There are two celebrations for Mother Jones in America over the next few days. An American birthday for Mother Jones takes place in Chicago on Sunday 27th April 2025 from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm at the Irish American Heritage Centre. A great afternoon of music, speakers and performers with Chicago’s Mother Jones, Brigid Duffy attending. Among those appearing are Beatriz Ponce de Leon, Deputy Mayor for Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights, Keith Ricardson, American Postal Workers Union, and Kathy Hanshew, Chicago Worker United.
The 4th annual International Mother Jones Festival is set for Sunday, May 4, from 1 pm to 5 pm in downtown Mt. Olive, IL, and in Union Miners’ Cemetery, where Jones is buried.
Included in the event is Music by Casting Runes, Wildflower Conspiracy, and Piasa Canyon. For the young at heart, there will be a magic and medicine show by Dr. Longhair, Randy Thompson, the Macoupin County Art Collective or MAC, plus performances by Loretta Williams as Jones for the young and old alike. Williams is the only MJ actor to portray her in both the country and place of her birth, City Cork, Ireland and at her final resting place in UMC. She will have a special program in the library. In case of inclement weather, the downtown activities will move inside the City Hall and library.
On behalf of the Cork Mother Jones Committee, we wish both events every success and congratulate all the organisers.
On April 28th the formal announcement of the Mother Jones Sculpture Design winners took place in front of a packed attendance.
A four-person team headed by Kathleen Farrell and Kathleen Scarboro won the contest. The team will include David Standifer and Dante DiBartolo. They are committed to a dynamic presentation of Mother Jones in their work.
This group will now complete the design development and bring the magnificent sculpture to reality near the iconic Water Tower in Chicago. It will be a memorable and fitting tribute to the spirit of Mother Jones, once described as ‘the most dangerous woman in America.’ On behalf of the Cork Mother Jones Committee, we would like to congratulate all involved in this great project and we long to see Mother Jones taking her rightful place in Chicago.
For an account of the great celebrations at the announcement just click on the motherjonesmuseum.org website for a full report.
Portrait of Mother Jones by Kathleen Scarboro.
Portrait of Mother Jones by Kathleen Scarboro used in the celebratory booklet.
Tribute Concert online to Si Kahn on Sunday 14th April 2024.
It will feature over a dozen artists, including Billy Bragg, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Tom Chapin, Jane Sapp, Holly Near and Kathy Mattea who will be chiming in with tales about Si and singing some of his classic songs.
According to his friend John McCutcheon….
“This will be an incredible evening and a chance to not only hear some great music, but honor the guy I declared, “The best damn songwriter in the South….in his spare time !” back in 1975.”
Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich visited Cork city to take part in the 2014 Spirit of Mother Jones festival.
In a memorable performance at the Firkin Theatre in Shandon, Si and the folk singer/activist Anne Feeney joined forces to perform what has become a legendary concert to a packed auditorium and appreciative audience.
Si Kahn and the late Anne Feeney Concert at the 2014 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
Si Kahn was born in 1944 and was greatly influenced by the Civil Rights movement. During the 1970’s, he worked with the United Mine Workers of America in the Brookside Strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, and was an area director of the J.P. Stevens campaign for the ACTWU in Roanoke Rapids in North Carolina. These historic labour struggles are portrayed in the movies Harlan County USA and Norma Rae.
Aragon Mill
In the early 70’s Si spent a few days in Aragon, Georgia where a textile mill had closed down putting about 700 people out of work. He wrote the folk classic Aragon Mill which is a haunting song of quiet despair after the closure of the local mill.
Aragon Mill was included in “New Wood”, Si’s first album. It has been recorded by Planxty, Hazel Dickens, Hans Theessink and many others. The Furey Brothers recorded it as Belfast Mill and there is a version called Douglas Mill.
Si’s songs have been recorded by many artists including Dolores Keane, Eleanor Shanley, Dick Gaughan, June Tabor, Peggy Seeger, the Dublin City Ramblers and Kathy Mattea. He has toured all over Europe, Canada and North America and released many albums of original songs, including a CD of original songs for children, “Good Times and Bedtimes”: a collection of traditional labour, civil rights and women’s songs recorded with Pete Seeger and Jane Sapp.
