Joe Hill | |
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 Hill in an undated photo | |
| Born | Joel Emmanuel Hägglund (1879-10-07)October 7, 1879 Gävle, Sweden |
| Died | November 19, 1915(1915-11-19) (aged 36) Sugar House Prison, Utah, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Execution by firing squad |
| Other names | Joseph Hillström |
| Occupation(s) | Labor activist, songwriter, and member of theIndustrial Workers of the World |
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Joe Hill (bornJoel Emmanuel Hägglund; October 7, 1879 – November 19, 1915) was aSwedish-Americanlabor activist, songwriter, and member of theIndustrial Workers of the World (IWW, familiarly called the "Wobblies").[1] A native Swedish speaker, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York toSan Francisco.[2] Hill, an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular songwriter and cartoonist for the union. His songs include "The Preacher and the Slave"[3] (in which he coined the phrase "pie in the sky"),[4] "The Tramp", "There Is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab", which express the harsh and combative life of itinerant workers, and call for workers to organize their efforts to improve working conditions.[5]
In 1914, John G. Morrison, aSalt Lake City area grocer and former policeman, and his son were shot and killed by two men.[6] The same evening, Hill arrived at a doctor's office with a gunshot wound, and briefly mentioned a fight over a woman. He refused to explain further, even after he was accused of the grocery store murders on the basis of his injury. Hill was convicted of the murders in a controversial trial. Following an unsuccessful appeal, political debates, and international calls for clemency from high-profile figures and workers' organizations, Hill was executed in November 1915. After his death, he was memorialized by severalfolk songs. His life and death have inspired books and poetry.
The identity of the woman and the rival who supposedly caused Hill's injury, though frequently speculated upon, remained mostly conjecture for nearly a century. William M. Adler's 2011 biography of Hill presents information about a possible alibi, which was never introduced at the trial.[7] According to Adler, Hill and his friend and countryman Otto Appelquist were rivals for the attention of 20-year-old Hilda Erickson, a member of the family with whom the two men were lodging. In a recently discovered letter, Erickson confirmed her relationship with the two men and the rivalry between them. The letter indicates that when she first discovered Hill was injured, he explained to her that Appelquist had shot him, apparently out of jealousy.[8]
Joel Emmanuel Hägglund was born 1879 inGävle (then spelled Gefle), a city in the province ofGästrikland, Sweden. He was the third child in a family of nine, of whom three children died young. His father, Olof, worked as a conductor on the Gefle-Dala railway line.[9] Olof (1846–1887) died at the age of 41, and his death meant economic disaster for the family. Joe's mother Margareta Catharina (1844–1902) did, however, succeed in keeping the family together until she died when Joel was in his early twenties.
The Hägglund family home still stands in Gävle at the address Nedre Bergsgatan 28, inGamla Stan, the Old Town. As of 2011[update], it houses a museum and theJoe Hill-gården, which hosts cultural events.
In his late teens-early twenties, Joel fell seriously ill with skin and glandulartuberculosis, and underwent extensive treatment inStockholm. In October 1902, when nearly 23, Joel and his brother Paul Elias Hägglund (1877–1955) emigrated to the United States. Hill became an itinerant laborer, moving from New York City toCleveland, and eventually to the west coast. He was inSan Francisco at the time of the1906 earthquake.[10]
By this time using the name Joe or Joseph Hillström (possibly because of anti-union blacklisting),[11] he joined theIndustrial Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies around 1910, when working on the docks inSan Pedro, California. In late 1910, he wrote a letter to the IWW newspaperIndustrial Worker, identifying himself as a member of the IWW local chapter inPortland, Oregon.
Hill rose in the IWW organization and traveled widely, organizing workers under the IWW banner, writing political songs and satirical poems, and making speeches. He andHarry McClintock were Spellbinders for the IWW and would show up as they did at theTucker strike on June 14, 1913. He shortened his pseudonym to "Joe Hill" as thepen name under which his songs, cartoons and other writings appeared. His songs frequently appropriated familiar melodies from popular songs and hymns of the time. He coined the phrase "pie in the sky", which appeared in his song "The Preacher and the Slave" (a parody of thehymn "In the Sweet By-and-By"). Other songs written by Hill include "The Tramp", "There Is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab".
As anitinerant worker, Hill moved around the west, hopping freight trains, going from job to job. By the end of 1913, he was working as a laborer at the Silver King Mine inPark City, Utah, not far fromSalt Lake City.
