1879-1915
Songwriter; Labor Activist: Folk Hero

Death in the Morning.

On 19 November 1915, at 7:44 A.M., Joe Hill, strapped to a chair in the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City, was pronounced dead. Hill had been shot in the heart minutes before by a five-man firing squad, ending a yearlong struggle by his supporters to have his sentence commuted or a new trial declared in what may have been the trial of the decade. Hill's case had, since its beginning in January 1914, grown from a dubious murder charge for a local crime to an international cause celebre that symbolized the violent ongoing struggle between the forces of capital and the much hated Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), of which Joe Hill was a member. Before his death, Hill, an itinerant worker known throughout his workers' union as a songwriter, had remained in prison, professing his...