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The Haunter of the Dark
The Haunter of the Dark
by H. P. Lovecraft
“The Haunter of the Dark” is a horror short story written by H. P. Lovecraft in November 1935, and published in the December 1936 edition of Weird Tales (Vol. 28, No. 5, p. 538–53). It is part of the Cthulhu Mythos, and it is a sequel to “The Shambler from the Stars”, by Robert Bloch. Bloch later wrote a third story in the sequence, “The Shadow from the Steeple”, in 1950. The epigraph to the story is the second stanza of Lovecraft’s 1917 poem “Nemesis”.
Inspiration
Lovecraft wrote this tale as a sequel and reply to “The Shambler from the Stars” (1935) by Robert Bloch, in which Bloch kills the Lovecraft-inspired character. Lovecraft returned the favor in this tale, killing off Robert Harrison Blake (aka Robert Bloch).[1] Bloch later wrote a third story, “The Shadow from the Steeple” (1950), to create a trilogy.[2]
In Blake’s final notes, he refers to “Roderick Usher”, an allusion to Edgar Allan Poe‘s “The Fall of the House of Usher“, which Lovecraft described in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” as featuring “an abnormally linked trinity of entities…a brother, his twin sister, and their incredibly ancient house all sharing a single soul and meeting one common dissolution at the same moment.” An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that this interpretation is the key to understanding the ending of “The Haunter of the Dark”: “[W]e are to believe that the entity in the church–the Haunter of the Dark, described as an avatar of Nyarlathotep–has possessed Blake’s mind but, at the moment of doing so, is struck by lightning and killed, and Blake dies as well.”[3]
Plot summary
The story takes place in Providence, Rhode Island and revolves around the Church of Starry Wisdom. The cult uses an ancient artifact known as the “Shining Trapezohedron” to summon a terrible being from the depths of time and space.
The Shining Trapezohedron was discovered in Egyptian ruins, in a box of alien construction, by ProfessorEnoch Bowen before he returned to Providence, Rhode Island in 1844. Members of the Church of Starry Wisdom in Providence would awaken the Haunter of the Dark, an avatar of Nyarlathotep, by gazing into the glowing crystal. Summoned from the black gulfs of chaos, this being could show other worlds, other galaxies, and the secrets of arcane and paradoxical knowledge; but he demanded monstrous sacrifices, hinted at by disfigured skeletons that were later found in the church. The Haunter of the Dark was banished by light and could not cross a lighted area.
The Shining Trapezohedron is a window on all space and time. Described as a “crazily angled stone”, it is unlikely to be a true trapezohedron because of the Old Ones‘ penchant for bizarre non-Euclidean angles. It was created on dark Yuggoth and brought to Earth by the Old Ones, where it was placed in its box aeons before the first human beings appeared. After the passing of the Old Ones, during the final stages of the lower Triassic period, the trapezohedron was salvaged from the ruins of their cyclopean cities by the serpent people of Valusia. Eventually, after the bloody extermination of the serpent people at the hands of the advancing pre-human hordes of Lomar, the device found its way into the possession of the primitive men ofLemuria, Atlantis and in later cycles the Pharaoh Nephren Ka of Egypt until at last it was unearthed and brought to New England.
After the death of Robert Blake, who came to grief after discovering the Shining Trapezohedron and deciphering texts about it from ancient evil cults, the artifact was removed from the black windowless steeple where it was found by a Dr. Dexter and thrown into the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay. It was expected to remain there, under the eternal light of the stars, forever; yet, Robert Bloch’s sequel, “The Shadow from the Steeple”, proved that Nyarlathotep had cheated Dexter, forcing him to peer into the stone and throw the stone into the bay, where the eternal darkness of the depths gave the Haunter the power to remain perpetually free; it used this power to merge with Dr. Dexter and make him one of the world’s leading nuclear scientists-in charge of atomic investigation for warfare.
Nyarlathotep appears in this story as the “three-lobed burning eye”, a huge bat-winged creature, with a burning tri-lobed eye appearing unseen from the Trapezohedron. Blake realizes the horror can only travel in the dark. When a storm and power blackout envelop the city, he scribbles down his findings, concluding the story with his terrified record of what he can only glimpse of the approaching beast. “I see it– coming here– hell-wind– titan-blur– black wings– Yog-Sothoth save me– the three-lobed burning eye…”
Characters
Robert Blake
Main article: Robert Harrison Blake
Robert Harrison Blake is a fictional horror writer who first appears, unnamed, in Robert Bloch’s 1935 story “The Shambler from the Stars”. In Lovecraft’s sequel, “The Haunter of the Dark”, Blake dies while investigating the Starry Wisdom cult of Enoch Bowen. Lovecraft modeled Blake on Bloch, but also gave him characteristics that evoke Clark Ashton Smith and Lovecraft himself.
Lovecraft indicated in his letters with then-young writer Robert Bloch, that the character Robert Blake was an intentionally thinly veiled gesture at killing off one of his friendly correspondents. In 1936, Bloch published story that continued the professional fun, in which Blake did not actually die, but was possessed by Nyarlathotep, and kills off a character based on Lovecraft.[4][5][6]
Blake’s death is the starting point for another sequel by Bloch, “The Shadow from the Steeple” (1950). Blake’s fiction is referred to in Ramsey Campbell‘s “The Franklyn Paragraphs” (1973) and Philip José Farmer‘s “The Freshman” (1979).
Lovecraft’s tale names five stories written by Robert Blake: “The Burrowers Beneath”; “Shaggai”; “The Stairs in the Crypt”; “In the Vale of Pnath” and “The Feaster from the Stars” which as Robert M. Price has pointed out are friendly spoofs of tales written by Robert Bloch (for more info see Price’s anthology The Book Eibon(Chaosium, 2002, p. 191). Author Lin Carter wrote stories which are pastiches of either Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith utilising all five titles.
Brian Lumley borrowed the title The Burrowers Beneath for his first novel (1974). Fritz Leiber also used the title “The Burrower Beneath” for a story which became “The Tunneler Below” and finally “The Terror from the Depths” (in Disciples of Cthulhu Cthulhu Mythos anthology). Robert M. Price has also used the title “The Burrower Beneath” for a story set in the Eibonic mythos of Clark Ashton Smith - see Price’s anthology The Book of Eibon (Chaosium, 2002).
Leigh Blackmore‘s poem “The Conjuration” (in his collection Spores from Sharnoth and Other Madnesses, P’rea Press, 2008) was inspired by the title “The Feaster from the Stars”. Blackmore’s story “The Stairs in the Crypt” (not to be confused with Lin Carter’s story of the same title) was also inspired by the name of Robert Blake’s tale.
Enoch Bowen
In Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark”, Enoch Bowen is a renowned occultist and archaeologist who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1843, Bowen earned some measure of fame when he found the tomb of the unknown pharaoh Nephren-Ka. A year later, Bowen mysteriously ceased his archaeological dig and returned to Providence where he founded the Church of Starry Wisdom. He dies circa 1865. He also appears in “The Shadow from the Steeple”, Robert Bloch‘s sequel to “The Haunter of the Dark”.
Ambrose Dexter
In “The Haunter of the Dark”, he is referred to only as “superstitious Doctor Dexter”, who threw the Shining Trapezohedron into “the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay” after the death of Robert Blake.
In “The Shadow From the Steeple”, Bloch’s sequel, the darkness of the bay’s bottom gives Nyarlathotep the power to possess Dr. Dexter (who is given the first name of Ambrose). The possessed Dr. Dexter takes a position on a nuclear physics team developing advanced nuclear weapons.
Connections with other tales
- The Shining Trapezohedron is mentioned as having been fashioned on Yuggoth, an outpost of the Mi-Gomentioned in “The Whisperer in Darkness“.
- “It (i.e. The Shining Trapezohedron) was treasured and placed in its curious box by the crinoid things of Antarctica”, suggesting a connection with the Elder Things from At the Mountains of Madness.
- The serpent-men of Valusia also held possession of the Shining Trapezohedron at one point, connecting it to the Kull tales of Robert E. Howard.

