JOE HILL SHOT AT SUNRISE. DIED GAME.
-ED ROWAN
Friday November 19, 1915
Salt Lake City, Utah-
Fellow Worker Joe Hill Executed by Utah Firing Squad
At 7:40 a. m. in the prison yard of the Utah Sate Prison, Fellow Worker Joe Hill was shot to death by firing squad. Ed Rowan and other friends and fellow workers whom Hill had invited to attend the execution were not allowed to enter the prison. According to Rowan, they stood at the gate and heard the shots ring out “like musketry in battle,” a sound, says Rowan, that is still ringing in his head.
In New York City, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn soon thereafter received the following telegram:
Goodbye Gurley Dear:
Fellow Worker Flynn’s last telegram from our Rebel Songwriter arrived late last evening:
—–
From Chicago, Ralph Chaplin describes the scene at the headquarters of the Industrial Workers of the World last evening when there was received the farewell telegram of Fellow Worker Joe Hill:
Bill read it without comment, then stared out of the window. I could only see the blind side of his face. He shoved the letter across the desk to Frank Little, who read it aloud, rather stumblingly, to the rest of us:
Goodbye, Bill: I die like a true rebel. Don’t waste any time mourning-organize! It is a hundred miles from here to Wyoming. Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in Utah. -JOE HILL.
Bill scribbled a brief answer:
Goodbye, Joe: You will live long in the hearts of the working class. Your songs will be sung wherever the workers toil, urging them to organize. -W. D. HAYWOOD.
The Man Who Never Died:
The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon
-by William M. Adler
Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Aug 30, 2011
https://books.google.com/books?id=nCwHDiXYMRMC
Joe Hill
-by Gibbs M. Smith
Gibbs Smith, Sep 1, 2009
https://books.google.com/books?id=wFwsHQVuHVUC
Wobbly: The Rough and Tumble Story of an American Radical
-by Ralph Chaplin
Literary Licensing, LLC, 2013
This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.
(Note: my copy is the 1948 edition.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=o8gmnwEACAAJ
The Letters of Joe Hill
-by Philip S. Foner
Oak Publications, 1965
https://books.google.com/books?id=1tHfAAAAMAAJ
IMAGES
Joe Hill
http://www.freedomarchives.org/La_Lucha_Continua/Joe_Hill.html
Joe Hill Died Game, Rowan to EGF, Nov 19, 1915
https://www.transport.se/Transportarbetaren/Start/Kultur/Allt-du-behover-veta-om-Joe-Hill/
Joe Hill Telegram to EGF, Nov 18, 1915, 10 pm
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tamiment/sets/72157600984845007/
Joe Hill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joe_hill002.jpg
See also:
Joe Hill:
The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture
-by Franklin Rosemont
PM Press, Dec 15, 2015
(search: ed rowan joe hill defense committee
https://books.google.com/books?id=WIjiCgAAQBAJ
“From San Diego up to Maine
In every mine and mill
Where workers strike and organize,”
Says he, “You’ll find Joe Hill,”
Says he, “You’ll find Joe Hill.”
-Alfred Hayes & Earl Robinson
Source for lyrics:
http://www.folkarchive.de/joehill.html
Performance by Bruce Springsteen: