Officials recently unveiled a historical marker dedicated to union activist Mother Jones at the Coalfield rest area along Interstate 55 in Illinois, not far from where she is buried.
According to the Macoupin County-Carlinville Inquirer-Democrat:
The large, 4×4-foot marker was placed in cooperation with the Illinois Department of Transportation and is paired with an indoor exhibit featuring a 1933 march of coalfield women to Springfield to demand justice and civil rights for workers’ families. […]
The marker dedication, held in conjunction with the end of Illinois bicentennial celebrations, also kicked off a larger project of stories and tours that will be available to Route 66 visitors. The Mother Jones Heritage Project, through funding from the Government of Ireland and the Illinois Humanities, began the launch of labor history stories and tours, including a digital-platform and free downloadable booklet tour of the Union Miners Cemetery/Mother Jones Monument in Mt. Olive and a walking tour of the Virden Mine War conflict of 1898. These resources will be fully available by Dec. 31; some are available now by visiting motherjonesmuseum.org/site-stories (which will be updated as more become available) or downloading phone apps called Vamonde or The Clio and searching in them for the terms “Mother Jones” or “Virden.” […]
The marker and indoor exhibit were funded in part by the Government of Ireland, in recognition of that nation’s growing interest in Mother Jones. In addition, support or funding came from United Mine Workers of America, Mother Jones Foundation in Springfield, Illinois Labor History Society, United Staff Union of Illinois, Springfield and Central Illinois Trades and Labor, Southwestern Illinois Building Trades, Northern Illinois University and Illinois State Historical Society.
“The coalfields were important to shaping all of Illinois’ history,” said Rosemary Feurer, director of the Mother Jones Heritage Project. “The goal of the marker is to draw people who visit the rest stop into a history that they might not normally associate with the prairie landscape of I-55. In addition, we are proud that we have added a woman to another marker in our state’s history.”
Mother Jones was born Mary Harris in 1837 in County Cork, Ireland. A survivor of the potato famine there, she emigrated to North America but lost her husband and four children to a yellow-fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee. He also lost her dress shop to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. She began working as a union activist after those tragedies.
From her Wikipedia page:
From 1897, at about 60 years of age, she was known as Mother Jones. In 1902 she was called “the most dangerous woman in America” for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners. In 1903, to protest the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a children’s march from Philadelphia to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York.
Mother Jones magazine, established in 1976, is named for her.
After he death at age 93, she was buried in Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive alongside the miners who died in the infamous 1898 Battle of Virden near the future Route 66 town of Virden, Illinois.
(Image of Mother Jones historical marker dedication via Illinois Department of Transportation Facebook page)