- The “catacombs of Nephren-Ka” are mentioned as the haunt of ghouls in “The Outsider“, and Nephren-Ka is mentioned as the Pharaoh who built a temple with a lightless crypt to the Shining Trapezohedron “did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments and records”.
- The events of this story are alluded to in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, in which they are depicted as having actually happened, and Lovecraft’s story having been inspired by them.
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
Posted in Art, Culture, Fiction, History, INTERNATIONAL, Leadership, Literature, Media, Pop culture, Social Media
Tagged Ambrose Dexter, Art, Artists, Arts, Arts and Entertainment, At the Mountains of Madness, Church of Starry Wisdom, Cthulhu Mythos, Enoch Bowen, H. P. Lovecraft, Narragansett Bay, Nyarlathotep, Old Ones, pharaoh Nephren-Ka., Popular Culture, Providence, Rhode Island, Robert Blake, Robert Bloch, Society and Culture, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shambler from the Stars, The Shining Trapezohedron, Yuggoth
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Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System
Aegis
Ballistic Missile Defense System
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System is a United States Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency program developed to provide a last line of defense against ballistic missiles. Aegis BMD (also known as Sea-Based Midcourse) is designed to intercept ballistic missiles post-boost phase and prior to reentry. It builds upon the Aegis Weapon System with the AN/SPY-1 radar and Standard missile technologies. Aegis BMD equipped vessels can transmit their target detection information to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, and if needed engage potential threats using the SM-3 missile.

