The Cork Mother Jones Committee is pleased to announce the dates for the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
Our 12th Annual festival will be held in and around Shandon in Cork City from Thursday 27th to Saturday 29th July 2023. All are welcome.
Thanks to our sponsors, the festival remains open to all free of charge. We are promising a very interesting selection of speakers and topics. Further announcements will appear regularly on this website and on the festival Facebook pages.
Hope to see you all and thanks to everyone for your support for this very unique festival.
Terence V Powderly (1849-1924) started life as a 13 year old railroad worker where he worked as an apprentice in a machine shop. Born in Pennsylvania, Terence’s people were from Co Meath in Ireland.
Having joined the trade union movement, he became a moderate head of the Knights of Labor in 1879. This “Order” grew to having about three-quarters of a million members by the mid 1880s, but subsequently went into rapid decline due the growing radicalism and militancy of the new trade unions and the oppression of the growing industrial corporations which treated workers very badly.
Powderly, who originally lived in Scranton in Pennsylvania went on to hold a number of government posts until his death in 1924.
Mother Jones, although regarded as a radical became great friends with Terence and his wife Emma for several decades and stayed at their homes in Scranton and in Washington with them when visiting those cities.
The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 
Mother Jones stayed at the Powderly home in Northwest Washington, DC. After Terence died (1924) Mother moved to Hyattsville, Md. to stay with the Burgess Family on their truck farm. That’s where she died on November 30, 1930. Terence’s wife, Emma, stayed at the Powderly home with her sister and then — after their deaths — the house was given to a small Catholic organization. Today the Powderly home is the residence of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House, a place for single moms and their children to stay and a place where peace and social justice activists meet. So you can see the effect which the Irish diaspora has had on the Washington, DC community.