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Article: Labor icon, in depth: Elliott Gorn produces a complete biography of Mother Jones
- Article from:
- Sunday Gazette-Mail
- Article date:
- December 8, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2002 Sunday Gazette-Mail. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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pjnyden@wvgazette.com
ELLIOTT Gorn's book is the definitive work about Mother Mary
Harris Jones, long an icon to West Virginia coal miners and union
supporters. Easy to read and impassioned, critical and exhaustively
documented, this new biography of the "miner's angel" will interest
anyone who follows labor or Appalachian history.
Mother Jones rarely talked or wrote about her early life. Her
first 43 years consume just five pages in her autobiography. And
specific details in her book are often incorrect, Gorn notes in his
own book on her life: "The book is best thought of as akin to
religious testimony, to bearing witness, to a pilgrim's story."
Mother Jones frequently said she was born in ...