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.

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.

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

[5] 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.

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.

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.

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.

Mine operators used the volatile atmosphere as an excuse to deport striking miners, "undesirables" or immigrants that were perceived to be a threat.

Little had broken his ankle and was not part of the Bisbee Deportation but visited organizers in Miami, Arizona, before leaving for Butte, Montana.

The day before the Bisbee deportation, Frank purchased a seat in the Pullman Berth to Salt Lake City.

On the day he left for Butte, Frank contacted Arizona's Governor Campbell about his protest to the Bisbee deportation.

During this period, he also spoke out against US involvement in the war, calling soldiers serving in Europe "Uncle Sam's scabs in uniform."

In the early hours of August 1, 1917, six masked men broke into Nora Byrne's Steel Block boardinghouse where Frank Little was staying.

The note also included the numbers 3-7-77 (a sign of Vigilantes active in the 19th century in Virginia City, Montana, which some people thought referred to grave measurements), and the initials of other union leaders, suggesting they were next to be killed.

[9] The attorney for the Metal Mine Workers said after Little's murder that the union had received warnings about Joe Shannon, Tom Campbell, and another man.

"[7] Union leaders who had seen Little's body at the time insisted that one of the murderers was Billy Oates, a notorious hired thug employed by Anaconda.

Prlja was at the time a motorcycle officer in the Butte police department and like Oates had worked as a security guard for Anaconda.

In addition, Bill Haywood felt Frank's body should be buried in Butte, where his grave would promote positive propaganda for the IWW and be safe from mobs.