Reflection on Mother Jones

The first thing about Mother Jones that bothered me was that I had never heard of her before. Even women leading protests have been rare in textbooks, with few exceptions like Rosa Parks. I have been through thirteen and a half years of school, and never once had I heard of her. It would seem like she would be at least kind of famous considering the fact that she was not a miner, or even a man for that matter, yet she managed to lead miners in protests.
It seems that Martin Luther King Jr. may have taken some pages from Mother Jones’ book. Judging by her maternal image, it seems like she was a protester that used non-violent methods to get her point across, which is very similar to what Martin Luther King did. Although, after reading some of her quotes like, “‘I’m not a humanitarian,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m a hell-raiser,’” I think that she probably caused a lot of problems for the coal companies during her time.
I thought that the “Children’s Crusade” that she organized was especially amazing. I knew that children worked in the mines in early 1900’s, but what I did not know was that there was a “Children’s Crusade”, which was led by Mother Jones, to get better opportunities for children, like the chance to play and go to school. They marched from Pennsylvania to President Theodore Roosevelt’s home in Oyster Bay, New York. Even though they were not allowed to meet with the President, just the news of it probably made a lot of coal companies nervous. I would have thought that a protest as unique as this would have gotten more attention, but I have never heard of anything like this.
I went to the website for the Mother Jones magazine. This website looked professionally made and after scanning the page and the headlines, I was reminded of the New York Times website. I noticed, though, that there was a lot more of a domestic focus. The big difference I saw was that the articles in Mother Jones are mostly opinion pieces and not really just objective reporting. The only problem that I have with this is that it does not allow the reader to make his or her own conclusions about the news. I read the fact sheet online about the magazine and found that there are over 230,000 readers and that it was the first general interest magazine online when in became available in November of 1993.
It is amazing that I have not heard of Mother Jones or the magazine named after her before this class. She seems like a very influential figure, and she even has a magazine named after her. I always thought that I was well educated; I guess you can always learn something new, or learn about a new person. I still find it incredible that she was able to lead so many miners in protest even though she was not a miner or even a man. I would love to meet someone with a personality like that.