Who was ‘Mother’ Jones and why is this southwest Illinois town dedicated to her memory? (original) (raw)

Hundreds of union pins and stickers line the Mother Jones museum in Mount Olive, Ill. on Sept. 12, 2024.Belleville News-Democrat

A BND series about what makes Belleville, St. Clair County and southwestern Illinois a unique place to live. Send questions and tips to newsroom@bnd.com.

Many travelers through the metro-east can recall a large, hand-painted white sign with crudely sketched words signaling a historic monument near Mount Olive.

Few know that the sign directed them to the grave of the person who coined the phrase “pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

More official-looking signs now lead the way to the memorial and final resting place of “Mother” Mary G. Harris Jones, a woman once dubbed the “most dangerous woman in America” and one of the nation’s first prominent labor organizers and activists.

Mount Olive sits just east of Interstate-55 in Macoupin County, about 50 miles north of Belleville’s public square.

A portrait of Mother Jones stands behind a cardboard cutout of three 20th-century boys working as union miners in the Mother Jones Museum on Sept. 12, 2024. Of all the causes she championed, those of children workers stood at the forefront of Jones’s activism. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

Nestled in a cemetery, which bares the graves of thousands of union miners and their families and descendants, her monumental tomb serves as an imposing reminder of the struggles the working classes faced at the turn of the 19th century.

The final resting place and monument to “Mother” Mary Jones, one of America’s first and most influential labor organizers. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

The entrance to the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Ill. on Sept. 10, 2024. The sign at the top reads “the resting place of real union people.” Thousands of graves serve as a testament to Mother Jones’s organizing efforts in the late 19th and early 20th century. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

Born some time in the early 19th century (usually dated to 1837, when she was baptized), Jones’ near century-long life was characterized by labor, both as a participant and activist. She stopped her first career as a teacher in order to raise children and support her husband in his ambitions as a union organizer for the National Union of Iron Workers before opening a dress shop once he and all four of her children died of yellow fever.

Once her dress making shop burned down in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a life time of fighting for labor rights awaited.

A miner on the Mother Jones monuments sports a red bandana as union miners did in the late 19th and early 20th century. This is the origin of the term “redneck” and was used to show solidarity amongst union workers. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

“She was feisty, deeply committed to social justice, active in supporting workers in almost every major strike of her day—and she had a great sense of humor,” said Adam Hochschild, who founded Mother Jones Magazine in 1971. “You don’t always find all those characteristics together.”

The magazine operates as a nonprofit publication that focuses its progressive views on news, commentary, and investigative journalism on topics including politics, environment, human rights, health and culture.

Hochschild said the founders chose the name to “honor a great American” and partly to “make people curious to pick up the magazine and find out just what it was.”

Magazines aren’t the only tribute to the great labor leader though. The entire city of Mount Olive serves as a testament to Jones’s activism.

With the national election on the horizon, many people have Trump or Harris signs in their front lawns, but almost all of them also share signs of solidarity with union workers, regardless of their political affiliation.

Residents of Mount Olive often visit the cemetery, including this one, who rode his bike through the serene monument on a warm September evening. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

At Mount Olive City Hall, an entire museum to Mother Jones sits open for anyone interested in learning the history of working-class labor.

Inside, photographic displays of armed strikers, despondent child workers and leveled miner villages are juxtaposed with images of Mother Jones posing and union organizers cheering successful bids. Hundreds of local union stickers line pieces of wood and other display cases.

A sign advertising to African American miners, who would replace striking white workers in Illinois. The action resulted in increased racial tensions and damage to the labor movement that Jones would work to correct. “Jones brought diverse workers together, including immigrants and African-Americans, around the ideal of solidarity, finding their common ground so they could acquire power,” said Rosemary Feurer, who works as project manager for the Mother Jones museum. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

Photos of Jones provide a colorful description of the woman and one can see that agitative personality — her mournful black dress and stern, pursed lips show a woman personified by her creed: “I belong to a class that has been robbed, exploited, vilified, persecuted and jailed down the ages, and because I belong to that class, I have the instinct to go and help break the chains.”

“Almost 100 years after her death, she is still inspiring many workers to think about a tradition of struggle,” says Rosemary Feurer, a history professor at Nothern Illinois University specializing in labor history, “and to think of their common interests, their needs and how to organize collectively rather than individually in order to address the same kind of wealth inequality that exists in such an uneven way in our time as it did in hers.”

Each labor day, hundreds descend upon the Union Miners Cemetery to drop off relics of their loved ones, such as this wreathe. In the background lie other graves and a large cornfield that showcases Mount Olive’s historic and contemporary working class nature. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

Feurer, who also works as the project director and statue committee of the Mother Jones museum, says one Jones’s most important works was inspiring and creating other labor organizers. In response to being called “the grandmother of all agitators,” Jones said she wished to be the “great grandmother of all agitators.”

A tombstone of a union miner in Mt. Olive, Ill. Many organizers’ families leave remembrances of them by their graves, such as this bell that a miner would have used for signaling purposes. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

Jones’s work was often met with violence, and she was imprisoned a handful of times while campaigning for labor rights and organizing demonstrations. Many of these scenes are shown at the museum, but traveling exhibits help bring the story to a national level, since that’s what Jones herself did.

“We have worked with people from across the globe to lift up her story,” Feurer said, “because in telling her story, we also capture much of the drama of working class history—the tragedy and the triumphs, the story of how people from across the globe came to the United States and through labor activism, remade the nation into a place that put workers perspectives on the agenda.”

Outside of the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Ill. Near the entrance sits a sign advertising an imminent visit from Cecil Roberts, current president of the United Mine Workers, and whose grand parents both worked and died as union miners. Joshua Carter Belleville News-Democrat

This story was originally published September 17, 2024, 5:45 AM.