A unique lady who never stopped crusading for the rights of laborers well into her death was Mary Harris.  She was a fiery speaker and organizer for the first two decades of the 20th century for the Mine workers. Apart from being a fiery speaker she also embodied rather unusual organizational methods while welcoming all types of people, African-American workers, women, and children to join the strikes. One example is when she organized miners’ wives into teams armed with mops and brooms to guard the mines against outsides. She staged parades with children carrying signs that read, “We Want to Go to School and Not to the Mines.”

Another great example of her nontraditional ways of organization was in 1903, when she led a children’s march of 100 children from the textile mills of Philadelphia to New York City “to show the New York millionaires our grievances.” She led the children all the way to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island home.

Mary Harris moved from town to town in support of workers’ struggles. In Kansas City, she did advance work for a group of unemployed men who marched on Washington, D.C. to demand jobs. While in Birmingham, Ala., she helped black and white miners during a nationwide coal strike. She also help organize a massive show of support for Eugene Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union.

It was 1897 when she was first being referred to as “Mother Jones”. It began after addressing the railway union convention that summer, when  9,000-members of Mine Workers called a nationwide strike of bituminous (soft coal) miners and tens of thousands of miners laid down their tools, Mary arrived in Pittsburgh to assist them. She became “Mother Jones” to millions of working men and women across the country for her efforts on behalf of the miners.

For more great information on Mary Harris “Mother Jones” and other great labor history visit the National Women’s History Museum http://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/mary-harris-mother-jones/