In 1980, Si founded Grassroots Leadership, a Southern-based national progressive organisation, and he served as its Executive Director for 30 years, retiring on May Day 2010. For the past 13 years, Grassroots Leadership has worked to oppose privatisation and to defend the public sector.
He spent many years actively involved with a campaign to stop what would be the world’s largest open pit mine in Alaska and by doing so to save Bristol Bay, one of the greatest remaining wild fisheries in the world. He released an album in 2013 entitled “Bristol Bay” and is active with Musicians United to Protect Bristol Bay. He also campaigned against mountaintop removal in West Virginia.
Si wrote “Creative Community Organising: A guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists and Quiet Lovers of Justice (Berrett-Koehler 2010).
An earlier book in 2006 “The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatisation Threatens Democracy” was co-authored with feminist philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, his long term partner and spouse. Two earlier organising handbooks, “How People Get Power” and “Organising: A Guide for Grassroots Leaders”, have been extremely popular.
Pete Seeger:
“Si Kahn is one of the best………………..a solid thinker who is able to humanize the political……Ihope he lives to be 120” .
Rosanne Cash:
“I put Si in the same category as Woody Guthrie, as Pete Seeger and in a strange way my Dad, who shared his righteous sense of humanity and his love of the meek who he truly believed would inherit the earth.”
Si has completed a musical about Mother Jones, “Mother Jones in Heaven” and we still hope it can be performed some day in Cork.
Si Kahn and Elizabeth in County Cork in 2014.
Read a wonderful tribute to Si Kahn from Saul Schniderman on his weekly Friday Labor Folklore.
Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), the Irish public broadcaster has reported that recent Oscar winner Cillian Murphy from Cork will star in and produce the film adaptation of Mark Bradley’s book, ‘BloodRuns Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America. (UMWA)
The report states that Murphy’s latest film project will concentrate on the terrible dark tale of corruption in the UMWA trade union in the 60s and early 70s under the leadership of Tony Boyle and the murder of the Yablonski family.
Yet during the long history of this great union, it has provided a beacon of hope and inspiration to hundreds of thousands of American union miners and their families over the past 130 years and had a unique Cork link in the connection with Mary Harris (Mother Jones), who was appointed the union’s first female organiser.
Founded in January 1890, the UMWA went on to become the largest, toughest and most powerful trade union in the history of the troubled American Industrial relations. Men such as Michael Moran, John McBride and Richard Davis along with thousands of miners forged the reputation of solidarity in this proud union.
Mary Harris was appointed a UMWA organiser in the late 1890s and from then until the early 1920s, she spent more time organising miners than any other group of workers. She became part of a large group of tough male union UMWA organisers, many of whom were Irish. Following the Lattimer Massacre in 1897 in which 19 miners were killed, John Mitchell, just twenty eight years old of Irish immigrant parents became the fifth president of the UMWA. He succeeded Michael Ratchford from Co Clare, who as president was the first to notice the organising ability of Mother Jones and hired her to become a UMWA “walking delegate”. John Mitchell later appointed her as a paid organiser in 1901 to try to unionise the difficult West Virginia coalfields.
John Mitchell, President of the UMWA, 1898- 1907
Over the next decade, Mother Jones became the most active, colourful, and outstanding union organiser during a period of violent industrial unrest which saw the UMWA call several national coal strikes to seek decent wages, safe conditions and shorter working hours. Mother Jones was directly involved in numerous strikes from Pittsburg, to West Virginia, to Arnot in Pennsylvania, to Colorado where she unionised thousands of miners as the UMW grew into the strongest and most diverse union in America. Later Jones played an active part in the Coal Wars in West Virginia and Colorado from 1912-1914 in which dozens perished in the brutal pitched battles between the miners and militias along with private detective firms paid by the mine owners.
Fred Mooney and Frank Keeney., officers of the UMWA in West Virginia.UMWA Banner. Source. James Goltz,
In July 1902, as a result of her union activities, Mother Jones was described in court as “the most dangerous woman in America.”. Later she fell out with President John Mitchell but each retained a great respect for each other. Today a large monument of John Mitchell stands in Scranton in Pennsylvania, the hometown of President Joe Biden. Very soon Mother Jones will have her own monument in the city of Chicago.
Monument to John Mitchell in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
In recent years the UMWA union membership has been much reduced due to the decline of the mining industry but it is now actively organising among other workers including the public sector.