The current system uses the Lockheed-Martin Aegis Weapon System and the Raytheon RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3). Notable subcontractors and technical experts include Boeing, Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Honeywell, Naval Surface Warfare Center, SPAWAR Systems Center, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (Lincoln Lab).
Aegis BMD Vessels

As of June 2006, the US Navy has equipped 3 Ticonderoga class cruisers, the USS Lake Erie, USS Shiloh and USS Port Royal, with anti-ballistic missile capability. The US Navy is currently converting 15 additional Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to incorporate the Aegis BMD capability. These ships include: USS John Paul Jones, and USS Russell, USS Ramage, USS Benfold,USS Milius and USS Decatur.[1] A total of 3 cruisers and 15 destroyers are scheduled to have BMD capability by 2009.[2]

FTM-11 (retest)
On April 26, 2007, Aegis BMD successfully intercepted its eighth target in ten attempts. This test marked the 27th successful “Hit-to-Kill” intercept (for all MDA systems) since 2001. The USS Lake Erie was the firing ship and utilized the Aegis 3.6 Weapon System. The interceptor was the SM-3 Block-Ia. This test not only demonstrated the ability of ABMD to intercept a ballistic missile but also demonstrated the Lake Erie’s ability to simultaneously track and intercept antiship missiles. This test also utilized the Solid Divert and Attitude Control System (SDACS), in the full pulse configuration.[9]
FTM-12
FTM-12 Stellar Athena Quicklook
FTM-12 Stellar Athena B-Roll
On June 22, 2007, the USS Decatur, using the operationally-certified Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Weapon System (BMD 3.6) and the Standard Missile – 3 (SM-3) Block IA missile, successfully performed a “Hit To Kill” intercept of a separating, medium range, ballistic missile. The target missile was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, HI. The Aegis-class cruiser USS Port Royal, Spain’s Álvaro de Bazán class frigate MÉNDEZ NÚÑEZ (F-104), and MDA’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) mobile ground-based radar also participated in the flight test. FTM-12 (Codename: Stellar Athena) was the first to use an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer as the firing ship.[10]
JFTM-1

(Codename: Stellar KIJI) On 17 December 2007, the JDS Kongō successfully intercepted a ballistic missile with SM-3 Block IA and Aegis System. The target was launched from Pacific Missile Range Facility. This was the first time a Japanese ship was selected to launch the interceptor missile. In previous tests Japanese ships provided tracking and communications.[11]
Japanese Variant

