I never died, says he

Today is the 94th anniversary of the judicial murder of Joe Hill, executed by a Utah firing squad 19 November 1915.  Hill, a Swedish immigrant (born Joel Hägglund in the 1870s — no one seems to be certain), while working as an itinerant laborer throughout the U.S. west, was also an entertainer, songwriter,  and — most dangerously — an IWW organizer. Charismatic and handsome, Hill’s labor organizing skills were a threat to the mining company management, and several attempts had already made to silence him.

Having been treated for a bullet wound in Park City, Utah, on the night of 10 January 1914 — as were at least six other men — he was fingered as the killer of a store keeper and ex-policeman who was killed during a robbery that night. Hill claimed he was shot by an irate husband while in bed with the man’s wife, whom he refused to name, and even by the forensic evidence available in 1914 Utah, could Hill’s wounds have come from the murdered man’s gun.  Nor did witnesses to the robbery-murder say that the killer looked like Hill. Nor did Joe Hill own a gun.

However, as Hill wrote “Owing to the prominence of [the victim] there had to be a ‘goat’ and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all, an IWW, had no right to live anyway, and was therefore duly selected to be ‘the goat’.”  The dubious nature of the evidence against him led to calls for clemency (from, among others, President Woodrow Wilson), but he had unwisely, and against the advice of his attorneys, had that late Victorian attitude about protecting a lady’s reputation. And made another lady’s reputation…