Joseph James Ettor

J.J. Ettor (center), flanked by Joseph Caruso and Arturo Giovannitti, his co-defendants in the 1912 Lawrence trial.

Joseph James Ettor (1886 - 1948) was an Italian-American trade union organizer who was one of the leading public faces of the Industrial Workers of the World. Ettor is best remembered as a defendant in a controversial trial related to a killing in the seminal Lawrence textile strike of 1912, for which he was acquitted.

Biography

Early years

Joseph James Ettorn was born in 1886.

Union career

Ettor was an outstanding and inspirational public speaker who was fluent in Italian and English.

Ettor participated in the Lawrence textile strike at a Massachusetts textile mill in January, 1912. During the walkout, which came to be known as the Bread and Roses Strike, IWW striker Anna LoPizzo was shot and killed. Joseph Caruso was charged with the murder. Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti, who were giving speechs several miles away from the crime scene, were arrested as accomplices. The three were eventually acquitted.

J.J. Ettor addresses striking Brooklyn barbers in Union Square, New York City, May 17, 1913.

Ettor was one of the leaders of the waiters strike of 1912 in New York City, and the Brooklyn barbers strike of 1913.

Ettor became a member of the executive council of the IWW. In 1916, he was expelled from the IWW with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn after a dispute over the Mesabi range strike.

Death and legacy

In later years, Ettor ran a fruit orchard in San Clemente, California, where he died in 1948.

External links

• Spartacus Bio