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.
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday November 21, 1915
Salt Lake City, Utah-
Walking with FW Joe Hill on His Last Day and to the Execution
Today there will be held in Salt Lake City a grand I. W. W. funeral for Fellow Worker Joe Hill. After the funeral his body will be placed on a train and shipped to Chicago where another funeral will be held later this week. The Chicago send-off may prove to be the largest funeral ever held in that city.
Today, as promised, Hellraisers, to the best of our ability and from the sources available, reconstructs the last day and the final moments of Fellow Worker Joe Hill.
Don’t Mourn; Organize!
-Joe Hill
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Wednesday November 17, 1915
From El Paso Herald:
-A. F. of L. Convention Pleads for Life of Fellow Worker Joe Hill
Resolutions on behalf of Joe Hill were passes unanimously yesterday by the thirty-fifth annual convention of American Federation now in session in San Francisco. Last evening’s El Paso Herald reported the news:
Labor Pleads For Murder Convict’s Life
—–HILLSTROM IS TO DIE FRIDAY
—–
Federation Calls On Utah Governor To
Exercise Clemency for Swede.
—–
President Wilson and Swedish Legation
Are To Receive Appeal Also.
—–
SAN FRANCISCO, Cal, Nov. 16.-Resolutions asking clemency for Joseph Hillstrom, member of the Industrial Workers of the World, sentenced to be shot at Salt Lake City Utah, Friday, were passed unanimously by the American Federation of Labor, meeting here in its 35th annual convention.
The resolutions were presented by the ways and means committee, to which the case was referred yesterday by president Samuel Gompers, after appeals for action in the case were made before the convention by Thomas Mooney, not a member of the convention, and delegate Camomile, both of Salt Lake City.
President to Receive Copy.The resolutions authorized president Gompers to transmit immediately copies of the resolution to the governor of Utah, the board of pardons of Utah, the Swedish minister to the United States and president Wilson.
