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Franklin Henry Little (1878-1917) , an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) , fought in some of the early twentieth century's most contentious labor and free-speech struggles. Following his lynching in Butte, Montana, his life and legacy became shrouded in tragedy and family secrets. In Frank Little and the IWW, author Jane Little Botkin chronicles her great-granduncle's fascinating life and reveals its connections to the history of American labor and the first Red Scare. Beginning with Little's childhood in Missouri and territorial Oklahoma, Botkin recounts his evolution as a renowned organizer and agitator on behalf of workers in corporate agriculture, oil, logging, and mining. Frank Little traveled the West and Midwest to gather workers beneath the banner of the Wobblies (as IWW members were known) , making soapbox speeches on city street corners, organizing strikes, and writing polemics against unfair labor practices.



About the Author

Jane Little Botkin

Born and bred in Texas, I have been blessed with a rich, western-family background that has driven me to write primarily nonfiction. For example, my great-great-grandfather was the Doolin-Dalton outlaw-gang's go-to doctor. My great-great-grandmother was part American Indian. Her grandson, my grandfather, was an oil wildcatter in the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma, at the turn of the century, after his parents homesteaded in the Oklahoma Land Rush. My other great-grandfather perished on the Chilkoot trail searching for gold in Alaska in 1898. His wife, my great-grandmother and a Danish immigrant, remarried a French mining supervisor during Colorado's Coal Wars in Louisville, Colorado. Obviously, the American West is just part of my DNA. I hope to draw from this family history in the future.My first book, Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family (2017) , is about my great-granduncle, a radical IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] organizer who impacted the labor movement at a time when industrial barons, supported with public opinion, oppressed workers suffering at their hands before and during World War I. Because my family had hidden secrets and family photos about Frank from fear of persecution, I decided to dig deeply, ultimately trailing his life-path for seven years. I researched primary sources in ten states before visiting the site of his infamous murder in 1917 in Butte, Montana. Frank Little had been lynched for his words, definitely a hate crime. I am proud to announce that this first book won two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, the Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Western History and Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library, Best Historical Nonfiction Award from the Texas Association of Authors, and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, High Plains Book Award, and Foreword Reviews. Another narrative that offers fresh insights into the New West, especially the years between 1880 until about 1930, is The Girl Who Dared to Defy: Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver, (2021) also a University of Oklahoma release. It traces the life of a woman who was not even a maid herself, her indoctrination into the IWW, her remarkable success organizing the "unorganizable," and her downfall due to sex. Jane's two worlds collide - that of traditional motherhood and wife, and that of an unencumbered revolutionary, fighting for an unconventional new world. Themes involving sexual exploitation, violent assault, misogyny, and virile syndicalism permeate the narrative. In the book's periphery, western women, with their unique spirits and backgrounds, strive to bring independence to all classes of women - except for the housemaids. Jane faced opposition not only from IWW men who felt threatened, but Denver's club women and suffragettes who depended on their domestics.. My own Danish grandmother, product of a frontier mining environment, had been a housemaid in



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