October 7 will always be remembered for the atrocity that happened in Israel a year ago, but it has another humanitarian significance as well, for it was the birthday of legendary labor activist and songster Joe Hill (Joel Hägglund, 1879-1915).
Hill was in his early 20s when he moved to the States from his native Sweden. He picked up English quickly and lived hand to mouth as an itinerant worker, toiling in his point of entry (NYC), then Cleveland, then San Francisco, where he was employed at the time of the 1906 earthquake. By 1910 he had joined the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies. He hopped freight trains to get from town to town, and like Harry McClintock was known for giving speeches at union rallies to boost membership and solidarity. He also took to writing folks songs to get the message across, some of which have become standards of their kind. His most widely known fragment is the phrase “pie in the sky”, coined for his 1911 song “The Preacher and the Slave”. Other songs included “There is Power in a Union” and “The Tramp”, both written in 1913.
By 1914, Hill was in the Salt Lake City area. One night he showed up at a doctor’s house with a gunshot wound, claiming to have been injured in a spat over a woman, the details of which he remained closed-lipped. Unfortunately that same day, a grocery store owner and former policeman, as well as his son, had both been shot to death. It didn’t take long for local authorities to connect the two events and pin the murders on Hill. There was no evidence for his culpability. The two events may have been coincidental. The real mark against him was his leftist leanings. He was found guilty of the murders and executed by firing squad. Not long before he died he told a friend “Don’t mourn — organize”. He used more words than that, but time and usage have boiled it down to its essance. Obama’s popular remark, “Don’t boo — vote”, seems a clear and direct reference to that quotation.
Hill of course became a cause celebre to the left, both during his trial and after his death, as one of the many martyrs to the tyranny of American capitalism. The reverence for him became almost Christ-like. After he passed, he was cremated and his ashes were distributed to key Wobblies around the country. They have been scattered at significant locations around the world, a wish he once expressed himself in verse. Abbie Hoffman suggested that his followers should ingest them, and one prominent one, English singer Billy Bragg, actually went so far as to do that. Others carried forward his memory in other ways. A portion of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. Trilogy was inspired by him. Around the same time (the 1930s), Earl Robinson set to music a poem by Alfred Hayes, entitled “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”, often shortened to “Joe Hill”. Notables who have performed it included Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, Joan Baez (at Woodstock), Bruce Springsteen, and others. In the age-old folk tradition, a conversation in song has also ensued. Phil Ochs wrote an entirely different song about Joe Hill. And then Billy Bragg wrote a song called “I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night”.
Nowadays, Joe Hill’s birthplace and childhood home in Sweden is a museum. Learn about it here, but you’ll need to employ a translator if you don’t know Swedish! Oh, and the irony if you use a computerized one rather than a human who does that work!