Joe Hillstrom Songtext / Lyric

On January Tenth Nineteen Fourteen
Two men fixed some masks of red handkerchiefs
Walked into the Temple and South Street Store
Laid Morrison and his son dead on the floor.
Before he died Merlin Morrison
Reached under his counter and pulled his gun
The fellows tried to run back out the door again
Morrison put a bullet in one of the men.
Just three days later you arrested me
At the Eselius home on Seventeenth South Street
Just because I've got a fresh bullet hole
You claim that I killed the Morrsons in their store.
I was courting a woman and had a fight with a man
He fired a pistol that lodged in me
Old Prosecutor Leatherwood can beat out his brains
But I'm not going to tell you this lady's name.
Take away these attorneys you picked for me
My own lawyer now I'm going to be
It's because I'm a union organizer in the copper mines
You've got me on your killing floor to die.
My labor friends sent Judge Hilton and Christensen
To prove I did not kill the Morrisons
But I cannot drag my lady's honor down
I can't tell where I got my gunshot wound.
It was in June you convicted me
You said I was guilty in the worst degree
I don't want your pardon, but an honest trial,
If I can't get a fair trial I will die.
President Wilson wired the Governor Spry
Saying please don't let Joe Hillstrom die
Several thousand letters and telegrams
Piled up on the governor's desk from workers hands.
The governor wired to Wilson, Nothing I can do,
The Pardon Board and Supreme Court, too,
Both did uphold the frame up trial
They all want to see me walk my last long mile.
The death watch is set, it's November Eighteenth,
My comrades are marching up and down the streets
Of all of the cities and the towns around
They can sing Joe Hillstrom never let them down.
The Nineteenth Day of November is here
A frosty old morning with winter in the air
Two telegrams that I got to send
To Elizabeth Gurley Flynn1 and Bill Haywood2.
It's a hundred miles to the Wyoming line
Could you arrange to have my body hauled
Past that old state line before you bury me at all
I just don't want to be found dead here in Utah.
Hey, Gurley Flynn, I wrote you a song
To the dove of peace. It's coming along.
I lived like a rebel, like a rebel I die.
Forget me. Organize these copper mines.
They march me now out to the baseball park
Tie me down in a chair, and the Doctor marks my heart
With a little white rag against this black robe
Goodbye Joe Hillstrom you done a pretty good job.