Coalfield Rest Area, I-55 Northbound Sites & Stories / Exhibits / Coalfield Rest Area We placed this major marker and exhibit at the Coalfield Rest Area in 2018. It profiles Mother Jones and the history of a 1933 march to Springfield by women inspired by Mother Jones. See the website/free app from Vamonde for more details. It includes performance, photos and documentary materials. Below that, check out the dedication photos .

Irish Rebel Sites & Stories / Exhibits / Irish Rebel

My Home Is My Shoes We are a Mother Jones kind of Museum--We take her story to the struggles and celebrations Sites & Stories / Exhibits / My Home is My Shoes On the Picket Lines John Deere strike Moline Illinois Kellogg's -Battle Creek Michigan December 2021 December 2021 John Deere strike Moline Illinois 1/10 Chicago Teachers Union Strike 2019 EG49Yd-XkAEeWGw EG4NRslWwAIE_MP EG3HwmMWwAAP8vT EG49Yd-XkAEeWGw 1/7 Workers Education Classes 1/5 Mother Jones Lives -in parades and celebrations 1/12 Chicago St. Patrick 's Day Parade St. Patrick's Day Parades Rockford Womens March 2018

Stories Stories from the Past Culture of Mother Jones Spirit of Mother Jones Stories from the Past Stories from the Past Culture of Mother Jones Culture of Mother Jones Spirit of Mother Jones Spirit of Mother Jones

Exhibits Hover over or tap for a description, then click on any of these to access an in-depth view of the exhibit.

Mapping Mother Jones This map opens a window onto Mother Jones’ activities and reach. These are just a fraction of the places Mother Jones travelled and organized. Click on each one to find a story. Mother Jones’ life was a whirlwind that connected to many struggles across the globe.

Mother Jones & Belleville Hell-raisers Exhibit Sites & Stories / Exhibits / Belleville Labor

The Costa Family and the Ludlow Massacre Sites & Stories / Stories / The Costa Family By Rosemary Feurer The Costa Family gave their lives for the union at Ludlow Massacre. More than a hundred years later, one family member is still seeking answers Linda Linville, the grand-niece of Charlie Costa writes of Cedi that “she was brave and feisty” and felt that the “fight for union was a woman’s responsibility.” She was full-term pregnant just before the massacre. Charlie’s mother “begged Cedi to go with her to someone's ranch. . . Cedi refused and told my grandmother that this was a woman's fight too and that the family needed to stay together." The family brought joy to the Ludlow camp and to the fight for union, from all accounts. ​ Charlie Costa, who was a key union organizer from Aguilar and had worked in the mines of southern Colorado since he was 12, was shot in the head during the April 20 battle. The next morning Cedi was discovered in the pit where they sought cover from the flying bullets over the bodies of her children. She was described as “badly charred” in some accounts. The children were clasped in each other's arms. ​ Newspapers reported that Onofrio, Charlie's father “created a demonstration at the morgue just as the bodies were being removed by a violent attack on the Colorado militia.” Linda writes that her grandparents saw Cedi’s body and it was bayoneted. While the coroners’ records do not show this, “I do not think my grandparents had any reason to lie about this so I would really like to get to the bottom of it.” ​ Some say Cedi had given birth and that this was why the women stayed in the pit. Linda writes “I know that this might be considered by some to be a minor matter considering the broad context of Ludlow, but it disturbs me that this baby’s death has been unacknowledged in the historical record.” ​ Cedi’s parents Antonio and Rafaela Mastro (Petrucella) were alive when they lost Cedi and their grandchildren. Linda would very much like to contact any descendants of the Mastros. ​ The little baby in the photo died of the flu in 1913, not in the massacre.

