Joe Hill

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Joe Hill bigraphy, stories - labor activist

Joe Hill : biography

October 7, 1879 – November 15, 1915

Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden, and also known as Joseph Hillström (October 7, 1879 – November 19, 1915) was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the "Wobblies").William M. Adler, The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, Bloomsbury USA, 2011, pp. 92-94, 121 A native Swedish speaker, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York to San Francisco.William M. Adler, The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, Bloomsbury USA, New York, pp. 115-119 Hill, as an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular song writer and cartoonist for the radical union. His most famous songs include "The Preacher and the Slave", "The Tramp", "There is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab", which generally express the harsh but combative life of itinerant workers, and the apparent necessity of organizing to improve conditions for working people.William M. Adler, The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, Bloomsbury USA, 2011, pp. 12-13, 206

In 1914, John G. Morrison, a Salt Lake City area grocer and former policeman, and his son were shot and killed by two men.William M. Adler, The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, Bloomsbury USA, 2011, pp. 44-52 The same evening, Hill arrived at a doctor’s office with a gunshot wound, and briefly mentioned a fight over a woman. Yet Hill was reluctant to explain further, and he was later accused of the grocery store murders on the basis of his injury. Hill was convicted of the murders in a controversial trial. Following an unsuccessful appeal, political debates, and international calls for clemency from high profile people and workers’ organizations, Hill was executed in November, 1915. After his death, he was memorialized by several folk songs. His life and death have inspired books and poetry.

Joe Hill’s love relationship, though frequently speculated upon, remained mostly conjecture for nearly a century. William M. Adler’s 2011 biography reveals new information about Hill’s ostensible alibi, which was never introduced at his trial.Steven Greenhouse (quoting John R. Sillito, retired archivist at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah), The New York Times, "Examining a Labor Hero’s Death", August 27, 2011, p. A10 According to the biography, Joe Hill and his friend and fellow countryman, Otto Appelquist, were rivals for the attention of twenty-year-old Hilda Erickson, a member of the family with whom the two men were lodging. In a recently discovered letter, Erickson confirmed her relationship with the two men, and the rivalry between them. The letter indicates that when she first discovered Hill was injured, he explained to her that Appelquist had shot him, apparently due to jealousy.William M. Adler, The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, Bloomsbury USA, 2011, pp. 294-297

Early life

Joel Emmanuel Hägglund was born 1879 in Gävle (then called Gefle), a city in the province of Gästrikland, Sweden. He was the third child in a family of nine, where three children died young. His father, Olof, worked as a conductor on the Gefle-Dala railway line. Olof died at the age of 41, and his death meant economic disaster for the family. His mother Margareta Catharina did, however, succeed in keeping the family together until she died in 1902.

The Hägglund family home still stands in Gävle at the address Nedre Bergsgatan 28, in Gamla Stan, the Old Town. it houses a museum and the Joe Hill-gården, which hosts cultural events.

In his late teens-early 20s, Joel fell seriously ill with skin and glandular tuberculosis, and underwent extensive treatment in Stockholm. In 1902, when about 23, he and his brother Paul emigrated to the United States. Hill became a migrant laborer, moving from New York City to Cleveland, Ohio, and eventually to the west coast. He was in San Francisco, California, at the time of the 1906 earthquake.