Our Mission
The Friends of the Mother Jones Museum works with local citizens and allies in the extended community of interest to preserve and promote our shared history of local coal-mining and labor strife, and maintains a volunteer base for the Mother Jones Museum, located at 215 East Main Street, Mt. Olive, Illinois.
The purpose of the Friends of the Mother Jones Museum shall be to document, preserve, study, and exhibit materials and artifacts of historical significance relating to the history of coal-mining, union labor activity, and strife in local communities in southern Illinois. Our interests include the contributions of Mother Jones, the development of the Union Miners Cemetery, the United Mine Workers of America, the Progressive Miners and the Women’s Auxiliary, and the impact of coal-mining, organized labor, and conflict in the stories of the families and workers who directly experienced these, and whose descendants work to keep their stories alive and relevant to today’s world.
The Mother Jones Museum at Mt. Olive, Illinois sits on the Main Street of a small town on the prairie, in a largely rural county whose communities witnessed some of the greatest struggles for workplace justice in American history. Coal brought the immigrant mining families, as the open land had earlier brought immigrant farmers. The train track runs across Main Street today as it did in 1930 when the train from Washington brought the body of Mary Harris “Mother” Jones to her chosen place of rest.
2019 Mayday Re-enactment of a march by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Progressive Miners of America.
A short distance from the Museum, the Union Miners Cemetery holds the monument to Mother Jones and the graves of hundreds of the miners and their families that she fought for.
The Mother Jones Museum is dedicated to the story of Mary Harris “Mother Jones”, Irish immigrant survivor of the Potato Famine, who lost her family to Yellow Fever and her business to the Chicago fire, who used her courage, intelligence and skill to become a great force for justice for working families. Descendants of many of the families who fought alongside Mother Jones hold the living memory of the coal miner in the family, grew up with the stories of mining life. We honor these families, too, as Mother Jones did, and include stories of their courage at the Mother Jones Museum at Mt. Olive and at the Union Miners Cemetery.
The museum is housed in the City Hall building in Mt. Olive. The Friends of the Mother Jones Museum board is made up of retired coal miners, representatives of several unions, nurses, teachers, skilled laborers, artists, and community activists.
The Spirit of Mother Jones is remembered in both the country of her birth and her final resting place. She was born in the historic Shandon District of Cork City Ireland. See: https://motherjonescork.com
See the Mythic Mississippi Project’s webpage on Mt. Olive for a range of interesting facts about our local historical significance:
References
Autobiography of Mother Jones
Mother Jones and the Union Miners Cemetery, Mount Olive, Illinois, edited by Leslie F. Orear, Illinois Labor History Society, Chicago, 2002.
The Union Miners Cemetery at Mt. Olive, Illinois, A Spirit-Thread of Labor History, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Autumn, 1969, pages 229-266.
Mother Jones The Most Dangerous Woman in America. Elliott J. Gorn, Hill and Wang, New York, New York, 2001.