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"Mother Jones" memorial dedication... Mount Olive, Illinois...
"Mother Jones" memorial dedication... Mount Olive, Illinois...
Item # 721544
October 10, 1936
THE SPRINGFIELD UNION, Mass. Oct. 10, 1936
* Mother Jones honored at Mount Olive, Illinois
* Memorial monument dedication - Unveiling
The bottom of the front page has a brief article with small heading: "'Mother' Jones Is Honored By Thousands of Miners" (see image)
Complete with 16 pages, light toning at the margins, nice condition.
background: On October 11, 1936, an estimated 50,000 people converged on the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois for the dedication of a monumental memorial honoring Mary Harris “Mother” Jones—a 22‑foot‑high obelisk of pink Minnesota granite weighing about 80 tons, flanked by two larger‑than‑life bronze statues of coal miners, conceived and funded by miners themselves during the depths of the Great Depression. The monument stood not only at her gravesite (she had died in 1930) but also at a site symbolizing the sacrifices of miners in strike‑related violence and industrial struggle; the cemetery had been established in 1899 by union miners. Special trains and dozens of buses brought celebrants from across the region, and notable speakers including a U.S. senator and congressman addressed the crowd while newsreel cameras and radio broadcasts captured the spectacle. The event thus served both as a tribute to Mother Jones’s lifelong advocacy on behalf of miners and workers and as a rallying point for labor solidarity—cementing her resignation to lie “in the same clay” as the miners she championed—and establishing the date as “Miners’ Day” (and colloquially “Mother Jones Day”) in Mount Olive.
Category: The 20th Century
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