The current president of the UMW is Cecil Roberts, who is the great-grandson of Ma Blizzard.
Cecil Roberts. Source (Wikipedia).
Ma Blizzard was a fearless union activist in Cabin Creek, West Virginia, and a great personal friend of Mother Jones during the Coal Wars. Her son Bill Blizzard was a miners leader at the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921.
Ma Sarah Blizzard.
President Roberts in a beautiful Proclamation, presented by James Goltz from Mt Olive, Illinois to the Cork Mother Jones Committee in 2014 expressed “special thanks and recognition to the remarkable annual Spirit of Mother Jones Festival for keeping her Irish Spirit alive in her birthplace in County Cork, Ireland, in the Shandon area of Cork City”.
James Goltz from Mt Olive with the UMWA Proclamation to Cork at the 2017 Festival.
Proclamation to the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival from President of the UMWA, Cecil Roberts in 2017.
Speaking about Mother Jones, the UMWA Proclamation continued,
“We loved her and still love her. We call her the Miners’ Angel. Only an angel could have endured all of the suffering, hate and obstacles that the industrial masters hurled at her as she valiantly fought for the dignity, economic security and safety for mine workers and their families.”
extract from the Proclamation to the Spirit of mother jones festival from cecil roberts, president of the umwa.
The connection of the UMWA to Cork continues as we look forward to Oscar winning actor, Cillian Murphy playing the part of Chip Yablonski as he seeks justice for his coal mining father.
Delegate Badge to the 100th UMWA annual delegate conference in 1990, held in Miami, Florida.
Mother Jones passed away at 11.55pm on Sunday November 30th, 1930. This year marks the ninety third anniversary of her death. The death certificate stated it was due to senility. She was ninety three years old. A requiem mass was held for her at St Gabriel’s Church in Washington on the morning of December 3rd.
Mother Jones and friends with a birthday cake on her American birthday 1st May 1930. She had claimed to be one hundred years old, in reality, Mother Jones was ninety two at the time. Mother Jones lived on the farm run by Walter and Lillian Burgess at Old Powdermill Road, Hyattsville, near Washington DC, where this birthday party was held. Photo courtesy of Saul Schniderman.
Her remains were taken by railroad car to St. Louis Union Station and then the 40 miles onwards to Mount Olive. A band played “Nearer, My God, to Thee” as thousands of people awaited the transfer of her coffin to the Odd Fellows’ Hall. It lay in state until the memorial service on Sunday during which many thousands of workers, union officials and the curious filed past.
Thousands of union miners march in Mt Olive at the funeral of Mother Jones (Illinois Labor History Society).
The Ascension Church was packed for Fr John Maguire’s eulogy at 2pm, with thousands of miners gathered outside, packing the nearby streets listening on loudspeakers. On the morning of Monday, December 8th after 10:00 am Mass, her casket was then taken to Mount Olive Miners cemetery to her final resting place.
Union leaders carry the coffin of Mother Jones,
Old photos show an enormous gathering of people covering the large graveyard. Motion picture cameras record the huge funeral throngs.
Fr Maguire’s tribute opened with;
“today in gorgeous mahogany furnished and carefully guarded offices in distant capitals, wealthy mine owners and capitalists are breathing sighs of relief.
Today upon the plains of Illinois, the hillsides and valleys of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, in California, Colorado and British Columbia, strong men and toil worn women are weeping tears of bitter grief.
The reasons……….are the same. Mother Jones is dead.”
Fr. Maguire tribute.
It was hard to imagine that this frail Cork women was once branded as “the most dangerous woman in America”.
Thousands gather outside the Ascension Church, Mt Olive, Illinois.
The Mother Jones Heritage Project has been extremely busy in Chicago planning for the landmark monument to Mother Jones in the city. It is hoping that the statue will be erected during 2024. Fundraising continues and we ask our supporters and friends to contribute, if possible.
The Mother Jones Heritage Project in Chicago wishes to thank all who helped to ensure Mother Jones took part in many parades for Labor Day, including Reno Nevada, Chicago, Rockford, Princeton Indiana’s huge LaborFest, and Nashville Tennessee’s upcoming parade. More photos here.
Brigid Duffy (Chicago’s Mother Jones) appeared in costume for many of the events.
