Joel Emmanuel Hägglund (1879 - 1915) was an IWW organizer and songwriter. He was executed by the US state in controversial circumstances, with many arguing it was politically motivated.
Life
Family
Joe Hill was born to a family of 9 (only 6 survived past the age of 5) in Gävle, Gästrikland, Sweden. His father, Olof, worked as a train conductor on the Gefle Dala Railway and his family was deeply religious and interested in music.
Childhood
As a child, Joe Hill learned how to play banjo, guitar, piano and the harmonica. He began writing songs about his family members, but this was cut short after his fathers death from a heart attack following a surgery. Pushing his family into dire poverty, forcing Joe to work at a local rope store and a construction worker, interacting with coal and the steam engine.
He contracted tuberculosis that affected his skin and bones, and underwent several x-rays and skin treatments in Stockholm, scarring his neck and face.
Young Adulthood
His late teenager and early adulthood was spent gambling, his mothers death meant that he and his siblings sold their house and went their desperate ways. With Joe heading to New York City, USA, living in the cities immigrant slums and working as a cleaner. He later traveled across the country being unemployed and underemployed as a farmer, construction worker, dockworker and lumberjack. He also witnessed the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (which killed 3,000 people).
Radicalisation
Witnessing poverty and inequality, as well as the mistreating of immigrant workers gave Joe a cynical view of America, and he joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1910 while working at the port of San Pedro, California. He changed his named from Joel Hägglund to Joseph Hillström for unknown reasons. It is speculated that this was done to avoid union blacklists or to avoid police from his criminal activities.
Political Activities
He began to organize strikes and wrote songs from the IWW, and during the Mexican Revolution he traveled to Tijuana and attempted to get US soldiers to volunteer with Mexican Revolutionaries. He was eventually violently beaten in San Diego after
In January 1911, Joe Hill was in the California-Mexico border area, joining a group of Wobblies who supported the struggle to overthrow the Mexican government and President Porfirio Diaz. In the border village of Tijuana, Joe Hill agitated to get volunteer Americans to join the fight in Mexico. In 1912, Joe Hill would have been violently beaten after holding a speech in San Diego in support of striking dockers. Joe Hill eventually became quite known as a singer and agitator. Employers also began to know him and in many cities he was denied employment. [5] In June 1913, Joe Hill was arrested during a docket strike in San Pedro, California. He was accused of driver and spent 30 days in prison. The following year, he worked with the mining carts in Silver King Mine in Park City, Utah near Salt Lake City. He came to Utah in the summer of 1913 on his way to Chicago where he would meet IWW leader Bill Haywood, one of the movement's founders. Joe Hill visited several of the small Swedish groups in the mining villages in the area and sang and played for them. In the small village of Murray, he rented a room with the Eselius family. Joe Hill knew the family from Sweden and had a few years earlier met the family's three brothers, Ed, John and Frank Eselius, on the American west coast.
With his talent as poets, singers and speakers, Joe Hill participated in the work of organizing and acquiring members of the IWW. His songs became known in an ever-growing circle, and since Joe Hill often wrote humorous lyrics with a very sharp ironic undertone for that time, the songs felt quick in many people's tastes. He became especially famous for the phrase "You'll get pie in the sky when you die", which stems from his perhaps most famous song, "The Preacher and the Slave". The text was written as a parody of the most famous American revival song, "In the Sweet Bye and Bye", and it was possible to sing Joe Hills text when the Salvation Army played the melody at the food queues and at revival meetings.
"A pamphlet, no matter how good it is, is never read more than once," wrote Joe Hill, "but a song is taught by heart and sung over and over." [6] And that's exactly what happened to his songs. Joe Hills lyrics were printed in the first edition of the IWW Workers' Songbook, The Little Red Songbook "in 1909, and although he never recorded his music himself, people learned to sing Joe Hills songs by heart and they sang on demonstrations, strikes and actions around In the US Among his most popular songs are "The Tramp", "There is Power in a Union", "Rebel Girl", "Workers of the World, Awaken!", "Where the Fraser River Flows" and "Casey Jones -Union Scab ".
On January 10, 1914 in the evening, former police officer John G. Morrison was at a slaughterhouse shop in Salt Lake City. In the store, which was on the corner of Eight South Street and West Temple Street, were also the sons of Arling and Merlin. John G. Morrison had left the police to open his own store. He had repeatedly said that the work of the police had given him many enemies, and that he feared being subjected to revenge. In the store he kept his old service gun. The store had been robbed sooner and at least once he had used his weapon to shoot himself free.
