Cover Image: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=456245
In Power at Work’s 2025 Labor Grammys nominations the song “Joe Hill” is entered in the “Traditional Song” category. The song shares some storied company: Woody Guthrie’s “Better World a-Comin;” Florence Reece’s “Which Side Are You On” as performed by the Almanac Singers (of which Woody was a member); Aunt Molly Jackson’s “I Am a Union Woman,” as performed by Bobbie McGee; and the spiritual “We Shall Not Be Moved” as performed by Mavis Staples are a few other songs in the “Traditional” category.
The nominated version of “Joe Hill” is the one by Paul Robeson, and that is as it should be. Of all the versions of “Joe Hill” that have been recorded—from Joan Baez and Pete Seeger to the Dubliners, Tom Morello, and Billy Bragg—Robeson’s remains the definitive recording. He was the single artist most responsible for the prominence and perpetuation of the song. And of course nobody sang like Paul Robeson. Another person who recorded the song was its composer, Earl Robinson. It was Robinson who, in the summer of 1936, took a poem handed to him by its author, Alfred Hayes, and converted it into one of the most widely known songs in the international labor movement.
By Gordon Parks, Office of War Information; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:13, 3 February 2011 (UTC) - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b14812, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12890227
That word “international” is important—and appropriate for a lyric written by an immigrant from England, set to music by a native-born American about another immigrant, one from Sweden. My new book, I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night: The History of a Classic American Labor Song, tells the story of how, for almost a century, “Joe Hill” has remained a recognizable anthem embraced by working people around the world.
It began as a poem that should not have needed to be written.
But the man whom the song commemorates did exist. He was not a myth, though his life has become the stuff of legend. He was a real man who was executed for a crime that many, including myself, do not believe he committed. The man of whom the song speaks was an individual who was a rank-and-file member of an organization that sought to unite and empower working people, a labor union that was hailed by those who joined it and hated by those who opposed it. This was the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW or Wobblies. By falsely accusing this one man of being a criminal and a symbol of a radical organization—and by executing him—the anti-union establishment intended to send a warning to that organization. The man’s death, then, was born not out of justice but of vengeance.
So the poem did need to be written to send its own message to workers everywhere as well as to the bosses who would keep workers down: you may kill one of us, but many more of us will continue to rise up and stand for our rights.
Who was this man Joe Hill?
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The city of Gävle, north of Stockholm, has long been an important Swedish seaport and railroad hub. It was there on October 7, 1879 that a son was born to Olaf and Margarita Catherina Hagglund, a son they christened Joel Emanuel. He was the fourth of nine children in the family. In 1886, Olaf, a railway conductor, was injured on the job, and the following year he underwent surgery for an illness that may or may not have been related to that earlier injury. Olaf died on the operating table. Joel went to work in a non-union rope factory and fell ill with skin and glandular tuberculosis from the fine dust prevalent in flax, the raw organic material for rope. He recovered, but he had gained his first exposure to the dangerous conditions under which many working people labor. It was a lesson he never forgot.
Margarita Catherina did her best to keep the family together, but in 1902, after fifteen years of continuous struggle with her own health issues, she died. The Hagglund children sold the family home and went their separate ways. Joel and his brother Paul sailed to America, where Paul eventually settled in Pennsylvania while Joel went west.
Growing up, Hill had displayed a precocious talent for music. He had learned to play the piano, accordion, violin, and guitar, and—just as importantly for his future union activities—had a talent for creating songs.
Between 1902, when he disembarked in New York, and 1906, when he witnessed the San Francisco earthquake, Joel’s movements are uncertain. What is clear is that, on the West Coast, Joel discovered the IWW and, by 1910, was an active union member on the docks at San Pedro, California. It was then that he came into his own as a union songwriter and satirist. And he was no longer Joel Hagglund; he was now Joe Hill.
By Industrial Workers of the World - http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/pioneerlife/id/8985, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37161917
On January 10, 1914, two men shot and killed John Morrison, a grocer and former policeman, and his son in Salt Lake City. That same night Hill, who had relocated to Utah, showed up at a doctor’s office with a gunshot wound, claiming it was because of a dispute involving a woman. On the basis of this injury, he was accused of the Morrison murders. He did resemble a known criminal whom the police first suspected, and soon enough a case was brought against him. What followed were almost two years of sensational fake news stories about Hill’s supposed criminal activities, while his lawyer contended that the only thing the authorities had against him was his IWW membership. Hill had been an active union member and a thorn in the side of the establishment, and that power structure wanted to be rid of him. Despite national and international pleas of his innocence, Hill was executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915.
The man was gone. The legend was just beginning.
The song “Joe Hill” grew out of a collaboration in 1936 between Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson. Before long it was being heard at labor meetings in New Orleans and on the docks in San Francisco. Volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade took it to Spain in their fight against Franco’s fascists. It was the beginning of the song’s international fame, which continues to this day.
By Columbia Broadcasting System-CBS - eBay itemphoto frontphoto back, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22061870
In 1939, when Robinson got together with Paul Robeson to work on the composer’s cantata called “Ballad for Americans,” Robeson told the composer that he had learned “Joe Hill” while in England. Its adoption by Robeson, at that time a film star and one of the world’s most in-demand concert singers, marked a major milestone in the journey of “Joe Hill.” Robeson would thereafter refer to the song as his “special favorite” and include it in his performances for the remainder of his life, including the notorious 1949 riot in Peekskill, New York, when KKK-influenced mobs attacked concertgoers.
The third major milestone in the story of “Joe Hill,” after its creation and its subsequent embrace by Paul Robeson, came in the summer of 1969. After one o’clock in the morning, Joan Baez paused in her set at the Woodstock music festival to sing “Joe Hill” a cappella. The impact of her performance cannot be overstated, as it introduced “Joe Hill” to a new generation and a counterculture that was primed to receive it. Like Robeson before her, Baez would sing and record the song throughout her career.
Contemporary singers and songwriters continue to add to the journey of “Joe Hill.” Musician and activist Si Kahn named his own company Joe Hill Music and has written a one-act play entitled “Joe Hill’s Last Will,” which is often performed by John McCutcheon, another pro-union advocate of all things Joe Hill. Kahn and McCutcheon met while supporting workers in the 1973 Harlan County, Kentucky strike. The duos Magpie and Shelby Bottom have championed the song, as have American singers and labor activists Joe Jencks, Elena Klaver, John O’Connor, Joe Uehlein, George Mann, Saul Schniderman, and Tom Morello, among others, as well as such international artists as Maria Dunn in Canada and Joe Hill’s great niece Lovisa Samuelson in Sweden.
What is it about this song that continues to resonate for working people almost ninety years after its creation? What can we learn from it, and what can we take away from it to improve our lives?
Let’s begin with what it is not: It is not a song that simply complains in vague terms about long working hours; it does not simply moan about poor working conditions. Rather, it names names—a specific worker, copper bosses, Salt Lake City. It is a song about a real man and a real incident in American labor history. It is a song that turns the tragic tale it begins with into a veritable shout, for it concludes not as a somber dirge for one fallen fellow worker but as a soaring call for collective action and for all working people to stand up for their rights. As the man Joe Hill cabled IWW co-founder Big Bill Haywood on the eve of his execution, “Don’t waste any time in mourning—organize!”
I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night: The History of a Classic American Labor Song is available through McFarland & Company.
