Still Dreaming of Joe Hill

  

I've written about Joe Hill here many times here previously. He remains a huge inspiration, politically and artistically, for people across the world over the last century, and I’m glad to be one of them. He was murdered on this day in 1915 by government firing squad at the Utah State Prison in Sugar House for a crime he didn’t commit.

Joel Emmanuel Hägglund  was born in Sweden in  October 7th 1879. Joe aged 22 left for the United States in 1902 with his brother Paul and travelled the country extensively in search of work and the golden opportunity of the American dream, but he soon found that dream was a nightmare for many working men and women there. Joe joined the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) in 1910, at  the time workers across the country were being betrayed wholesale by the American Federation of Labor, a so-called union that collaborated to suppress the struggle for vital workers’ rights. While the AFL would exclude immigrants, non-whites, women and poorer laborers, the IWW was open to all, struggling for all together. In the early years of the 20th Century, the IWW was crucial in winning many of the rights Americans take for granted today,  and spread across the world, too.

Hill as a wobbly was incredibly active, whether it was organising strikes with dockworkers in San Pedro California, helping rebels in Baja California to overthrow the Diaz dictatorship or aiding workers with the Fraser River strike in British Columbia. Even fighting in the Mexican revolution His activities ensured he was blacklisted wherever he went so Joe just kept on moving around the States. 

Hill taught  himself piano violin and guitar and roused workers with songs he wrote such as Casey Jones and The Preacher and the Slave, the Slave, The Tramp, There is Power in a Union,  the Union Scab, and a hundred more. Many are still being sung today. Hill’s songs, because they were so easy to learn, so fun to sing, and condensed vital messages so skillfully, spread across the country, sung by crowds of workers regularly at strikes and protests. They became important for the movement: a way of keeping spirits high, of reminding everybody where they stood and with whom, and of spreading the word. His last song, The Rebel Girl, celebrated his comrade and friend, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, hero of the Bread and Roses strike and long time chair of the Communist Party USA. It was first sung at Joe Hill’s funeral. He was also a prolific cartoonist for  his union. 

Hill made his way to Utah in 1914 and settled in Park City where he got a job at a local silver mine. He wasn’t long in Park City when he was arrested and framed for the murder of a local grocery store owner and his son. Masked robbers had broken into the store and after a brief gun battle they left the store owner and his son dead. That same night Joe turned up to a doctors clinic with a bullet wound. The doctor grew suspicious of Joe’s gunshot wound and informed the police who promptly arrested him.

On the night in question Joe  had been with a married woman that night, 20 year old Hilda Erickson and in a pith of jealousy was shot by her husband,  but Joe  refused to disclose this in order not to disgrace them, even though it might mean his death.

The real culprit of the grocery store murders was an out of state career criminal  Even though the police had strong evidence to pin point the crime on this particular character they instead chose to frame Joe. Hill stayed in jail for well over a year..Despite the flim­sy nature of the evi­dence, Hill was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death, with the pros­e­cu­tor urg­ing con­vic­tion as much on the basis of Hill’s IWW mem­ber­ship as any puta­tive evi­dence of his involve­ment in the crime. In an article for a radical socialist newspaper Hill gave his own opinion. He wrote: “There had to be a scapegoat and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all, an IWW, had no right to live.”

 An inter­na­tion­al amnesty move­ment pressed for a new tri­al,  including Helen Keller and president Woodrow Wilson, of all people demanded his release. There were vigils everywhere, and often where the people gathered they would sing Joe Hill songs.

Shortly before facing the firing squad, Joe Hill wrote his last will and testament in the style he’d always written that now reads like a secular text:

 

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? 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

 

On November 19th 1915 Joe Hill was taken out into the yard, blindfolded, with a paper heart pinned to his chest. His last spoken word on this world was “Fire!”

His body was sent to Chicago, he’d  previously written to Bill Haywood another IWW leader, who himself would later be victim to another trumped-up murder charge. Hill’s letter said “Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organise… 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.”

Up to 30,000 people attended his funeral. Joe was cremated and his ashes divided into 600 envelopes that were sent to IWW branches across the globe.

Since then  his songs have  continued to be sung, and the struggles he took part in continued, and the victories he helped win still inspires countless numbers of people people. His life and work continued to be an inspiration to political songwriters from Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs to Billy Bragg and Utah Phillips. Hill has been immor­tal­ized in a wide vari­ety of cul­tur­al expres­sion, includ­ing poet­ry by Ken­neth Patchen, fic­tion by Wal­lace Steg­n­er, and a song by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robin­son, pop­u­lar­ized by Paul Robe­son, promis­ing ​“where work­ing­men are out on strike, Joe Hill is at their side.”

The ballad of Joe Hill was written  by Alfred Hayes  in the summer of 1936, whilst at a left wing retreat called Camp Unity. By that September the song had been  published in the Daily Worker and became a popular song with  members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting Franco's fascists in Spain.

Haye’s song had been a popular one with the folk revivalists of the 1940s and 50s but it wasn’t until Joan Baez sang it at Woodstock did the song enter the mainstream. Luke Kelly sang it on The Dubliners 1970 album Revolution thus bringing it to the fore of the ballad scene in this part of the world. The song has to this day helped keep the memory of Joe Hill alive. 

 

The Ballad of 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’ says he ‘I never died’ says he. 

 

‘In Salt Lake City, Joe’ says I 

 

Him standing by my side 

 

‘They framed you on a murder charge’ 

 

Says Joe ‘But I ain’t dead’ says Joe ‘but I ain’t dead’ 

 

‘The copper bosses shot you Joe, 

 

They filled you full of lead’ 

 

‘Takes more than guns to kill a man’ 

 

Says Joe ’and I ain’t dead’ says Joe ’I ain’t dead’ 

 

And standing there as big as life 

 

And smiling with his eyes 

 

Says Joe ‘What they forgot to kill 

 

Went on to organize, went on to organize’ 

 

‘Joe Hill ain’t dead’ he says to me 

 

‘Joe Hill ain’t never died, 

 

Where working men are out on strike 

 

Joe Hill is at their side, Joe Hill is at their side.’ 

 

From San Diego up to Maine 

 

In every mine and mill 

 

Where working men defend their rights 

 

Its there you’ll find Joe

 

 

Hill captured people's imagination with his aphorisms, songs and cartoons. Using popular cultural forms allowed his ideas to find broad purpose in his day and across time. What English speaker today doesn't know the phrase "pie in the sky"?

He conveyed revolutionary ideas in down -to earth language relatable to anyone who has has had too work to survive. His example tells us that revolution won't be carried forward by dry theoretical treatise alone. Wee need to expres our revolutionary desires in plain tal and with music and humor.

In 1988 it was discovered that an envelope had been seized by the United States Postal Service in 1917 because of its “subversive potential”. The envelope, with a photo affixed, was captioned, “Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915”. The Chicago IWW laid claim to the envelope, scattered some at sites of struggle, but also followed up a suggestion by Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman: portions were given to modern day Joe Hills, like Billy Bragg and Michelle Shocked to be eaten. Billy Bragg did indeed eat his, and still carries Michelle Shocked’s packet wherever he plays. So Joe Hill is metaphorically here among us, as we still daily struggle on, keeping his memory alive in all our dreams and aspirations.

I will end with an old poem of mine  that I hope releases my sincerity, and affection for Joe Hill, that recognises the courageousness of his actions. This rebel songwriter that many of us can't forget. His legacy still resonating widely across the world.

 

Still Dreaming of Joe Hill 

 

Through the dusty ages
the earth creaks and moans,
dark shadows try to break people bones
the air is still , thick with mire,
daily each border, delivers human shame
parasites still create walls of oppression,
build bloodstained monuments that can't thwart hope
because the mighty human spirit carries resilience,
within us all, lay rivers of resistance.

Standing together we are strong
in our palms, another world glows,
with unity's strength 
we set people free,
no tyrant's grip 
can ever stop us,
we serve the weak and defenceless
protecting with dignity and defiance.
 
Today we still remember
when Joe Hill was shot down,
his enduring dream survives 
gives us strength,
shoulder to shoulder 
solidarity lives,
an injury to one
is an injury to all.