Japan’s foreign minister Hirofumi Nakasone and South Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Yu Myung-hwan agreed that early April 5, 2009 launch[13] of the North Korean Unha-2 satellite violated UN resolutions 1695 and 1718 of July 2006. Japan’s cabinet examined approval of a JMSDF AEGIS BMD engagement in the event of a failure of the Taepondong launch.[14][15][16][17]
Japan also noted that it could bypass cabinet for an interception under Article 82, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Self-Defence Forces law.[18] In total, 5 AEGIS destroyers were deployed at that time.[19]
The intercept-capability was a 2-tiered[20] use of SM-3′s in the boost phase and Patriot AC-3′s in the event of re-entry in Japanese airspace during a potential failure.[21]
Supplemental to SM-3 capability the Japanese system incorporates an airborne component. Together discrimination between platform tests and satellite launches is possible by analyzing the angle of ascent.[22]

U.S. Exploring Cooperation With Ukraine On Missile Defense System
Posted in Culture, Current Affairs, Design, History, INTERNATIONAL, Leadership, Political, Science, Society, Technology, War
Tagged Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, History, Middle East, Military History, Military Science, National missile defense, Technology, United States Navy, USS Port Royal
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The Effect of Personality and Public Urination in Military, Sports and Diplomatic History
The Effect of
Personality and Public Urination
in Military, Sports and Diplomatic History


Robert Massie discusses an interesting incident involving the Duke Of Marlborough (John Churchill) and a Swedish Ambassador acting on behalf of the King of Sweden (Charles XII) in the late 17th Century amid the Wars of Spanish Succession and the Great Northern Wars.
The Protocols of a titled Nobleman meeting an actual King (Head of State) were on the minds of both parties in this meeting between probably the two greatest Military Minds of the period. Charles had remarked that he found John Churchill “rather overdressed for a soldier” and the Duke probably was not pleased with this remark, however he still tended to flatter Charles in an effort to keep him out of areas that the Duke was engaged in.
Whether on Charles instructions, or some other reason, the Ambassador chose to keep the Duke waiting to be received for a considerable period of time in some effort to perhaps remind the Duke of his position as not being a Head of State. When the Swedish envoy finally did get around to coming out and receiving the Duke, the Duke was Furious, but had considered his response well.


The Duke emerged from the Carriage, walked straight past the waiting dignitaries, not acknowledging them and proceeded to the nearest wall. When he got to the wall, he unfastened his breeches and extracted his member and released the full contents of his bladder on the wall in a slow and unhurried fashion. Once done, he then successfully carried on with the conference and achieved his aims and every ones station was satisfied with the results.A good chuckle all around, quick thinking on the Dukes part and a very amusing story.

In a similar vein, in the closing stages of the Second World War, the Allied Front, and Army Group Commanders (Patton was under Omar Bradley) in Western Europe all wanted to be the first to cross the Rhine, Patton sent some troops over in a boat first, stealing the thunder of Montgomery’s slightly later huge, well planned crossing of the Rhine further to the North and then famously urinated into the river as an act of defiance.

Another humorous story concerns the meeting of George Patton and his boss George Marshall shortly after the landing in Normandy when General Marshall decided to remind Patton who was who in the United States Army, possibly making Eisenhower and Bradley’s job controlling Patton a little easier.

The United States Army, under George Marshall in the Second World War was very much centered around Supply and Logistic issues, Marshall himself being one of the strongest advocates of these doctrines. George Patton was aware of these issues as were his superiors aware of his talent for pursuit and worrying about supply issues later. At their meeting on the Normandy beachhead, General Marshall decided to ask General Patton where his supply rail head was located. At this time, Patton didn’t know and muttered an excuse about being confused by all the French Town names (when both he and Marshall knew he was fluent in French, he lied.) General Marshall went into a tirade about wasting the taxpayers money by sending him over here to France when he didn’t know where his supplies were coming from, and told him to straighten up or he would be sent home. I’m sure that Eisenhower, Bradley and Montgomery were delighted that somebody took a little steam out of Patton’s huge ego and it is kinda funny. George Patton had managed to create a variety of problems with his behaviors and needed a kick in the butt from time to time to remember who and what his job was, in between insulting the Allies and some anger management problems and by generally having a loose mouth that got him in trouble if he wasn’t being careful, but he knew better than to really piss off Eisenhower and Marshall, and Patton had yet to urinate in the Rhine which probably didn’t particularly please Marshall either. Boys will be Boys!!! Some of the same personality differences were visible in Desert Storm with Powell and Stormin Norman, but to a lesser degree certainly.

