City urged to honour its crusading daughter

CORK was urged last night to honour a pioneering Irish woman who fought her entire life for American workers’ and women’s rights.

As the country marked International Women’s Day, Cllr Ted Tynan called on Cork City Council to honour Mary Harris Jones, better known as Mother Harris, who was born in the heart of the city in 1873.

After emigrating to America, she fought for miners’ rights, championed for their wives and children, was once described as the “most dangerous woman in America” and inspired the legendary song, She’ll be coming ’round the mountain.

Cllr Tynan said she remains an iconic figure in the history of the US trade union and women’s movements, and a memorial plaque should be erected near her birthplace.

“There are many memorials, street-names and plaques in Cork commemorating famous men who were born in the city, but apart from the Nano Nagle Bridge, there is hardly anything to remember the city’s famous women,” Mr Tynan said.

“Mary Harris Jones is an internationally renowned woman who spent her life working for the betterment of working people and women in particular.”

Mother Harris was born on Blarney Street, Cork in 1837. She emigrated with her family to Canada around 1851 and later moved to America. In 1861, she married George Jones, a metal worker and trade unionist. He died along with their four young children in the Great Fire of Chicago in 1867.

From the 1870s, Mary devoted her life to working with the wives and families of striking mine workers, before joining the Miner’s Union and later becoming an unpaid union organiser. From 1880 on, she organised many strikes and looked after the welfare of strikers’ wives and children.

In 1902, West Virginia’s District Attorney branded her “the most dangerous woman in America”.

A year later, she organised the Children’s Crusade against child labour, especially in the mines.

In 1913, she was arrested with other union leaders and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, a charge later withdrawn without evidence.

Public outrage against her arrest led to the intervention of the governor who ordered an investigation into working conditions in the mines and the exposed methods of the mine owners. She also organised workers after the Ludlow Mine Massacre in which miners and their families were gunned down by police agents.

She was jailed in 1924 and charged with sedition. She died in 1930 and is buried in Mount Olive, Illinois, beside miners killed in another attack on striking workers by employer’s hirelings.

Cllr Tynan’s call came as Cork’s Lady Mayoress, Tanya Murphy, hosted an event in City Hall, supported by the Irish Examiner, to mark International Women’s Day.

The lunchtime concert featuring the Irish Sopranos, and accompanied by Cork School Choirs, raised funds for the Cork Sexual Violence Centre and the Women of Concern initiative.

The event also featured a photographic exhibition displaying the work undertaken by Women of Concern globally.

The Women of Concern initiative works on three specific projects designed to help and empower women, including an education project in Bangladesh and a gender-based violence project in Ethiopia.