Shortly before 10 pm, while John G. Morrison and his sons got ready to lock the deal, two armed men, both masked with red-colored shawls, penetrated the store. One of the men started shooting at John G. Morrison. Arling grabbed the father's gun and shot at the men. The gunman now turned to Arling and also shot him. Then the two men left the deal. The youngest son, the 13-year-old Merlin, had been at the back of the store when the shots had fallen, and was unharmed. John G. Morrison and his son Arling died of their bullet wounds.
When the police arrived, Merlin could only give a scant description of the perpetrators. But he could say that the person who shot John G. Morrison had shouted "We've got you now!" ("Now we have you") before the shots were fired. The police interrogated four men that night, all suspected of the murder. Two of the men, C. E. Christensen and Joe Woods, were arrested when they tried to jump on a freight train heading out from the railway station which is right next to the crime scene. The police had to shoot sharply to stop them. It turned out that the men were wanted for robbery in Prescott, Arizona.
A third man, W. J. Williams, was found walking with a bloody shawl in his hand, not far from the store. The only thing he wanted to say was that he was innocent and he lived with the local salvation army who offered lodging for the homeless. Later it turned out that the Salvation Army did not know him. The fourth man, 19-year-old Oran Anderson, was interrogated when he came to the police station with a caliber 38 bullet in his arm. He claimed that he had been subjected to robbery at the scene of the crime.
Around half past twelve o'clock that night, as the murder took place, Joe Hill had turned to Dr. Frank McHugh for treating a bullet wound. Joe Hill told me he had been shot in a quarrel over a woman. whose name he did not want to disclose. The bullet had entered the chest and out through the back just below the shoulder blade, but had not met any important organs. Frank McHugh later reported that Joe Hill had been armed with a gun. Joe Hills shoot wounds were treated and the doctor arranged for him to return home. On the way home, Joe Hill asked the car driver to stay in a dark place. Here Joe Hill went out of the car and hid a gun. This gun was never found again.
The police initially considered the murder of John G. Morrison and his son as a vengeance when nothing was stolen from the deal. The day cash remained, so the motive was not to rob the deal. The city's newspaper told the day after the murder that one of the shots Arling fired had met one man. However, no technical evidence could confirm this claim but the witnesses have pointed out that one offender had taken his chest as he left the shop, and there had been blood traces in the snow not far from the scene. About the motive for the shooting of John G. Morrison and his son, the newspaper Salt Lake Tribune wrote the following day: "Revenge was the motive behind the crime is the police's opinion. On two previous occasions, Morrison had been subjected to armed robbery. In September, Morrison was attacked by two masked bandits on his way home from his shop. He pulled his revolver and shot at the men. Both escaped. Morrison had often described the appearance of the bandits for the family. The description of the murderers in many respects agreed with the description of the men that Morrison supported together at the previous occasion. " - Original text: Salt Lake Tribune: January 11, 1914
The police called for the two perpetrators and the newspaper asked everyone who could contribute to the case being cleared up to make themselves known. When Dr. Frank McHugh next morning read this in the newspaper, he contacted the police and told him about Joe Hill's bullet wound. Three days later, Frank McHugh was on a home visit to Joe Hill to look after his wounds and give him painkillers. At the same time, police from Murray Joe Hills stormed the room of the Eselius family and found Joe Hill lying in bed. With drawn weapons, they commanded him to lie still. When Joe Hill seemed to stretch for something, one of the policemen fired a shot that hit Joe Hill in his hand.
In his room they found a red-colored scarf but the gun the doctor had told them did not find. It wasn't a gun but a pair of pants Joe Hill had been stretching. He denied any knowledge of the murder of John G. Morrison and his son. He held his explanation from the night before about a quarrel about a woman, and said he had been shot while he had had his hands over his head. In the book Joe Hill - poet and agitator, by Ingvar Söderström it is speculated that if the woman Joe Hill claims to have visited the drop night was a Maria Johansson, whom he already knew that they both lived in Gävle [7]. When he was arrested as Joseph Hillstrom, it took a while before the public realized it was Joe Hill, the well-known protest singer and poet about it. The first day when the case was against him, a local newspaper could tell how it was. Joe Hill's roommate, Otto Applequist, who was suspected of being the second offender, had left Murray on the night of murder and not been seen since then.
