Mother Jones
Irish-born American labor and community organizer (1837–1930)
Mary G. Harris Jones (baptized August 1, 1837 – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onward, was an American labor organizer, schoolteacher, and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She helped coordinate major strikes, secure bans on child labor, and co-founded the trade union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
After Jones's husband and four children all died of yellow fever in 1867 and her dress shop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, she became an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers of America union. In 1902, she was called "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing miners and their families against the mine owners. In 1903, to protest the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a children's march from Philadelphia to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York.
Early life
Mary G. Harris was born on the north side of Cork, the daughter of Catholic tenant farmers Richard Harris and Ellen (née Cotter) Harris. Her exact date of birth is uncertain; she was baptized on August 1, 1837. Harris and her family were victims of the Great Famine and were among the millions of Irish families driven to emigrate to North America. The family moved to Canada when Harris was 10.
Formative years
Mary was a teenager when her family emigrated to Canada.
The public source identifies “Mother Jones” as irish-born American labor and community organizer (1837–1930). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mother, Jones and Irish-born.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107082. VIAF identifies the subject as 193711314. The Library of Congress control number is n80002291. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1837, 1930, 1897 and 1867.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mother Jones” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.