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Mother Jones: America's Most Dangerous Woman. A film produced and directed by Rosemary Feurer and Laura Vazquez. (2007). Approximately 23 minutes.
In Upton Sinclair's words, "she was the walking wrath of God," while, less sympathetically, a prosecuting attorney once called her "the most dangerous woman in America." Whether uttered in praise or opprobrium, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones wore such labels as a badge of honor. In a career that spanned more than half a century, Jones stood in the forefront of the labor movement, especially among miners, earning a reputation as a fearless and tireless advocate for workers' rights. In this brief documentary film, financed in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, Rosemary Feurer and Laura Vazquez seek to provide an introduction to Jones's life and put it in context of the emerging industrial labor movement exemplified by the United Mine Workers.
Feurer and Vazquez, professors at Northern Illinois University, rely heavily on the comments of Elliott Gorn, author of the 2002 biography Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, who discusses the process by which Mary Harris, an Irish immigrant, self-consciously...