Mary Harris Jones, .
The Mother Jones Monument in Mount Olive, Illinois.
MOUNT OLIVE — The fourth annual International Mother Jones Festival at the Mother Jones Museum will be held Sunday from 1-5 p.m. in downtown Mount Olive and at Union Miners’ Cemetery, where the famous labor activist is buried.
The event will feature music, a magic and medicine show, and a demonstration of how shoes like the ones Jones took to striking miners were made. Loretta Williams, an actor who has portrayed Jones in Cork, Ireland, and Mount Olive, will perform.
A shuttle bus between downtown and the cemetery will be provided. Docents will be at both the cemetery and for guided tours. If it rains, the downtown activities will move inside City Hall and the library.
Mary “Mother Jones†Harris was a prominent labor activist and union organizer from the 1870s until her death in 1930 at age 93. She’s buried in Mount Olive alongside union miners who died in the Battle of Virden in 1898.
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Mount Olive is on Interstate 55 about 50 miles north of downtown St. Louis.
The Post-Dispatch contributed to this item.
