Thanks to a FB pal’s post I learned of Joe Hill today. Not heard of him before.
An itinerant worker of Swedish ancestry, Hill was a ‘Wobblie’, or member of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), rising to prominence in that organisation as a songwriter and cartoonist, as well as for his vocal activism.
Hill was executed, aged just 36, in 1915. Allegedly for a robbery in which two men, father and son (the elder an ex-policemen), were killed. I know next to nothing about all this. So I’ll be looking into it. It’s pretty fascinating!
Tom Morello of RATM credits a whole lineage of protest music to Joe Hill’s leading example, which is interesting. As a musician and artist I’m immediately drawn to Hill, not just because I share his politics to some extent (to what extent I don’t know as yet!), but because art and music are my ‘bag’.
Rather strikingly, Hill’s will, reproduced below (along with a post-mortem photo showing his corpse, complete with the execution bullet holes!), is in verse. A poet to the last!
The popular perception on the left is that Hill is a martyr, a scapegoat, a ‘pesky agitator’ silenced by the boss class. Hill refused to exonerate himself entirely, claiming he was innocent. But unwilling to name a lady for love of whom he had, he said, been shot by a another man!
The gunshot wound, which he presented to a doctor on the same day as the fatal double shooting of which he was eventually accused, was, it seems, what got him the death penalty.
A tantalising tale! I must find out more.
* Quite a striking/good looking dude! Could’ve been played by a young Willem Defoe, perhaps?