Mother Jones Memorial

WE COUNT IT DEATH TO FALTER, NOT TO DIEMary “Mother” Jones is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois, just off old US Route 66. This is a picture of her memorial monument there. A founder of the International Workers of the World, she never faltered in her support for working people. She is buried beside fallen heroes from the Virden massacre of 1898.

Mount Olive

“When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that I get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the hills of Virden, Illinois on the morning of October 12th, 1898, for their heroic sacrifice? They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state in America. I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away to feel I sleep under the clay with those brave boys.” Mother Jones said this on November 12, 1923. Seven years later, her wish was honored.

The Union Miners’ Cemetery in Mount Olive is the final resting place of Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. The legendary UMWA organizer is buried with “her boys”—the coal miners she championed tire lessly until her death at age 100 in 1930. A 22-foot-high granite obelisk (a four-sided shaft of stone that rises to a point) features a medallion of Mother Jones, who is guarded on either side by bronze statues of coal miners holding their sledges. The cemetery is linked historically to the Virden Massacre of 1898, when seven miners and five guards were killed. The bloodbath was triggered when Chicago-Virden Coal Company’s armed guards fired on striking miners to break the newly formed union. The union prevailed.

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