Joe Hill's one of my heroes and he was undoubtedly wrongfully convicted by folks who wanted to shut him and the labor movement up/down. And there are still mysteries in his story, including who shot the grocer and his son if it weren't Joe Hill--and who had shot Hill and why they did so if you discount the grocer's son. The NYT reports on an author who claims to be answering those questions.
I'd like to see that and I haven't read the book yet but from up front, this story sounds too much like a tawdry movie plot than real life to me.
Quote:
Hill, who bounced around the West as a miner, longshoreman and union organizer, was the leading songwriter for the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, a prominent union that was widely feared and deplored for its militant tactics. He penned dozens of songs that excoriated bosses and capitalism and wrote the well-known lyric “You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”
His conviction was so controversial that President Woodrow Wilson twice wrote to Utah’s governor to urge him to spare Hill’s life, and unions as far away as Australia protested on his behalf.
After his death, Hill was immortalized in poetry and song, including the 1936 ballad embraced by Ms. Baez, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson and others: “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night.”
In the letter found by Mr. Adler, Hill’s sweetheart, Hilda Erickson, wrote that Hill had told her he had been shot by her former fiancé, Otto Appelquist — someone she had broken off with a week earlier and who had asked her “if I liked Joe better than him.” In her letter, she added, “I heard Joe tease Otto once that he was going to take me away from him.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27 ... 2&emc=eta1
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