Well, Bobby Knight has yet to urinate publically as the result of some officiating dispute, which brings me to the topic of personality. Sarah Palin was nice enough to bring up sports analogies in her speech resigning as Governor as well as bringing up Douglas MacArthur so I began thinking about loose cannons and discipline.

From a purely mental health perspective, many of the behaviors of some of histories most successful people are distinctly at odds with modern therapy and emphasises. Now Charles XII probably should have taken some other course than the one that ended with his death and the loss of the Swedish Empire, but his story is oddly compelling. George Patton needed therapy, but would he have been the George Patton that was needed after it? Bobby Knight is an excellent Basketball Coach, regardless of how many Academic feathers he ruffles and maybe each is needed as part of the whole and has some qualities to offer for emulation or at least consideration. But you better watch out for Sarah Palin, cause she is on the “Screamer Model”, she runs on emotion where Barack Obama is the thoughtful reflective one, both types of people have histories of success and achievement.

Charles XII of Sweden and the Great Northern War.
I’m gonna start throwing chairs real soon at this rate?!?!

Kindly recall that we threw the Reagan Clones out of office because we got tired of the Rich getting Richer, while the Poor got Poorer and the Middle Class got stuck in a rut ?!?!

But, that was the least psychotic episode Michelle has had in a while, it’s progress I think??
Rutgers coach fired for abuse of players – CBS News Video
Posted in Art, Culture, Europe, History, INTERNATIONAL, Literature, People, Political, Society, War
Tagged basketball coach, Bobby Knight, Charles XII, Duke Of Marlborough, fired basketball coach, George Marshall, George Patton, John Churchill, Mike Rice, Military History, Rutgers University, Sarah Palin, Society and Culture, the Great Northern War, United States Army, Wars of Spanish Succession
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Troops called out in Bloomington Normal Illinois, Mother Jones appears!!!
Troops called out in Bloomington Normal Illinois
Mother Jones appears!!!

Mother Jones played key role in 1917 streetcar strike
Pantagraph.com: May 12, 2007
By Bill Steinbacher-Kemp
Archivist/Librarian, McLean County Museum of History

BLOOMINGTON — Mother Jones, the “mother” of the United States labor movement played a pivotal role in the bitter Bloomington, Illinois streetcar strike of 1917.
Mary Harris Jones was born in 1830 in Cork, Ireland, and her family emigrated to the United States when she was a young child. She became a teacher and dressmaker but lost her husband and four children to the Memphis yellow fever epidemic of 1867.
Eventually, “Mother” Jones, as she came to be called, developed into a battle-hardened union organizer who crisscrossed the nation to rally labor in its often-bloody struggle to earn recognition and concessions from Gilded Age robber barons. She also rallied public opinion against the cruelest abuses of laissez faire capitalism, such as child labor.
Thus it’s no surprise that in the summer of 1917, 87-year-old Mother Jones found herself in Bloomington urging striking street railway workers to fight, in the literal sense of the word, for their union rights.
Horse-drawn streetcars first plied Bloomington streets in 1867. The electric era arrived in 1890, and during its heyday, the railway operated an expansive system that not only connected downtown Bloomington to downtown Normal, but also reached deep into residential neighborhoods.

Times, though, were tough for the motormen conductors and other workers of the Bloomington & Normal Railway & Light Co. Back in 1904, a six-month strike ended in defeat. Their last pay raise came in 1914. Now, in 1917, Superintendent D.W. Snyder refused to collectively negotiate with the disgruntled employees frustrated over long workdays and low pay.
The strike began in late May, and Snyder responded by bringing in out-of-town “detectives” to prevent strikers and their supporters from vandalizing company property or intimidating “scab” hires and veteran employees who remained on the job.
As the strike dragged on, the dispute narrowed to one of union recognition. With the implicit and explicit blessing of city leaders, including the local courts, Snyder remained obstinate in his refusal to meet, let alone negotiate with, union representatives.
On July 5, Mother Jones delivered her fiery call-to-arms at the old Turner Hall on South Main Street. The Pantagraph sent cub reporter James D. Foster to cover the speech. “What are you going to do?” Foster recalled Mother Jones shouting to the crowd. “Are you a damn lot of yellow dogs? Go out and get ’em.”
The crowd poured out of the hall and, by happenstance, came upon the Park St.-S. Main St. car. The conductor and a hired detective were “beaten about the face, head and shoulders.” Brandishing a gun, motorman Frank Hart fled to a nearby shanty. Once disarmed, he was kicked and stoned by the mob.
During the long night, the strikers and their supporters broke the windows of the railway’s powerhouse and headquarters and ransacked a second streetcar. Remarkably, no one was killed; six people were injured.
The next day, some 1,400 Illinois militiamen from Peoria and Chicago arrived to restore order. Most of them encamped on the old courthouse lawn.

