Who was Mother Jones?

[Donkees]

Excerpt:

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was a fearless fighter for workers’ rights. When she was mocked as the “grandmother of all agitators,” in the U.S. Senate, Mother Jones replied that she would someday like to be called “the great-grandmother of all agitators.” She helped to shape a spirit of civil disobedience in the cause of justice. Mother Jones deeply believed that a workers movement would replace “this moneyed civilization with a higher and grander civilization for the ages to come.”

Mary Harris’ early life was shaped by struggles that she viewed as part of a system of class injustice. She was born in 1837 in Cork, Ireland, enduring the Great Hunger where she witnessed starved corpses carted off while food was taken to the ports of the River Lee to be exported. Harris emigrated to Canada and then the U.S., earning a living as a teacher and seamstress, then moved to Memphis where she married union iron molder George Jones and started a family. But when yellow fever struck the city, “the rich and the well-to-do fled the city”, while workers like her husband perished from it. “One by one my four little children sickened and died. . . I sat alone through nights of grief. No one came to me. No one could.” Jones then moved to Chicago, where she sewed for the wealthy until the Great Fire of 1871 made her homeless.

Jones emerged from these struggles indomitable, inspired by the birth of a new labor and socialist movement that contested these injustices. When asked to state her address, Jones often replied that her home was “wherever there was a fight.” From the 1890s through the 1920s she was on the road, and played a role in many strikes and demonstrations. Many commentators and newspapers called her a “folk hero” and “most well-known woman” in the United States. On this website, we are building a map that shows the breadth of her involvement.

Jones emerged as an activist as part of the unemployed movement of the 1890s, which in style was similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement–occupation and encouragement of militant direct action. This movement became connected to the new industrial unions of the era, the American Railway Union organized by Eugene Debs, and the United Mine Workers Union, which launched major strikes in mid-1894. While the armies and the strikes were bitterly crushed and ridiculed, they helped to shape Jones and others to create a movement that mobilized communities of struggle.

http://www.motherjonesmuseum.org/information/who-was-mother-jones/

[Donkees]

1. A Mother to Millions of Working Men and Women

Excerpt:

In June 1897, after Mary addressed the railway union convention, she began to be referred to as "Mother" by the men of the union. The name stuck. That summer, when the 9,000-member Mine Workers called a nationwide strike of bituminous (soft coal) miners and tens of thousands of miners laid down their tools, Mary arrived in Pittsburgh to assist them. She became "Mother Jones" to millions of working men and women across the country for her efforts on behalf of the miners.

Mother Jones was so effective the Mine Workers sent her into the coalfields to sign up miners with the union. She agitated in the anthracite fields of eastern Pennsylvania, the company towns of West Virginia and the harsh coal camps of Colorado. Nearly anywhere coal miners, textile workers or steelworkers were fighting to organize a union, Mother Jones was there.

She was banished from more towns and was held incommunicado in more jails in more states than any other union leader of the time. In 1912, she was even charged with a capital offense by a military tribunal in West Virginia and held under house arrest for weeks until popular outrage and national attention forced the governor to release her.

Mother Jones was deeply affected by the "machine-gun massacre" in Ludlow, Colo., when National Guardsmen raided a tent colony of striking miners and their families, killing 20 people—mostly women and children. She traveled across the country, telling the story, and testified before the U.S. Congress.

https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/mother-jones

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Highly recommend reading her autobiography or listening to the audiobook of it

Last edited Mon May 1, 2017, 07:03 AM - Edit history (1)

available free here - https://archive.org/details/autobiography_jones_librivox

By chapter (Librivox) - https://librivox.org/the-autobiography-of-mother-jones-by-mary-harris-jones/

or the full Librivox audio Youtube -

[cannabis_flower]

3. Another woman

from that time who influenced labor and women's rights was Emma Goldman.

Here's and audiobook excerpt from her autobiography Living My Life, where she talks about her reaction to the Haymarket Affair



http://listentogenius.com/author.php/255

[lillypaddle]

4. Thanks for posting nt

[PatrickforO]

5. FINALLY!!! A union hero being recognized.

And a socialist, to boot! We might be OK after all...