From the late 1870s through the early 1920s, Jones participated in hundreds of strikes across the country. Five-feet tall with snow-white hair, all black dress and confrontational style, Jones was indeed a fierce maternal presence. She reconstructed herself as “Mother” Jones, radical organizer. Having lost her husband and children at the age of 30, Mary began to see the labor movement as her family. She committed herself to the labor struggle for humane wages and working conditions. After losing all her possessions in the great Chicago fire of 1871, Jones sought community in the Knights of Labor. As she sewed clothes for wealthy residents of Chicago, Mary’s resentment of economic inequities grew.
Six years later Mary lost her husband and four young children to a yellow fever epidemic, and returned to Chicago to open a seamstress shop. Jones, a member of Iron Molders’ Union in Memphis. After briefly trying her hand at dressmaking in Chicago, she resumed teaching, this time in Memphis, Tennessee. Mary graduated from school and soon became a teacher at a convent in Monroe, Michigan. The Harrises lived in Toronto, Canada where Richard worked in railroad construction. Mary’s father moved to the United States in the 1840s, and the rest of the family followed soon thereafter. Biographers suggest that she chose 1830 to add to the image of white-haired “Mother” Jones, and May first to connect herself to the Haymarket demonstration for the eight-hour day.
Jones later claimed a birthdate of May 1, 1830.
Mary Harris Jones was born approximately Augin Cork, Ireland to Helen Cotter and Richard Harris. She said of herself, “I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hell-raiser.” While her opponents called her the “most dangerous woman in America,” fellow organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn called Jones “the greatest woman agitator of our times.” Jones combined dynamic speaking skills and radical organizing methods to mobilize thousands of laborers and working-class families. Labor organizer Mother Jones worked tirelessly for economic justice.
0 kommentar(er)
