Joe Hill’s Great-Grand Niece, Lovisa Samuelsson performs a song she wrote for Joe Hill at the Joe Hill Centennial Celebration in Salt Lake, Utah. She is joined on stage by her mother, Pia Samuelsson, and her uncle, Rolf Hägglund. They are descendants of Joe Hill’s brother Efraim Hägglund. She is playing on the guitar of Utah Phillips which contains some of Joe Hill’s ashes.
Organize! Oh, toilers, come organize your might;
Then we’ll sing one song of the workers’ commonwealth,
Full of beauty, full of love and health.
-Joe Hill
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Hilda Erickson
There are three love songs written by Joe Hill that have survived to make their way into our Rebel Songwriter’s musical legacy. Two were found in his room when it was searched soon after his arrest in January of 1914. These two songs were subsequently published in The Salt Lake Tribune of June 21, 1914. The third was found years later in Stockholm, Sweden, during a search of the Joe Hill file of the Archives of the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Organize! Oh, toilers, come organize your might;
Then we’ll sing one song of the workers’ commonwealth,
Full of beauty, full of love and health.
-Joe Hill
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Cartoon drawing by Joe Hill, September 1911
Fellow Workers, sit back and relax. It’s time to honor the memory of Joe Hill by enjoying the songs that he left to us. For the second day, WE NEVER FORGET, The Labor Martyrs Project, features FW Hill’s musical and lyrical legacy. We are presenting his songs in the order in which they were first published in the Little Red Songbooks of the Industrial Workers of the World. Today we offer Part 3 of this series.
Organize! Oh, toilers, come organize your might;
Then we’ll sing one song of the workers’ commonwealth,
Full of beauty, full of love and health.
-Joe Hill
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Cartoon drawing by Joe Hill, September 1911
Fellow Workers, sit back and relax. It’s time to honor the memory of Joe Hill by enjoying the songs that he left to us. For the second day, WE NEVER FORGET, The Labor Martyrs Project, features FW Hill’s musical and lyrical legacy. We are presenting his songs in the order in which they were first published in the Little Red Songbooks of the Industrial Workers of the World. Today we offer Part 2 of this series.
The Songs of Joe Hill, Published in the Little Red Songbook of 1913
The Industrial Worker of March 6, 1913 announced that the new edition of the Little Red Songbook would include eleven new songs. On the front cover, that issue of the songbook was designated as the Fifth Edition. Nine of the eleven new songs were by Joe Hill, and included: Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: Joe Hill-Songs from the Little Red Songbook, Part Two”→
Then we’ll sing one song of the One Big Union Grand,
The hope of the toiler and slave,
It’s coming fast; it is sweeping sea and land,
To the terror of the grafter and the knave.
-Joe Hill
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The Songs of Joe Hill from the Little Red Songbook, Part 1.
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Joe Hill, Self-Portrait at Sailors’ Rest Mission in San Pedro, April 1911
Fellow Workers, sit back and relax. It’s time to honor the memory of Joe Hill by enjoying the songs that he left to us. Over the next few days, WE NEVER FORGET, The Labor Martyrs Project, will feature FW Hill’s musical and lyrical legacy by presenting his songs in the order in which they were first published in the Little Red Songbooks of the Industrial Workers of the World. Today we offer Part 1 of this series.
Therefore, Comrades, over the great heart of Joe Hill, now stilled in death,
let us take up his burden, rededicate ourselves to the cause that knows no failure,
and for which Joseph Hillstrom cheerfully gave his all.
-Jim Larkin
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday December 1, 1915
From the International Socialist Review:
Comrades Ralph Chaplin and Big Jim Larkin Remember Joe Hill
This month’s edition of the Review honors the memory of Joe Hill who was murdered by the state of Utah on Friday, November 19th.
Joe Hill, charcoal drawing by L. Stanford Chumley:
But tho’ his clarion voice is hushed,
And tho’ his harp lies mute and still,
Hill’s murdered dust is vocal yet
With words that burn and notes that thrill.
-Major Honere J. Jaxon
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday November 30, 1915
From The Day Book:
“Another Immortal” by Honore J. Jaxon
In yesterday’s Day Book we find a poem, written by Honore J. Jaxon, which declares Fellow Worker Joe Hill to be “Another Immortal” and begins:
Once more a glorious rebel falls,
Ensnared by knaves in legal guise.
Once more a rebel’s name is smirched
By slaves who peddle purchased lies.
But tho’ his clarion voice is hushed,
And tho’ his harp lies mute and still,
Hill’s murdered dust is vocal yet
With words that burn and notes that thrill.
These words recall the chant voiced by members of I. W. W. Local 69 and their Verdandi allies as they kept vigil throughout the long night of November 18th until sunrise the next morning when the shots rang out that ended the life of Joe Hill. There, in Salt Lake City, on the corner of Second South and Commercial Streets, where Local 69 soapboxers had rallied since its founding five years earlier, they gathered and sang the songs of Joe Hill and listened to speeches by members of the Joe Hill Defense Committee, Ed Rowan and Fred Ritter among them.
The chant began, “And Joe Hill will be shot in the morning,” and was answered by “Not if we can help it!” Then someone called out:
Something is going to happen. Joe Hillstrom will never die,
do you hear it every body, Joe Hillstrom will never die.
Through this aperture each of us, one at a time,
and each with feelings all his own,
viewed the flame-lashed casket.
-Ralph Chaplin
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday November 29, 1915
Chicago, Illinois-
The Body of Fellow Worker Joe Hill Reduced to Ashes
In his Last Will, FW Joe Hill wrote:
My body? Oh! If I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
In accordance with the wishes of our Rebel Songwriter, Hill’s body was taken to the crematory at Graceland Cemetery on Friday, November 26th, and cremated. Ralph Chaplin has provided a moving description of the cremation procedure:
The coffin lid was raised for the last time to permit final identification. The attendants looked to me as committee spokesman for word to proceed. I bowed my head. The casket was wheeled to the doors of the blast chamber, which creaked open to receive it. The steel doors creaked together, and the tiny room was all white again. Only the roar of the fire blast could be heard, growing louder and louder. We could hardly bear it.
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday November 28, 1915
From Solidarity:
The Joe Hill Edition: “Don’t Waste Anytime Mourning!”
The latest edition of the I. W. W. newspaper, Solidarity, is dedicated to Joe Hill and features the following cartoon, penned by Ralph Chaplin:
Drawing by Ralph Chaplin from Solidarity of November 27, 1915
According to the cartoon, the firing squad is made up of the five members of the Utah Board of pardons, which includes Governor Spry, Attorney General Barnes, and the three members of the Supreme Court: Chief Justice Straup, and Associate Justices Frick and McCarty. As the money power directs the state-sanctioned murder of Fellow Worker Hill, the rising sun of Organization appears over the prison wall.
Below Chaplin’s drawing is a banner with FW Hill’s farewell message:
I. W. W. movement has been sealed in
the sweet blood of this poet-radical.
-Jim Larkin
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Saturday November 27, 1915
Chicago, Illinois-
I. W. W. Gives FW Joe Hill a Grand Send-Off, Thousands March
A grand funeral hosted by the Industrial Workers of the World was provided for Fellow Worker Joe Hill, Working Class Martyr. Thousands gathered in the West Side Auditorium on Thanksgiving morning, November 25th. The windows of the auditorium were open and the singing within could be heard by the the thousands who filled the streets outside, extending for blocks in every direction.
After the morning’s orations were completed, a great throng of mourners followed the casket to the train which bore the remains of FW Joe Hill to Graceland Cemetery. Another funeral service took place there followed by singing which lasted late into the night.
