Dreaming of Joe Hill: A Story, A Song, A Poem

19 November, 2010 at 1:51 pm · Filed under Music, Poetry, Politics, Rambles

I talk about Joe Hill a lot. He’s 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 killed 95 years ago today, murdered by government firing squad for a crime he didn’t commit. But he never died. I wanted to write a post for Joe Hill, to remember him, to explain for those who don’t know the story why he’s so important, and to keep him alive. The story should be told again and again, so while you can find it in many places online, I don’t mind telling it again here. I’ve recorded a song — not by him but for him — and a simple poem came to me too.

Joe Hill was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Sweden, October 7, 1879. He emigrated to America in 1902, working as a migrant laborer all across the country. Like many immigrants and migrant laborers in the 1900s, he became involved in radical labor organisation, joining the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies, 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.

Well, Joe Hill wasn’t just an organiser but a poet and songwriter, and that’s what he’s remembered for most now. Between 1910 and 1915 Joe Hill wrote dozens of radical songs which grew immensely popular throughout labor struggles. They were often based on hymn tunes — simple, memorable, and often bitingly funny. You might know The Preacher and the Slave (where the phrase “pie in the sky” comes from), Rebel Girl, or There is Power in the Union. 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.

But Joe Hill made some enemies this way too. Chief among them was Amalgamated Copper ( later known as Anaconda Copper) who were involved in several of the toughest struggles, and of course the state authorities wherever he happened to be. So in January 1914, when in Salt Lake City former police officer John Morrison and his son were killed, he was shadily framed by the authorities for the murder. The evidence was as slim as slim could be: Joe Hill, in the city at the time, had suffered a gunshot wound the same night (as had four other people in the city), and had a red bandana (unsurprisingly for a labor organiser) as did, reportedly, the murderer. But, while strongly denying his involvement, throughout the case Joe Hill resolutely refused to reveal his alibi, even though it might mean his death. The story goes something like the folk ballad Long Black Veil: that Joe Hill had been with a married woman that night, was shot by her husband, and refused to testify in order not to disgrace them. Whether or not that’s true, who knows, but that’s how the story goes.

Joe Hill stayed in jail for well over a year, and people across the world — including Helen Keller and president Woodrow Wilson, of all people — demanded his release. There were vigils everywhere, and often the people gathered would sing Joe Hill songs — songs which he kept writing all the while. But the Utah authorities wouldn’t relent, and he was sentenced to death. Shortly before facing the firing squad, Joe Hill wrote his last will and testament in the style he’d always written:

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