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Article: Mother Jones played key role in bitter 1917 streetcar strike
- Article from:
- The Pantagraph Bloomington, IL
- Article date:
- May 13, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 The Pantagraph Bloomington, IL. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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BLOOMINGTON - Mother's Day brings to mind famous "mothers," such
as Mother Earth and Mother Teresa.
There's also Mother Jones, the "mother" of the United States labor
movement who played a pivotal role in the bitter Bloomington
streetcar strike of 1917.
Mary Harris Jones was born in 1830 in Cork, Ireland, and her
family emigrated to the United States when she was a young child. She
became a teacher and dressmaker but lost her husband and four
children to the Memphis yellow fever epidemic of 1867.
Eventually, "Mother" Jones, as she came to be called, developed
into a battle-hardened union organizer who crisscrossed the nation to
rally labor in its often-bloody struggle to earn recognition and ...