The unrest, typical of the era’s rough-and-tumble clashes between labor and capital, drove management to the negotiating table. The railway company soon agreed to accept a unionized work force, a wage increase of about 35 cents a day and a reduction in the workday.
Mother Jones passed away on Nov. 30, 1930, at the age of 100. She is buried at the Union Miners’ Cemetery in Mount Olive.
Several days after her passing, Foster, the former cub reporter who was by then was an editor for the Associated Press, recalled that summer night in 1917. “I have not always agreed with her, nor her fights,” he wrote. “But her passing takes from life and from the news columns one of the most picturesque and noble women this country ever had. She was honest in her beliefs and right or wrong, she knew how to ‘go out and get ’em.’ ”
Bloomington Community Index Bloomington Township, Sections 1 – 12, 14 – 19, 22 – 23 McLean County, Illinois

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (May 1, 1830 or August 1, 1837 – November 30, 1930), born in Cork, Ireland, was a prominent American labor and community organizer, a Wobbly, and a Socialist.
Biography
She was born Mary Harris, the daughter of a Roman Catholic tenant farmer, Richard Harris and his wife Ellen Cotter, on the northside of Cork city, Ireland.[1] Some recent materials list her birthday as August 1, 1837, although she claimed her birthdate to be May 1, 1830. Her claims to an earlier date may have been an appeal to her grandmotherly image. The date of May 1 was chosen symbolically, representing the national labor holiday and anniversary of the Haymarket Riot.[citation needed]
Formative years
The family emigrated to the United States, and settled in the town of Monroe, Michigan. Harris studied and qualified to become a teacher in Toronto in 1857.[2] She moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1862 where she married George Jones, a member of the Iron Workers’ Union.[1] Two turning points in her life were the 1867 deaths of her husband and their four children (all under the age of five) during a yellow fever epidemic in Tennessee, and the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. After the death of her family, she moved to Chicago and recreated herself as an independent dressmaker. She lost her hard-earned home, shop and possessions in the Great Fire. This second loss catalyzed an even more fundamental transformation: she turned to the nascent labor movement and joined the Knights of Labor, a predecessor to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or “Wobblies”).[3] As another source of her transformation into a radical organizer, biographer Elliott Gorn draws out her early Roman Catholic connection — including bringing to light her relationship to her estranged brother, Father William Richard Harris, Roman Catholic teacher, writer, pastor, and dean of Toronto’s diocese of St. Catherine’s, who was “among the best-known clerics in Ontario.” [4] Active as an organizer and educator in strikes throughout the country at the time, she was particularly involved with the United Mine Workers (UMW) and the Socialist Party of America. As a union organizer, she gained prominence for organizing the wives and children of striking workers in demonstrations on their behalf. She became known as “the most dangerous woman in America,” a phrase coined by a West Virginia District Attorney Reese Blizzard in 1902, at her trial for ignoring an injunction banning meetings by striking miners. “There sits the most dangerous woman in America”, announced Blizzard. “She crooks her finger—twenty thousand contented men lay down.”

