Frank Little

Dr. Walter Little attended medical school in Keokuk, Lee County, Iowa between the years 1874 and 1878.

According to the 1880 U.S. census, Franklin Henry Little was born in Illinois about 1878 to Dr. Walter R. and Almira Hays Little.

In 1889 he left behind his medical practices in Missouri in the pursuit of a new home for his family, finally settling in Oklahoma, where the family became homesteaders in the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush.

The family later suffered drought and penurious conditions after the Panic of 1893.

After Dr. Walter Little's death in 1899, Frank Little followed his miner brother, Walter Frederick Little, to California, where he too became a miner.

In 1903, Frank departed his brother and sister-in-law, Emma Harper Little, in California for Bisbee, Arizona.

There he worked as a miner before becoming an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners in Clifton, Arizona.

He joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, organizing miners, lumberjacks, and oil field workers.

He was a member of the union's Executive Board when he was murdered and lynched.

In 1905 Frank Little joined the Industrial Workers of the World.

Frank Little was involved in organizing lumberjacks, metal miners, migrant farm workers, and oil field workers into industrial unions, often as part of free speech campaigns.

He pioneered the passive resistance tactics used by the Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights Movement.

Frank Little first took part in the 1909 Missoula, Montana free speech fight along with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, helping organize lumber workers who suffered at the hands of logging company managers complicit with "sharks," or employment agencies who tricked workingmen out of their hard-earned money.

Next Frank Little took part in the Spokane, Washington free speech fight, where he was sentenced to thirty days in prison for reading the Declaration of Independence.

He suffered in Spokane's frigid Franklin School after refusing to work on the city rock pile.

Along with his organizer brother Walter Frederick Little and sister-in-law Emma Harper, Frank took part in free speech fights among workers in Fresno, California in 1910 and 1911.

On one occasion, he was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment for reading the Declaration of Independence on a street corner.

Little and several hundred workers were arrested for violating a city ordinance, congregating on city streets to publicly speak.

In response, Frank said he expected a large arrival of Russians, Japanese, Germans, and Chinese to join the IWW.

Many more workers belonging to the Industrial Workers of the World union came to the city and struck in support after Frank calls them to solidarity on May 10 and August 27, 1910.

Frank and his brother would wait until after harvest to take the fight to the streets of Fresno.

In response to the free speech fights sixty-six new IWW locals formed.

Eventually, Little successfully organized unskilled fruit workers in the San Joaquin Valley of California, a precursor to Cesar Chavez's work.

He also led free speech efforts in Kansas City, Missouri; Webb City, Missouri; and Peoria, Illinois.

In August 1913, Little and fellow Industrial Workers of the World union organizer James P. Cannon arrived in Duluth, Minnesota, to support the strike of ore-dock workers against the Great Northern Railway over dangerous working conditions.

In the course of the strike he was kidnapped, held at gunpoint outside of the city, and dramatically rescued by union supporters.

In 1914, Little was elected a member of the Industrial Workers of the World's General Executive Board.

Two years later he returned to the Great Lakes Region, where he organized Superior, Wisconsin, dock workers in a strike for better safety conditions and wages.

There he was kidnapped, severely beaten, and mock hanged.

Franklin Henry Little (1879 – August 1, 1917), commonly known as Frank Little, was an American labor leader who was murdered in Butte, Montana.

No one was apprehended or prosecuted for Little's murder.

When the United States joined the war in April 1917, Ralph Chaplin, the editor of the Industrial Workers of the World's newspaper, Solidarity, claimed that opposing the draft would destroy the union through government repression.

Other Board members argued that organized labor would not have the power to stop the war until more workers were organized, and the union should continue to focus on organizing workers at the point of production, even if their actions might incidentally impede the war effort.

Little refused to back down on this issue and argued that "...the IWW is opposed to all wars, and we must use all our power to prevent the workers from joining the army."

He planned to go to Butte, Montana, to support union organizing after the Speculator Mine Disaster on June 8, 1917, where 168 men died.

A fire began in the Granite Mountain shaft of the Spectacular Mine owned by North Butte Mining Company.

Sealed bulkheads prevented men from escaping toxic fumes in the various levels of the mine.

Little was a strong opponent of capitalism after witnessing many late 19th and early 20th-century American businessmen use what he viewed as unscrupulous methods to get rich.

As a result, he also opposed World War I, which many believed to be a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

While General Secretary-Treasurer William Haywood and members of the General Executive Board shared Little's opinions about the war, they disagreed about whether to create anti-war agitation.