It was decided that an initial court hearing would determine if there was any factual ground for prosecuting Joe Hill for manslaughter. Joe Hill abstained from using a defender in court proceedings and demanded to defend himself, pro se defense, with reference to his poverty. At the hearing, the prosecutor claimed that Joe Hill had planned an armed robbery against John G. Morrison's deal, but that the robbery was wrong, after which Joe Hill had killed the two in the store. Joe Hill couldn't say much about his defense and the hearing decided that Joe Hill would be prosecuted for the murder. The public prosecutor demanded the team's most severe punishment, the death penalty. Joe Hill was kept in custody until the trial would take place without the possibility of bail.
The trial of Joe Hill lasted from June 17 to June 28, 1914. Two lawyers in Salt Lake City, E. D. McDougall and F. B. Scott asked to defend Joe Hill without compensation. In the middle of the trial, Joe Hill requested that both be disconnected from the case, claiming that they were in fact working for the District Attorney (District Attorney) and wanted to get him killed only. The judge, Morris L. Ritchie, did not want to allow Joe Hill to defend himself and declined the request. Although IWW subsequently offered to make two of its best lawyers, Orrin N. Hilton and Soren Christensen available to the defense, Joe Hill refused to cooperate with his defenders.
The Prosecutor, E. O. Leatherwood, built his evidence exclusively on testimonials. There was no technical track that tied Joe Hill to the crime scene. Neither his blood nor the bullet that had gone through him had been found. Merlin Morrison might see some similarities between Joe Hill and one of the perpetrators. Another witness claimed to recognize those brands Joe Hill had in the face after the tuberculosis as a child. Dr Frank McHugh testified in the evening when Joe Hill had searched him and described the bullet wounds Joe Hill had had. He also said he had seen Joe Hill have a gun.
It was speculated whether Joe Hill would break the silence and testify in favor of his own defense - thus also revealing the circumstances of the jealousy he claimed to have resulted in his gunshot wound. But Joe Hill refused to testify. The prosecutor said that Joe Hills's reluctance to testify indicated that his testimony could not last very long. The jury just retired a few hours on June 28, 1914 before they found Joe Hill guilty of the murder and he was sentenced to death. As a convicted person in Utah, the convicted person could choose whether he wanted to be arched or hanged. Joe Hill also got this choice. "I choose the bushing," he replied, "I've been shot a few times before and I think I can do it".
Joe Hill was taken to the Utah State Penitentiary, awaiting execution. It was decided that it would be implemented on October 1, 1915. During the 16 months to date, Joe Hill was in prison, while the verdict was tried in the US courts. When his goals were not addressed by the bodies, Joe Hill wrote songs, letters, poems and articles. But he was always secretive about himself. In 1915 he wrote: "Biography do you say? No, let's not ruin good writing paper with such stupidity - just here and now means something to me. I am a world citizen and was born on a planet called Earth. The place where I first saw the light of day means so little that it doesn't have to be commented on - I don't have much to say about myself. I just want to say that I've done the little I could to bring the flag of liberty closer to the goal. " - Original text: Joe Hill: The Man Who Didn’t Die
The Socialist journal Appeal to Reason, launched in the United States in 1897, printed an article by Joe Hill on August 15, 1915. In it he lifts a little on the veil of himself and the trial. He writes: "Despite all the horrible pictures and all the nasty stories written about me, I have only been arrested once in my life and it was in San Pedro, California. At that time, the dockers were in a big strike where I was secretary in the strike committee and I guess I was a little too active for the police chief of the city so he arrested me and put me in prison for thirty days for the runaway driver and that is the whole of my criminal path '.
The key and important thing to value is, however, this: I did not kill Morrison and I do not know anything about it. He was shot, as the testimonies clearly show, by an enemy and I have not been in the city long enough to get me some enemies.
A short time before I was arrested I came from Park City where I worked in the mines. Because of Morrison's position one must find a guilty one and then found signing, a countryman without friends, a Swedish, and worst of all, a member of the IWW, who in any case had no right to live and was therefore designated as guilty.
2403/5000
I have always worked hard for my livelihood and paid for everything I received and in my spare time I paint paintings, write songs and compose music.
