What Is Union Miners Cemetery?
This is the only cemetery in the USA owned by a labor union!
What Makes It Historical?
The first coal mines in Illinois opened up in 1810 and grew with industrial demand as coal replaced wood for heat and power! To fuel the demand, mine owners employed a combination of children and immigrants to keep wages down. This was before there was much in the way of legal protection for workers, and by 1897, coal miners across the country had had enough, enacting a nationwide strike for better working conditions!
Some mine owners reached agreements, but not in central Illinois. South of Springfield, mine owners knew of the agreement but decided to ship in Black workers who weren’t represented by a union. The organized miners, led by Alexander Bradley, weren’t having it, so on October 12, 1898, a 10-minute gun battle broke out, killing 5 guards and wounding 4, killing 7 miners and wounding 40! Nonetheless, the Battle of Virden resulted in the train of strikebreakers leaving Virden and the mine owners upholding their contract!
The graves of four of those miners became the rallying point for labor demonstrations, and not-in-my-backyard residents demanded that the bodies of those miners be removed! So the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) started their own cemetery, first a single acre in 1899, then expansions in 1902, 1918, and 1931. It was in this cemetery in 1923 that grand old champion of labor, Mother Jones, asked to be buried in “the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the hills of Virden.” When she died in 1930, Depression-ravaged miners still donated what they had to build a 22-foot, 80-ton obelisk of Minnesota pink granite flanked by two bronze miner statues, in her memory. The monument was sculpted by Carl Graf and dedicated on October 11, 1936!
How Can I #HelpTheHelpers?
- Volunteer with the Friends of the Mother Jones Museum!
- Donate to the Mother Jones Museum!
- Be a responsible visitor! Please respect the signs and pathways, and treat all structures and artifacts with respect. They’ve endured a lot to survive into the present. They’ll need our help to make it into the future!
How Do I Get There?
5585 Mt Olive Rd
Mt Olive, IL 62069
(Take Me There!)
When Should I Visit?
Whenever the mood strike you!