Arturo Giovannitti (1884 - 1959)

Mon Jan 07, 1884

Image

Arturo M. Giovannitti, born on this day in 1884, was an Italian-American IWW organizer, socialist political activist, and poet. Giovannitti was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and is best remembered for his leadership and subsequent arrest in the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.

Along with “Smiling Joe” Ettor, Giovannitti was sent to Lawrence to help rally and organize striking workers there. When a striking worker was shot and killed, Ettor and Giovannitti were arrested as accomplices to the murder on little to no evidence.

While in jail, he wrote many poems, “The Walker” in particular becoming well-known. The trial made the textile strike a national controversy and resulted in “Big Bill” Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn coming in to lead the strike in their stead. Months after the strike itself ended, Ettor, Giovannitti, and a third co-defendant were acquitted of all charges.

"A man may lose his soul for just one day

Of splendor and be still accounted wise,

Or he may waste his life in a disguise

Like kings and priests and jesters, and still may

Be saved and held a hero if the play

Is all he knew. But what of him who tries

With truth and fails and then wins fame with lies?

How shall he know what history will say?

By this:

No man is great who does not find

A poet who will hail him as he is

With an almighty song that will unbind

Through his exploits eternal silences. Duce, where is your bard? In all mankind

The only poem you inspired is this."

  • Arturo Giovannitti, “To Mussolini”