Jim Larkin's oration at Joe Hill's funeral 1915

On November 19th, 2015, during the “Decade of Centenaries”, remember Joe Hill who was executed in Salt Lake City, Utah, one hundred years ago. About fifty years ago, when I was still in primary school, my older brothers used to buy the “Sing Out Reprints” from Waltons Music Shop, which was then located on Nth. Frederick Street, Dublin, and through browsing these, and listening to my brothers' tales of folk and traditional music sessions at the Neptune Rowing Club, I was introduced to songs both about, and by, Joe Hill, as well as several other folk songs and songs of protest. Hill’s story always fascinated me and as a child I just could n't get it that his main crime seemed to be his songs, such as "Rebel Girl", "and "The Preacher and the Slave (Pie in the Sky)", and also the song based on "Joe Hill's Last Will and Testament". Around the same time, The Dubliners included the song "I dreamed I saw Joe Hill Last Night" on an album, although they simply called it "Joe Hill". A few years later, after I saw the “Woodstock” film and Joan Baez singing "Joe Hill", I became even further interested in Hill as a protest icon; in the film Baez refers to her husband, anti-war protestor, David Harris, who was serving a prison sentence at the time for Draft evasion. Decades later, in November 2011, when I was experimenting with video-editing, I put a ten minute piece together about Hill, and at the time I was determined to make another video about him at the time of the centenary of his execution, November 19th, 2015. I thought no better way than to use the words from Jim Larkin’s oration at Hill’s funeral to reflect on Hill and his times. I also use Luke Kelly’s rendition of Joe Hill and music from Grieg’s “Peer Gynt”, which Hill is reported to have played publicly once when he was a young adult in Sweden. The IWW have very useful archives for researching Joe Hill. William Adler's biography of Hill “The Man Who Never Died” is an invaluable historical source, as is Ralph Chaplin’s account of “Joe Hill’s Funeral” and also the Walther P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, for both written and visual material. My thanks to Joe Duffy for the narration. BC.