Children’s Crusade
In 1903 Jones organized children working in mills and mines in the “Children’s Crusade”, a march from Kensington, Pennsylvania to Oyster Bay, New York, the home of President Theodore Roosevelt with banners demanding “We want to go to School and not the mines!” Though the President refused to meet with the marchers, the incident brought the issue of child labor to the forefront of the public agenda. In 1913, during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia, Mother Jones was charged and kept under house arrest in the nearby town of Pratt and subsequently convicted with other union organizers of conspiring to commit murder, after organizing another children’s march. Her arrest raised an uproar and she was soon released from prison, after which the United States Senate ordered an investigation into the conditions in the local coal mines. A few months later she was in Colorado, helping to organize the coal miners there. Once again she was arrested, served some time in prison, and was escorted from the state in the months leading up to the Ludlow Massacre. After the massacre she was invited to Standard Oil‘s headquarters at 26 Broadway to meet face-to-face with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a meeting that prompted Rockefeller to visit the Colorado mines and introduce long-sought reforms.
Later years
By 1924, Mother Jones was in court again, this time facing varying charges of libel, slander, and sedition. In 1925, Charles A. Albert, publisher of the fledgling Chicago Times, won a $350,000 judgment against the matriarch. A popular “tall tale” is often told about Mother Jones, as follows: “In early 1925, Jones fought off a pair of thugs who had broken into a friend’s house where she was staying. After a brief struggle one intruder fled while the other was seriously injured. The wounded attacker, 54-year old Keith Gagne, later died from the wounds inflicted on him by the elderly Jones—wounds including blunt head trauma from Jones’ trademark black leather boots. Police immediately arrested Jones, but she was soon released when the attackers were identified as associates of a prominent local business person.” According to academic-based search engines[clarification needed], this story is false. Not only that, but she was in her late 80s by then, in poor health, and it stretches credulity to imagine that she could have prevailed in such a physical altercation with two men.[citation needed] Mother Jones remained a union organizer for the UMW affairs into the 1920s, and continued to speak on union affairs almost until her death. She released her own account of her experiences in the labor movement as The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925). In her later years, Jones lived with friends Walter and Lillie May Burgess of Hyattsville, Maryland. There she celebrated her self-proclaimed 100th birthday on May 1, 1930, and was filmed making a statement for a newsreel. She died at the age of 93 or 100 on November 30, 1930.[5] Mother Jones is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois, alongside miners who died in the Virden Riot of 1898.[6] She called these miners, killed in strike-related violence, “her boys”.

Legacy
During her lifetime, Mother Jones was known to working folk as “The Miners’ Angel.” Persevering in her efforts despite the many tragic events she witnessed, her fierce determination was vividly expressed in her famous declaration, “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” When she was denounced on the Senate floor as the “grandmother of all agitators,” she replied in typical fashion, “I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.”
During the bitter 1989-90 Pittston Coal Strike in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, the wives and daughters of striking coal miners, inspired by the still-surviving tales of Mother Jones’ legendary work among the miners of that region, dubbed themselves the “Daughters of Mother Jones”. They played a critical role on the picket lines, and in presenting the miners’ case to the news media.[7]
At present, many people know of Mother Jones chiefly because her name has been emblazoned for more than three decades on the cover of every issue of Mother Jones magazine, which reports on and muckrakes about many of the same social causes espoused by Mother Jones herself.
Additionally, Carl Sandburg, in The American Songbag, suggests that the “she” in She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain was a reference to Mother Jones and her travels to Appalachian mountain coal mining camps promoting the unionization of the miners.[8]
Students at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia have the option to apply for residence in the Mother Jones House, which is an off-campus service house. Resident students are required to perform at least 10 hours of community service each week, plus participate in community dinners and other functions.
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones Elementary School in Adelphi, Maryland is named for her.
In November 2007, at the Crystal Theater of South Norwalk, Connecticut,[9]the original musical “Mother Jones and the March of the Mill Children,”[10] by Crystal Theatre cofounder and director Cheryl Kemeny, was performed. Based on the life of Mother Jones, the production (first staged in 1997) featured around 40 middle- and high-school students of South Norwalk and the surrounding area.
Mother Jones is the topic of a track called “The Most Dangerous Woman” on the album Fellow Workers by Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco
Talking Union Blog
National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers (RMT)
Mother Jones
Posted in Comedy, Culture, Events, Funny, History, INTERNATIONAL, Musings, Political, Rants, Society
Tagged American History, Blooington Normal Illinois, Child labor, Comedy, Funny, Gilded Age, History, Mclean County Illinois, Military History, Mother Jones, Pantagraph, Politics, Popular Culture, Rants, Society and Culture, Trade union
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