Learn More Anchor 1 Who was Mother Jones? When Mother Jones was mocked as the “grandmother of all agitators,” in the U.S. Senate, she replied that she would someday like to be called “the great-grandmother of all agitators.” Born Mary Harris in Cork Ireland in 1837, she was an immigrant refugee who lost her entire family in a pandemic, then lost everything in the Chicago Fire of 1871. ​ ​ She became a rebel for justice, and became known simply as "Mother Jones," the mother of the working class. An icon of labor history, she organized against child labor, for workers rights, and helped to shape a spirit of civil disobedience in the cause of justice. Mother Jones believed that a workers movement would replace “this moneyed civilization with a higher and grander civilization for the ages to come.” To learn more, including a short documentary about her, see : Who was Mother Jones? Chicago Mother Jones Statue Campaign Statue Campaign Recent Blogs Labor Day 2023 0 Post not marked as liked March of the Mill Children Commemorated 0 Post not marked as liked Historical Marker to Mother Jones - Evansville, Indiana 0 Post not marked as liked Celebrating Mother Jones in Chicago 0 Post not marked as liked St. Patrick's Day 2023 0 Post not marked as liked We Did It! Mother Jones at the Historic Water Tower 0 Post not marked as liked

Labor Rights Are Human Rights Exhibit, Workers Education Society, St. Louis Sites & Stories / Exhibits / Labor Rights

Mother Jones Monument Union Miners Cemetery, Mt. Olive Sites & Stories / Tours / Union Miners Cemetery About Mother Jones' Monument View Pictures of the Site Guided Tour Read About Mother Jone's Monument Mother Jones’ decision to be buried in Mt. Olive, Illinois' Union Miners Cemetery was due to the battles that were rooted not only in the 1890s but in the 1920s and 1930s. Jones valued the voice of the ordinary miner, and she felt that President John L. Lewis, the head of the United Mine Workers, was eliminating that rank-and-file voice. One month after she spoke at the commemoration event on October 12, 1923, she formally announced the site as her burial place. In 1930 she died and was initially buried there next to the Virden "martyrs" . ​ Soon, a fundraising effort was underway by the miners to build a fitting monument to Mother Jones. In the heart of the depression, when miners around the country were often penniless, they donated in mostly small amounts to build a tremendous 80-ton Minnesota pink granite, 22 feet high, flanked by two bronze statues of miners. They dug the site themselves. The site itself evokes what Mother Jones meant to a generation of trade unionists. The Union Miners Cemetery is in Mt. Olive, a small mining-town that was once the center of a rebellious group of miners who helped to secure Illinois as the solid rock for the United Mine Workers Union. Today thousands of visitors come each year to pay their respects to the memory to Mother Jones and the spirit that guided her and the founders of the labor movement in the United States. They reflect about the connections between the past and the present. ​ The cemetery was established in 1899, when commemorations of the miners killed in the 1898 “Virden riot” became controversial in the Mt. Olive cemetery where they were originally buried. The bodies of the Virden “martyrs” were re-interred in a cemetery established as the Union Miners Cemetery by the Mt. Olive United Mine Workers local. Commemorations of these events in the following years contributed to a generation of activism in the Illinois coal fields. They did this by claiming the kind of memorial space that was denied in other places, such as Haymarket, where police often disrupted commemorations. This built a sense of connection between past and present in the area, and made it clear that ordinary workers had changed the course of history. The role of the ordinary worker came into focus. Mt. Olive was one of the few places in the country where labor history was taught before the 1970s. View Pictures from the Site This is a unique place in the history of the labor movement; it was the only union-owned cemetery in the country. This is a place with a monument to Mother Jones, but it also evokes the power and potential of the labor movement. It is a place of reflection and remembering, of thinking of the labor movement’s roots. It is a shrine not only to Jones but to the sacrifices that connected human rights and labor rights, a place where people wonder when and why labor lost power. Cemetery Tour Guided Tour Learn about this site and the controversies that surrounded it. See dozens of photos, songs, poems, performance by actress Vivian Nesbitt, about the tremendous struggle and effort that brought Mother Jones to this site. The tour below can be accessed from either your computer, or your sm artphone/ipad. Copyright Rosemary Feurer & Mother Jones Heritage Project. Funded by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council. Other options: The Clio version of the tour.