March 6, 2014
March 6, 2014
Aimee and I are getting tired of the cold, so we pack the car up and head towards my parents’ home in Southern Illinois. We make a brief stop at the Limestone rest area where I read a blurb about the vast coal deposits in Illinois. That is prophetic, because just south of Springfield we make a detour to the little town of Virden. In the main square is a monument to the Battle of Virden. On a large granite wall is a beautifully detailed relief sculpture of the once-famous event. Somebody spent a lot of time creating it. Disappointingly there is almost no verbage explaining what happened. Fortunately I read up on the story before I came. In 1898, mine owners brought a group of southern blacks here to replace striking coal miners. When the Chicago & Alton train arrived, armed union miners surrounded the train and got in a gun battle with the security force. Seven were killed and many wounded. The train was driven off, the mine owner was forced to unionize, and the town of Virden became “sundown” (off-limits to blacks after sunset).
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The dead miners were buried forty miles south in Mt. Olive’s Union Miner cemetery. Buried with them under a memorial is “Mother Jones”. Mary Harris Jones lost her entire family to yellow fever and her sewing business in the Great Chicago Fire. Somehow she resurrected herself as “the miner's angel” leading the unionization of mineworkers nationwide. When she died she requested to be buried here “with her boys”. Apparently she was enough of a liberal hell-raiser that a socialist magazine was named after her.
Aimee and I are getting tired of the cold, so we pack the car up and head towards my parents’ home in Southern Illinois. We make a brief stop at the Limestone rest area where I read a blurb about the vast coal deposits in Illinois. That is prophetic, because just south of Springfield we make a detour to the little town of Virden. In the main square is a monument to the Battle of Virden. On a large granite wall is a beautifully detailed relief sculpture of the once-famous event. Somebody spent a lot of time creating it. Disappointingly there is almost no verbage explaining what happened. Fortunately I read up on the story before I came. In 1898, mine owners brought a group of southern blacks here to replace striking coal miners. When the Chicago & Alton train arrived, armed union miners surrounded the train and got in a gun battle with the security force. Seven were killed and many wounded. The train was driven off, the mine owner was forced to unionize, and the town of Virden became “sundown” (off-limits to blacks after sunset).
posted by Mike and Aimee at 7:06 AM
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