Festival to honour heroism of ‘most dangerous woman in US’

An Irishwoman once described as “the most dangerous woman in America” for her fearless campaigning for workers’ rights is to be honoured in her native city this week.

Leading trade union figures from the US are due in Cork tomorrow for the opening of the three-day Mother Jones commemorative festival to mark the 175th anniversary of her birth.

She is one of the heroines of the early days of the American trade union movement, particularly US miners, and is still known as “The Miner’s Angel”.

Mother Jones was born Mary Harris near the North Cathedral, Shandon St, on Cork’s northside in 1837.

Her family survived the Famine and emigrated to the US where, in 1860, she married George Jones. They settled in Tennessee and had four children.

But tragedy struck in 1867 when Memphis was struck by a yellow fever epidemic which wiped out her entire family.

Harris witnessed the horrors of the American civil war before moving to Chicago, where she set up a business which burned in the Great Fire of 1871.

At the age of 60, she became involved in the fledgling US labour movement, witnessing the huge rail strikes of 1867, taking an active part in the march of Coxey’s unemployed army in 1894, and becoming a union organiser for the United Mine Workers Union of America.

She travelled through the US organising workers, mills, and factories.

Her sense of outrage at the sight of thousands of young children working in mills and mines prompted her to lead the famous march of the Mill Children from Pennsylvania to the home of President Theo-dore Roosevelt in 1903.

Her fiery orations and courage representing workers, particularly miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where she faced down the private armies of mine owners, made her a national hero among union activists, who christened her Mother Jones.

She was the only woman present at the foundation of the Industrial Workers of the World in Chicago in 1905, became involved in the Socialist Party of America and supported the Mexican revolution.

She continued her labour organising into her 70s and 80s and was very active in the West Virginia and Colorado Coal Wars from 1912 to 1914, which led to the infamous Ludlow Massacre in Apr 1914.

She was arrested and jailed without charge many times.

She died on Nov 30, 1930, aged 93, and is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery at Mount Olive in Illinois. Tens of thousands attended her funeral and her grave is still a place of pilgrimage.

A specially commissioned memorial plaque by sculptor Mike Wilkins is to be unveiled at John Redmond St near Shandon on Wednesday.

The festival includes a lecture by her biographer, Prof Elliot J Gorn, a documentary by filmmaker Rosemary Feurer, and a concert with Andy Irvine.

Events will take place at the Firkin Crane, St Anne’s Shandon, and the Maldron Hotel.

* Details at www.motherjones175.wordpress.com. See Michael Clifford’s feature tomorrow.