Joe Hill", which was later turned into the 1971 movie Joe Hill, directed by Bo Widerberg. [2]

Robert Hunter wrote the opening verse about Joe Hill for the song "Down THe ROad" which he wrote for Mickey Hart's Mystery Box.

[edit] See also

Wikibooks

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ BBC.co.uk, "Joe Hill: Murderer or Martyr?" February 19, 2002.
  2. ^ BBC.co.uk, "Joe Hill: Murderer or Martyr?" February 19, 2002.
  3. ^ BBC.co.uk, "Joe Hill: Murderer or Martyr?" February 19, 2002.
  4. ^ Joe Hill, Appeal to Reason, August 15, 1915; cited in BBC.co.uk, "Joe Hill: Murderer or Martyr?" February 19, 2002.
  5. ^ Zinn, 335.
  6. ^ Denver Post, June 11, 1989
  7. ^ Hampton, W: Guerilla Minstrels. Tennessee

[edit] References

  • Fellow Workers. Philips, Utah and Difranco, Ani. Righteous Babe Records, NY, 1999.
  • "Joe Hill: IWW Songwriter." Nolan, Dead & Thompson, Fred. Kersplebedeb. Montreal.
  • "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.
  • Zinn, Howard (September 2001). A People's History of the United States, Revised and Updated, New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-093731-9. 

[edit] External links

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