Joe Hill
The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture
Joe Hill (1877-1915) is the best-known figure in the heroic history of the Industrial Workers of the World (a.k.a. Wobblies). US labour’s most world-renowned martyr and celebrated songwriter, he is remembered above all for his songs in the Little Red Song Book: “The Preacher and the Slave” (“Pie in the Sky”), “Mr Block,” “There Is Power in a Union,” and many more that are still popular on picket lines today.
A monumental work that explores the issues that Joe Hill raised—capitalism, white supremacy, gender, religion, wilderness, law, prison, industrial unionism—and their enduring relevance and impact in the century since his death. Collected too is all of his art, plus scores of other illustrations featuring Hill-inspired art by IWWs from Ralph Chaplin to Carlos Cortez, as well as other labour artists.
Praise
Magnificent, practical, irreverent and (as one might say) magisterial, written in a direct, passionate, sometimes funny, deeply searching style.
– Peter Linebaugh, author of Stop, Thief
Rosemont seems to have hunted down every available detail of Hill’s short life and abiding legend.
– Los Angeles Times
Rosemont’s treatment of Joe Hill is passionate, polemical, and downright entertaining. What he gives us is an extended and detailed argument for considering both Hill and the IWW for their contributions toward creating an autonomous and uncompromising alternative culture.
– Gordon Simmons, Labor Studies Journal
It has been a long time since so much new material on Joe Hill and the Wobblies has been collected in one volume. All students of the IWW, labor cartoons and songs, radical humor, and the history of blue-collar countercultures in the U.S. will find this book indispensable.
– Salvatore Salerno, editor of The Big Red Songbook
Joe Hill has finally found a chronicler worthy of his revolutionary spirit, sense of humor, and poetic imagination.
– Robin D.G. Kelley , author of Freedom Dreams
Contents
| Joe Hill's Artwork | |
| A Note on the Notes | |
| Introduction | Troubadour of Discontent |
| Chapter 1 | Joe Hill & His Union |
| Chapter 2 | The Wobbly Bard |
| Chapter 3 | A Free-Spirited Internationalist |
| Chapter 4 | A Classic Case of Frame-Up |
| Chapter 5 | Joe Hill and the Arts |
| Chapter 6 | Joe Hill Myths |
| Chapter 7 | The IWW & the White Problem |
| Chapter 8 | Women Wobblies & Wobbly Feminism |
| Chapter 9 | Wobblies versus “Sky Pilots” |
| Chapter 10 | Cops & Wobblies: Law, Crime, Prison & the Struggle for Working-Class Emancipation |
| Chapter 11 | Wobblies versus Stalinism |
| Chapter 12 | Wobblies & Wilderness |
| Chapter 13 | Joe Hill, the Wobblies & the Beat Generation |
| Chapter 14 | Wobbly Poetics in Theory and Practice |
| Chapter 15 | The IWW Counterculture & Vernacular Surrealism |
| Chapter 16 | “Yours for a Change” |
| Conclusion | |
| Envoie | |
| Acknowledgements | |
| Bibliography | |
| Index |
