Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
984
AUTHOR:
Joe (Joseph Hillstrom) Hill (1879–1915)
QUOTATION:
Don’t waste any time mourning—organize!
ATTRIBUTION:
JOE HILL, letter to William D. Haywood, November 18, 1915.—Philip S. Foner, The Letters of Joe Hill, p. 84 (1965).
Joe Hill was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and was “the Wobblies’ most famous and most prolific writer of working class songs.” Hill had been convicted “on the flimsiest of evidence—all circumstantial” of slaying a Salt Lake City grocer, and sentenced to death. “It appears obvious that a real effort had been made to ‘fix’ the case against him.” Despite an international movement to reverse the conviction or grant a new trial, Hill was shot and killed by a firing squad on November 19, 1915 (pp. 7, 9, 10).
