Did Joan Baez Get it Wrong?

 The lyrics/melody might not have worked but the famous song that Baez highlighted at Woodstock (and many others including Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen have also sung) should really have started, I dreamed I saw Joel Emmanuel Hägglund last night, alive as you and me.  Says I, “But Joe, you're ten years dead,” “I never died," says he. "I never died," says he.

   Joe Hill, indeed, has never died. He was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, October 7, 1879, in Gävle, Sweden. And Sweden – especially Gävle - maintains a strong connection to this working class icon, affirming the international character of the labor movement.  

One of the memorials to him in Joe Hill Park.Nexxt to his picture is this quote: "No one will for bread be crying. We'll have freedom, love and health when the grand red flag is flying in the workers' commonwealth."

His was a large and poor family, whose fate worsened in 1887 when Joe’s father, a railroad worker, died. At the age of 23, Joe did what many Swedes have done (including Carol’s grandfather and great grandfather in 1866) – leave for America. There he became a migrant worker, a labor activist, and songwriter, cartoonist and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. And there the State of Utah victimized him for his activism,  put him on trial for a murder he did not commit, and convicted him.  Rejecting all calls for clemency, including from the Government of Sweden, a firing squad executed him on November 19, 1915. 

 

Joe Hill's house in Gävla which is now a museum. 

 

But indeed he did not die, living on in memory and in the actions and commitment of untold fighters for labor rights and justice. His hometown memorials and museum are but one example. That his songs have continued to be sung in the Swedish labor movement is another. 

Stamp honoring Hill in Sweden.