On January 10, 1914, John G. Morrison and his son Arling were killed in their Salt Lake City grocery store by two armed intruders masked in redbandanas. 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, Hill appeared on the doorstep of a local doctor, with a bullet wound through the left lung. 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 apistol. Considering Morrison's past as a police officer, several men he had arrested were at first considered suspects; 12 people were arrested in the case before Hill was arrested and charged with the murder. 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. He said that when he was shot, his hands were over his head, and the bullet hole in his coat—four inches below the exit 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 for 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.[12]
The prosecution, for its part, produced a dozen eyewitnesses who said that the killer resembled Hill, including 13-year-old Merlin Morrison, the victims' son, and a brother, who upon first seeing Hill said, "That's not him at all" but later identified him as the murderer. The jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of murder.[12]
An appeal to theUtah Supreme Court was unsuccessful.Orrin N. Hilton, the lawyer representing Hill during the appeal, declared: "The main thing the state had on Hill was that he was a Wobbly and therefore sure to be guilty. Hill tried to keep the IWW out of [the trial] ... but the press fastened it upon him."[12]
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. Chief Justice Daniel Straup wrote that his unexplained wound was "a distinguishing mark", and that "the defendant may not avoid the natural andreasonable inferences of remaining silent."[13] In an article for thesocialist newspaperAppeal to Reason, Hill wrote: "Owing to the prominence of Mr. Morrison, there had to be a 'goat' [scapegoat] and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all, an IWW, had noright to live anyway, and was therefore duly selected to be 'the goat'."[14]
The case turned into a major media event. PresidentWoodrow Wilson,Helen Keller (the blind and deaf author and fellow-IWW member), the Swedish ambassador and the Swedish public all became involved in a bid for clemency. It generated international union attention, and critics charged that the trial and conviction were unfair. Despite the various petitions the governor at the timeWilliam Spry maintained Hill's guilt. In 2005,Utah Phillips considered Hill to have been apolitical prisoner who was executed for his political agitation through songwriting.[15]
In a biography published in 2011, William M. Adler concludes that Hill was probably innocent of murder, but also suggests that Hill came to see himself as worth more to the labor movement as amartyr than he was alive, and that this understanding may have influenced his decisions not to testify at the trial and subsequently to spurn all chances of a pardon.[16] Adler reports that evidence pointed to early police suspectFrank Z. Wilson, and cites Hilda Erickson's letter, which states that Hill had told her he had been shot by her former fiancé.[7]
Hill was executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915, at Utah'sSugar House Prison. When Deputy Shettler, who led the firing squad, called out the sequence of commands preparatory to firing ("Ready, aim,") Hill shouted, "Fire—go on and fire!"[17]
That same day, a dynamite bomb was discovered at theTarrytown estate ofJohn D. Archbold, President of the Standard Oil Company. Police theorized the bomb was planted byanarchists and IWW radicals as a protest against Hill's execution. The bomb was discovered by a gardener, who found four sticks of dynamite, weighing a pound each, half hidden in a rut in a driveway fifty feet from the front entrance of the residence. The dynamite sticks were bound together by a length of wire, fitted with percussion caps, and wrapped with a piece of paper matching the color of the driveway, a path used by Archbold in going to or from his home by automobile. The bomb was later defused by police.[18]
Just prior to his execution, Hill had written toBill Haywood, an IWW leader, saying, "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel.Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize ... Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah."[12][19]Hunter S. Thompson asserted that Joe's last words were "Don't mourn. Organize."[20]
His last will, which was eventually set to music by Ethel Raim, founder of the groupThe Pennywhistlers, requested acremation and reads:[21]
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 rolling stone"
My body? Oh, 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; in accordance with his wishes, his ashes were placed into 600 small envelopes and sent around the world to be released to the winds. Delegates attending the Tenth Convention of the IWW in Chicago received envelopes November 19, 1916, one year to the day of Hill's execution (and not on May Day 1916 as Wobbly lore claims).[22][page needed] The rest of the 600 envelopes were sent to IWW locals, Wobblies and sympathizers around the world on January 3, 1917.[23][page needed]
In 1988, it was discovered that an envelope had been seized by theUnited States Post Office Department in 1917 because of its "subversive potential". The envelope, with a photo affixed, captioned "Joe Hill murdered by thecapitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915", as well as its contents, was deposited at theNational Archives. A story appeared in theUnited Auto Workers' magazineSolidarity and a small item followed it inThe New Yorker magazine. Members of the IWW in Chicago quickly laid claim to the contents of the envelope.
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 weeklyIn These Times ran notice of the ashes and invited readers to suggest what should be done with them. Suggestions varied from enshrining them at theAFL–CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., toAbbie Hoffman's suggestion that they be eaten by today's "Joe Hills" likeBilly Bragg andMichelle Shocked. Bragg did indeed swallow a small bit of the ashes with some Union beer to wash it down, and for a time carried Shocked's share for the eventual completion of Hoffman's last prank.[24] Bragg has since given Shocked's share toOtis Gibbs.[25] The majority of the ashes were cast to the wind in the US, Canada, Sweden, Australia, andNicaragua. The ashes sent to Sweden were only partly cast to the wind. The main part was interred in the wall of a union office inLandskrona, 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 six unarmed IWW coal miners buried inLafayette, Colorado, who had been machine-gunned byColoradostate police in 1927 in theColumbine Mine massacre. Until 1989, the graves of five of these men were unmarked. Another Wobbly,Carlos Cortez, scattered Hill's ashes on the graves at the commemoration.[26]
On the night of November 18, 1990, the Southeast Michigan IWW General Membership Branch hosted a gathering of "wobs" in a remote wooded area at which a dinner, followed by a bonfire, featured a reading of Hill's last will, "and then his ashes were released into the flames and carried up above the trees. ... The next day ... one wob collected a bowl full of ashes from the smoldering fire pit."[27] At that event several IWW members consumed a portion of Hill's ashes before the rest was consigned to the fire.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hill's execution,Philip S. Foner published a book,The Case of Joe Hill, about the trial and subsequent events, which concludes that the case was amiscarriage of justice.[28]
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Hill's handwritten last will and testament was uncovered in the first decade of the 21st century by archivistMichael Nash of theTamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives ofNew York University.[29] Found in a box under a desk at the New York City headquarters of theCommunist Party USA during a transfer of CPUSA archival materials to NYU, the document began with a couplet: "My will is easy to decide / For I have nothing to divide."[29]
Additional archival materials were donated to theWalter P. Reuther Library byCarl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in 1976.[30]
His [William Adler's] research is just incredible -- it expands what we know in really dramatic ways," said John R. Sillito, co-author of a new book on radicalism in Utah and a retired archivist at Weber State University in Ogden. "It builds a strong case that Wilson should have been the prime suspect.
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]Cover albums of his songs:
Video
Articles
YouTube Music
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Songs
University of Utah Special Collections
The Joe Hill Visitor Center, Sweden
County Museum of Gävleborg, Sweden
Internet Archive
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