Now, when the residents of the state of Utah want to arc me without giving me a reasonable chance to put my side of the case, they must come, I'm ready. I have lived as an artist and I will die as an artist. " - Original text: Spartacus Educational: Joe Hill
The day before the execution, Joe Hill wrote in a telegram to the leader of the IWW, William D. Haywood: "Farewell Bill. I die as a genuine worker uprising. Don't waste time grieving. Organize." [8] Attention to the goal Helen Keller, photographed here in 1905, wrote directly to Woodrow Wilson.
After the court decision, Joe Hill and his death sentence became a case for IWW. William D. Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, IWW's female front figure, traveled around the United States and told it was big business behind Joe Hills's death sentence. The IWW magazine, Solidarty, urged everyone to write to the judicial authorities and demand Joe Hill's pardon. The demands were printed on pamphlets and slips throughout the United States. The invitation led to a letter storm and many thousands of letters, resolutions and petitions were sent with demands for pardon. On a pamphlet from 1915, it translated into translation: "Joe Hill.
He has incurred hatred of the ruling class as a champion of humanity, as a working class defender and as the poet of the American proletariat. Should the rulers get their revenge? [9] [10] "
In June 1915, the Australian Department of IWW sent a resolution of 30,000 signatures, demanding that Joe Hill's death sentence be reconsidered. It was backed up by resolutions from trade unions in Europe. Several of these eventually ended up with Utah's governor, William Sprys, and the American president, Woodrow Wilson's desk. One of the letters to Woodrow Wilson came from author and activist Helen Keller, who wrote: "Mr. Excellency: I am convinced that Joseph Hillström has not received a fair trial and that the judgment he has received is unfair. I beg you, as an official father of all people, to use your power and influence to save one of the nation's helpless sons, to wait with the execution will allow time to investigate a new trial that allows the man to get the righteousness that he is entitled to under the laws of the country.
Virginia Snow Stephen, an art director at the University of Utah, sent a telegram in September 1915 to Sweden's Ambassador to the United States, W. A. F. Ekengren. In the telegram, which was a request for the Swedish ambassador to intervene, it stated: “Hillström, a Swedish citizen, has been sentenced to execution on October 1. When the case is a serious assassination of the law, I ask you in the name of the court and humanity to seek a pardon.
Miss Sigrid Bolin, sister of the deceased Jacob Bolin, former Swedish consul here, joins this wish.
"
- Original text: Joe Hill's Story: The Campaign to Save Joe Hill - (archived link)
US President Woodrow Wilson tried to prevent the execution of Joe Hill.
Joe Hill had retained his Swedish citizenship while living in the United States, and the Swedish ambassador therefore started an investigation about the circumstances surrounding his case and judgment. For the time being, W. A. F. Ekengren therefore, on behalf of the Swedish government, asked President Woodrow Wilson to report the execution. Request solved: "Mr President
A Swedish citizen named Joseph Hillstrom has been convicted by the courts of Utah to be executed on 1 October for first-degree murder. I have only had a short time to study the matter. However, I have come to the conclusion that the evidence in the case, which is merely indicative, is not sufficient to justify the death penalty and that the prisoner's rude conduct during the trial and refusal to declare led both the jury and the court to judge him. I have already appealed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as directly to Utah's governor, and requested that the execution be postponed so that the goal can eventually be resumed, but so far only has received an answer that if new facts can be presented in favor of the accused then the appeal will to be heard.
Since the lack of evidence is what underlies my appeal, I cannot be satisfied with such an answer. My view of the lack of lawfulness of the judgment in the light of the evidence presented at the trial is shared by several men with legal background as well as a large number of well-known citizens of different cities in this country and I have received a number of requests to plead for the convicted. My government, which from various sources has received information on the matter, has asked me to do my utmost. To try every opportunity to postpone the execution of the judgment in any case, I take the liberty of very respectfully presenting the case to Mr President for his benevolent valuation. " - W.A.F. Ekengren, Swedish Minister (Ambassador), Translation of original text: Joe Hill's Story: International Protest (archived link)
Woodrow Wilson could not overlook this appeal. He asked Utah's governor to postpone Joe Hills execution. Governor William Spry, convinced of Joe Hills debt, reluctantly agreed, so W. A. F. Ekengren was given the time needed to obtain evidence that could justify a review of the judgment. The defense failed to get more evidence and Joe Hill still refused to comment. In a simple message to the court, he reiterated that he was still not given a fair trial and that in a fair trial he had been acquitted. He also repeated that he did not have to prove his innocence.
