Long live Mother Jones!

“I'm Mary Harris Jones. But I'm called a lot of other names: ‘Bolshevik’, ‘Socialist’, ‘The most dangerous woman in America’, ‘The Walking Wrath of God’”.
Today, the Irish-born schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent American union organizer and activist – she preferred “hellraiser” -- is known simply as Mother Jones. She died on November 30, 1930 in Silver Spring, Maryland and on today’s show we feature memories, tributes and re-enactments from her life, from the Labor Heritage Foundation’s Saul Schniderman, Kaiulani Lee, and Loretta Rymer Williams, all bringing Mother Jones to life with vivid tales from a life of tragedy and an unbreakable commitment to fighting for workers that still inspires us today, 91 years after her death.
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1908. That was the day that an explosion at the coal mine in Marianna, in Washington County Pennsylvania claimed the lives of 154 miners. It was one of the deadliest disasters in US mining history.

Credits/Resources: Empathy Media Lab; Jase Media Service Podcast; Mother Jones marker; The Spirit of Mother Jones - Andy Irvine; Gene Autry sings "The Death of Mother Jones" (1931). 

Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com

Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.

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