Joe Hill's arrest papers; he was subsequently executed by firing squad

On this day, October 7, Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, later to be known as the labor martyr Joe Hill, was born in Sweden.

Hill was a labor organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as the Wobblies, an organization that inspired now unimaginable fear among the  “employing class.” The preamble to the IWW Constitution states “It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.” Joe Hill was executed in Utah in 1915 after a still controversial conviction for murder.

Hill was a notable songwriter, as you can hear here, on the album Don’t Mourn, Organize, and his songs and his story have inspired numberless tributes, including those from Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan.

Joe Hill’s life and death have been the subjects of several books by notable authors, including biographies by independent publisher Gibbs Smith (his first book), and historian Philip Foner (uncle of Eric Foner), and a “biographical novel,” Joe Hill, by Wallace Stegner.

Most recently, independent labor history publisher Charles H. Kerr published Joe Hill: The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture by Franklin Rosemont.