Mother Jones: Buried Among the Miners She Fought For

Mary Harris Jones, known to the labor movement as Mother Jones, died in nineteen thirty. She claimed to be one hundred years old, though records suggest she was about ninety-three. She spent most of those years in coal mines and on picket lines, organizing workers across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Colorado, and beyond.

She was arrested repeatedly, called the most dangerous woman in America by a prosecutor, and once led a march of child textile workers to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt to demand an end to child labor. She chose to be buried here, in Union Miners Cemetery, beside the men she had fought alongside. The monument also honors General Alexander Bradley, a fellow organizer who died in nineteen eighteen.

For Mother Jones, resting among the miners was not sentiment. It was a final statement about who she stood with.