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Joseph Ettor

AKA: Smiling Joe Ettor
Released
Date of birth:06. 10. 1885
Date of death:09. 05. 1948
Age:62† Deceased
Gender:Male
Race:White
Era:1910s
State:Massachusetts
Time Imprisoned:
9 Months 27 Days
Support
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Joseph Ettor

Biography

Joseph Ettor was an Italian-American IWW organizer who, with Arturo Giovannitti, led the 1912 Bread and Roses textile strike of 23,000 workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. After striker Anna LoPizzo was shot dead by police on January 29, 1912, Ettor and Giovannitti — miles away addressing a strike meeting — were arrested as accessories to murder in an explicit attempt to behead the strike. After nearly a year in jail awaiting trial in Salem, they were acquitted in November 1912 following one of the most celebrated labor-defense campaigns of the early 20th century.

The Lawrence strike history reports that Joseph J. Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti were arrested, booked for murder and held without bail following the killing of striker Anna La Pizza. The history presents the arrests as an effort to break strike leadership. It supplies no new individual custody endpoint.

One Big Union Monthly, December 1919, PDF pages 33.

Case

Essex County Jail
Charges: Accessory to murder (Anna LoPizzo, Lawrence textile strike)
Arrested: Jan 30, 1912
Incarcerated: Jan 30, 1912
Released: Nov 26, 1912
Sentence: Acquitted; no sentence.
Convicted: No
Institution State: New Jersey