At the March of the Mill Children 2023. Credit (Mother Jones Heritage Project).
On July 7 2023, the Mother Jones Heritage Project organized a 130th commemoration of the March of the Mill Children at City Hall in Philadelphia, where the dramatic 1903 march was launched . Amidst concerns over the growing number of children in dangerous jobs, this issue is as relevant as ever. See the full story.
Further Funding for the Mother Jones Statue in Chicago
The Mother Jones Statue campaign announced on June 19 last that it has received a further $250,000 funding for the statue project at the Water Tower in Chicago.
Brandon Johnson, Mayor of Chicago making the announcement
The years of work the Chicago Committee has invested in planning for a Mother Jones statue is getting closer to fruition and the Cork born labour and union organiser will soon grace the Chicago skyline.
It is particularly rewarding that this is part of a package in support of multiple projects of underrepresented peoples projects. The Mellon Foundation announced a grant of $6.8 million to The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) to support the Chicago Monuments Project (CMP) and citywide community-generated commemorative initiatives and installations.
The Plaza where the Mother Jones Statue will be erected.
The Mellon Foundation grant, in coordination with the Monuments Project, is part of a recent expansion of the Mother Jones project from the original plan. This is now a landmark project that will result in a much bigger impact.
The Mother Jones Monument project committee has now raised about $160,000 dollars and still needs about $40,000. The committee wishes to raise further funding to fulfil its share of the costs of this magnificent project, some $200,000 and continues to seek donations, including from Ireland. Congratulations to all for the hard work in organising the Mother Jones statue project from a dream to a reality.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee is proud to present the 1954 documentary Salt of the Earth at this year’s Festival. It will be shown on Thursday 27th July 2023 at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon, beginning at 11:00 am.
Salt of the Earth is the story of a strike which is based on a 1951 strike in New Mexico.
Deemed “culturally significant” by the US Library of Congress,it is now preserved in the National Film Registry.
Source: Wikipedia.
On its release in 1954, the American Legion called for a nationwide boycott, it was denounced in the US House of Representatives, investigated by the FBI and the film set was attacked by vigilantes. As its writer Michael Wilson, director Herbert J Biberman and producer Paul Jarrico were all blacklisted in Hollywood in the McCarthy campaign against Communism, Salt of the Earth itself was also blacklisted and many cinemas refused to show it..
Due to financial constraints, a few professional actors such as Rosaura Revueltas as Esperanza Quintero (later deported to Mexico). Will Geer played the Sheriff, he was a socialist, a comrade of Woody Guthrie to whom he introduced Pete Seeger. (he is better known to Irish audiences as Grandpa in the Waltons). They were joined by miners from Local 890 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter workers. and their families in the cast. Juan Chacon who played Ramon Quintero was a union local official.
Rosaura Revueltas and Juan Chacon. Source: Wikipedia.
The blunt and austere realism of the strike is full on and direct in some emotional and powerful scenes. Crucially it embraces a unique feminist approach to union politics which was rare in the early 1950 cinema. The wives, family and widows of the miners rally to offer hope for the future of migrant workers.
The earlier efforts of Mother Jones to assist the Mexican trade unions and support the Mexican Revolution is especially relevant
In spite of production difficulties and the quality, this film remains long in one’s mind due to its honesty, its realism and the common human story of labour injustice it displays as the participants strive to tell the story of the union activists and the strike.
Even the biblical origins of its title, Salt of the Earth did not prevent its condemnation in some quarters as communist propaganda. Yet its message lives on as a brave political statement in opposition to the rampant McCarthyism which prevented progressive film making, culture and the arts in America. That it survives and endures almost 70 years later is testament to the everlasting story of workers organising to fight injustice.
Salt of the Earth will be shown on Thursday morning 27th July 2023 at 11:00 am at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon followed by a discussion. Running time 90 minutes.
A Mother Jones Birthday party will take place on Sunday 30th April from 3 – 5 pm at the Irish American Heritage Centre in Chicago.
It will feature Liz Carroll, (fiddle), Brendan and Siobhan Mc Kinney (pipes and Flute), Kathy Cowan, vocalist and Mother Jones, Brigid Duffy. In attendance also will be Sarah Keating, Vice Consul of Ireland in Chicago.
