The IWW gave working class rebellion its first soundtrack. Neither the organization's ideology nor tactics were completely new to the labor movement. What was new was the creation of an extensive body of music and poetry, which inspired and united a multicultural, American workforce. Sung at mass meetings, on the picket lines, and in the jails, Wobbly songs kindled a spirit of solidarity and strengthened the will to resist. Most importantly, IWW songs articulated the sentiments and aspirations of the working class in a way that a thousand well-argued pamphlets and manifestos never could.

The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 was an event specific to Arizona that influenced the labor movement throughout the United States. What started as a labor dispute between copper mining companies and their workers turned into vigilante action against the allegedly nefarious activities of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). This site is a research-based collection of primary and secondary sources for the study of the deportation of over 1,000 striking miners from Bisbee on 12 July, 1917.

Materials include I.W.W. publications, personal recollections, newspaper articles, court records, government reports, correspondence, and journal articles that are part of the collections of three libraries: The University of Arizona Library, the Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, Arizona, and the Sharlot Hall Museum, Prescott, Arizona.

"Unlike orthodox Marxists, we had no revolutionary Bible. Our simple creed was summed up in the Little Red Song Book, the I.W.W. Preamble and a handful of ten-cent pamphlets." Ralph Chaplin, from Wobbly: The Rough-and-Tumble Story of an American Radical. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948