A Little Bit About a Great American

“Slain by capitalist interests for organizing and inspiring his fellow man”

When we visited in 1996, an IWW member in Butte made sure that Frank Little’s grave always looked nice and had flowers. It’s in a beautiful graveyard right before a mountain range. It was still possible to make out the railroad trestle where they hanged his body, even though the tracks had been ripped up. I saved a few railroad spikes as mementoes and took a few photos. Over at the Silver Bow Museum, they have a lot about Frank Little’s last few days of life because they saved the newspaper coverage. The labor palace was still functioning, and the union people there know quite a lot about those last few days. In fact, Frank Little’s death is pretty well documented. But not his life!

In Butte, they sell bright colored postcards with a little bit of Montana history. At bottom, men carry “IWW” signs and confront an authority figure. On the far right, an automobile is parked by a railroad trestle, where a man hangs.

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