Woman from Spillertown

Kathryn Kish Sklar calls this work “a major contribution to our historical understanding of the role of women in organizing American miners in the twentieth century.”

Agnes Burns Wieck was a crusading labor organizer, an activist known as “the Mother Jones of Illinois.” This first book-length biography is a unique portrait of her energy and unremitting dedication to social justice.

Wieck organized miners’ wives and led a movement of Illinois coalfield women. She used her talents as a journalist and a public speaker to campaign for a decent standard of living, for good schools and working conditions in communities free of corporate domination, and for union democracy, racial equality, and acceptance of women in political life.