Chicago broke ground Wednesday on a bronze statue honoring labor activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones at Wacker Drive near Wabash Avenue, marking what city officials describe as downtown's first monument to a real historic woman. The “We Shall Rise” memorial will depict Jones alongside a child, evoking her role in the 1903 March of the Mill Children, a demonstration against child labor that she led from Philadelphia to New York City.
The project is a partnership between the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the Mother Jones Heritage Project, according to Block Club Chicago. Jones, who was born in Ireland and later called Chicago home, organized workers across the city and helped establish the Industrial Workers of the World there, fighting for safer working conditions, fair pay and equal rights for workers throughout her life. The march she led in the summer of 1903 pushed for a 55-hour work week for children, a cause that became central to her legacy.
A Partnership Years in the Making
Rosemary Feurer, who leads the Mother Jones Heritage Project, said at the groundbreaking that Chicago continues the struggle and traditions that shaped Mother Jones, per Block Club Chicago's reporting. The project has raised over $200,000 toward the monument, and the Government of Ireland contributed a $36,000 seed grant to help get the effort off the ground, according to the same account.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson spoke at the ceremony, saying organized working people have the power to change the world and that the monument will help ensure Mother Jones and workers' stories are seen and remembered. 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, who secured the honorary Mother Jones Plaza designation and was an early supporter of the project, told attendees the statue will give history a place in shared public life and remind people of work that remains, the outlet reported.
Labor and Irish Community Voices
Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, also spoke at the groundbreaking, as did Megan Grealy of the Consulate General of Ireland in Chicago. Grealy said the monument reflects close ties between Ireland and Chicago's Irish American community, according to Block Club Chicago. The sculpture was created by artists Kathleen Farrell and Kathleen Scarboro, and the monument is part of the broader Chicago Monuments Project, which began in 2020.
Separate reporting on the project's earlier stages fills in more of its backstory. Irish American News reported the statue was approved by the city and is slated for dedication in spring 2027, calling it the first monument to a woman labor activist and the first statue of a real woman in downtown Chicago. That outlet also described the Mother Jones Heritage Project's broader mission to preserve knowledge of working-class struggles, immigrant rights and labor activism. According to Mother Jones Cork, the design team — Farrell, Scarboro and Dante Di Bartolomo — sent the sculpture to the foundry, with the finished piece meant to echo the pose of the 1903 march.
Why the Location Changed
Plans for the statue once centered on the park around Chicago's historic Water Tower on North Michigan Avenue, as People's World reported. Organizers later said the move to Wacker and Wabash came down to engineering reasons rather than any hesitation from the city, according to a statement cited by the Mother Jones Museum. People's World also framed the statue as part of a nationwide push to replace monuments to oppressors — often slaveholders — with memorials to liberators like Jones, or with no statue at all.
Filling Gaps in a City of Statues
The Chicago Monuments Project itself grew out of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot's monuments commission, which emerged amid the Christopher Columbus statue controversy, the Chicago Tribune reported in 2023. The city announced $6.8 million in grant funding that year for eight new monuments, including the one honoring Mother Jones, and the plan folded in five new women-focused works overall, according to Axios Chicago.
That gap has been stark by the numbers. As recently as 2015, Chicago parks hosted zero figurative statues of women compared with 48 of men, Axios Chicago reported. By 2023 that count had risen to at least two, honoring poet Gwendolyn Brooks and Judge Laura Liu. The Chicago Tribune has also noted that the city has more public artwork celebrating mythical women than real ones, a gap organizers point to as part of the rationale behind the Mother Jones project.