Karen White of the NEA. (Source: Mother Jones Heritage).Kathy Cowan. (Source: Mother Jones Heritage)
Karen White of the National Education Association will speak to issues of the exploitation of children on this the 120th Anniversary of the march of the Mill Children led by Mother Jones in 1903.
Fundraising is proceeding for the erection of the new Mother Jones Monument in Chicago.
Meanwhile about 250 miles further south in the town of Mt. Olive, the burial place of Mother Jones an International Mother Jones Festival takes place also on Sunday 30th April. It will be held at the Union Miners Cemetery beginning at 12 noon and continuing afterwards at the Mother Jones Museum on Main Street.
Speakers and artists include the Consul-General of Ireland in Chicago, Kevin Byrne. Tim Drea, President of the Illinois AFL/CIO and Brother Jerome Lewnard of the Viatorian Order. Music will be provided by Wildflower Conspiracy along with a number of other bands. Loretta Williams will participate as Mother Jones and historian, Dale Hawkins will also take part.
Further details call 618-659-8759.
Congratulations to all involved and best wishes from Cork for the May Day American Birthday celebrations for Mother Jones.
Note: The American celebrations have traditionally taken place around May Day which was the day, Mother Jones gave as her birthday, however her real birth date was probably 31st July 1837 as she was baptised at the North Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Anne in Cork on the 1st August of that year.
Credit: Consul General of Ireland, Chicago.Credit: Mother Jones Museum, Chicago
Photo 1: Kevin Byrne Consul General of Ireland, Chicago with Tim Drea, President of the AFL-CIO in Illinois at Mount Olive Cemetery on the 30th May 2023.
Photo 2: Rosemary Feurer of the Mother Jones Museum, Chicago making a presentation of a limited edition artwork by Lindsay Hand, “Chicago March 1915” to Karen White, speaker at the May Day Chicago Celebration of Mother Jones.
On Wednesday, December 24th, Christmas Eve 1913, in Calumet, Michigan, seventy-three men, women, and children, mainly striking mine workers and their families, were crushed to death in a stampede in what became known as the Italian Hall Disaster.
At a crowded Christmas party organise for the children of copper miners, who had been on strike in the local mines since July 23rd of that year, someone shouted “fire” at the entrance to the hall. There was no fire!
Hundreds of people were in the second floor room at the Italian Hall enjoying the miners party. Toys were being distributed to the children by Santa. On hearing the shout from downstairs, there was a huge panic and a mass rush down a steep narrow stairs to the exit which caused multiple deaths, especially among the children.
Italian Hall: (Wikipedia) John William NaraThe Italian Hall today: (Wikipedia)
The strike had earlier been called by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) seeking union recognition and an improvement in wages and working conditions. Mother Jones had visited Calumet in early August to show her support for the workers, before she became embroiled in the Colorado Coal Wars.
Mother Jones visits Calumet in August 1913. Courtesy of Jeremiah Mason of the National Park Service.
The Arrival of Mother Jones in Calumet in 1913. Courtesy of Jeremiah Mason of the National Park Service.
The mine owners in Copper Country refused to talk to the union members and the long and bitter strike continued until March 1914 in spite of this tragedy. Later investigations failed to reveal exactly who had wrongly called out “fire” which started the panic. Mother Jones blamed an anti union “law and order crowd” in the Calumet region for the false fire call which led to the deaths and repeatedly mentioned this dreadful tragedy in later speeches.
The sad and harrowing scenes in the town of Calumet on Christmas Day and over the 1913 Christmas period as the bodies of over 60 children were brought back to their homes left a lasting mark on witnesses. Photos from the time show lines of wooden white caskets. The Red Jacket Town Hall became a morgue, while the massive funeral procession down snow covered Fifth Street to Lakeview Cemetery was heart-breaking. Following several speeches from the strike leaders, the deceased were laid to rest in two mass grave sites.
The disaster at the Italian Hall was memorialised by singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie when in 1940 he wrote the “1913 Massacre”, in which he blamed the copper mines bosses of the Copper Country for the deaths.
“The piano played a slow final tune, And the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon, The parents they cried and the miners they moaned, “See what your greed for money has done””
Candles are lit each Christmas Eve at the local park in Calumet, let us remember them too!
Our thanks to Jeremiah Mason of the National Parks Service, Lake Superior Management Centre at Keweenaw National Historical Park at Calumet.