Pressed by, among others, the American Federation of Labor, Woodrow Wilson tried on November 17, 1915, to postpone the execution again. This request rejected William Spry with the letter:
Who demand his release regardless of his guilt. I am fully convinced that your request must be based on a misconception of the facts or that there is some reason of an international nature that you have not disclosed. With a full knowledge of all the facts and circumstances submitted I had a further postponement at this time would be an unwarranted interference with the course of justice. Mindful of the bonds of my oath of office to see that the laws are enforce I cannot and will not lend myself or my office to such interference. Tangible facts must be presented before I will further interfere in this case. [11]
Joe Hill was executed by archery at dawn on November 19, 1915.
The night before his execution, Joe Hill wrote his last will. The handwritten will, addressed to William D. Haywood, read:
My will is easy to decide, for there is nothing to divide. My kin doesn't need to fuss and moan - "Moss does not cling to rolling stone".
My body? Ah, If I would choose, I would like to reduce it, 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
The morning after Joe Hills execution, The New York Times wrote that the death sentence could "make Hillstrom dead more dangerous for social stability than he was when he lived," and continued: "in the revolutionary group, there is a sincere belief that he died as a hero both like a martyr ".
Joe Hill received his desire to be dispersed for the wind. Following a memorial service at O'Donnell Funeral Home in Salt Lake City on November 21, 1915, Joe Hills was brought to the Westside Auditorium in Chicago, where his funeral on November 25 was attested by more than 30,000 people, thus becoming one of the greatest funerals in the history of the United States. In December 1915, Ralph Chaplin wrote an article on the Joe Hills funeral in the International Socialist Review: "At 10:30 am the streets were blocked in all directions; the trams did not arrive and all traffic was exposed. In the hall you could almost always hear a needle falling. The coffin was placed on the flower decorations, on the black and red-draped scene, and over it hung a hand-woven IWW banner.
The funeral opened with Joe Hills wonderful song, Workers of the World, Awaken, members of the IWW led, and the congregation filled in the corus. Subsequently, Jennie Wosczynska made a performance of Rebel Girl written and composed by Joe Hill, after which came two beautiful tenor solo performances, one in Swedish by John Chellman and one in Italian by Ivan Rodems.
Thousands in the ward bore IWW pennants on their collars or red ribbons with the words "Joe Hill, murdered by the authorities of the city of Utah, November 19, 1915" or "Joe Hill, IWW martyr for a great cause", "Don't worry - organize! " and many others.
Throughout the ceremony most of Joe Hills songs were sung, but some of the foreign-speaking songs sang revolutionary songs in their own languages. As soon as a song died out in one place, the same song or someone else was taken by other voices.
The killing of martyrs has never secured any tyrant. The state of Utah has shot our song-writer into eternal immortality and has shot himself to eternal shame. [12] "
Joe Hill was cremated on November 26, 1915. His ashes were distributed in small bags and sent to the IWW's US, South America, Europe, Asia, New Zealand, and Africa local offices, where the ashes on the International Labor Day of the Workers were spread on the first May.
A Swedish-American, J. A. Granström, who also participated in the cremation, took one of the bags with him when he later returned to Sweden. In 1960 Granström contacted his friend from his youth, editor Gustaf Sjöström in Gothenburg and told about the ashes. Preserved in a cigar box, the ash bag in 1961 was handed over to the Workers' Archive. At a ceremony on May 20, 1967, Joe Hill's ash was walled in the left wall of Ljusgården at Folkets Hus in Landskrona. Along with the ashes, documents from IWW were also placed in the wall. [13] The contemporary workman singer Billy Bragg has also swallowed some of Joe Hills ashes in order to become the bearer of his courage and song treasure. [14]
In 1969, the Swedish Workers' Central Organization (SAC) bought Joe Hills childhood home in Gävle and made it a museum named Joe Hill Farm. In a specially set up memory room in the house, copies of Joe Hills' last letter to the family are preserved. The United States Postal Service discovered in 1988 that one of the letters with Joe Hills ash had been held back by the US postal service because of its controversial content. The content, a photo of Joe Hill with the text: "Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915" and a small bag of Joe Hills ashes are deposited since then at the US National Archives, the National Archives. The last of Joe Hills ashes was scattered to the wind in Washington, D.C. in November 1988.
In March 2007, the US Communist Party gave a huge archive of party material to New York University. The historical archive consisted of 12,000 boxes that included documents, books and about one million photographs. The archive also contained Joe Hills handwritten will, which he wrote the night before his execution.