Coal miners stood at the forefront of the American labor movement, and Illinois played a major role. In the 1890s, tens of thousands of Illinois miners joined the United Mine Workers Union, but in later decades the leadership of UMW president John L. Lewis drew criticism. On September 1-3, 1932, miners met in Gillespie to address their grievances, and at the Colonial Theater 274 delegates voted to form the Progressive Miners of America as a cleaner, more democratic union. The UMW answered the PMA challenge with violence, often backed by local police and state militia, and the PMA retaliated in kind. From 1932 to 1936, UMW and PMA miners fought each other in gun battles and bombings in an episode known as the Mine Wars. A Women's Auxiliary organized alongside the PMA and supported the miners at home and beyond; in 1933, 10,000 members in white dresses and white headbands protested at the state capitol in Springfield against the abrogation of PMA miners' civil rights. In 1938, the PMA and Women's Auxiliary dedicated the Mother Jones Monument in the Union Miners Cemetery at Mt. Olive, bearing the names of 21 PMA members killed during the Mine Wars. At its peak, the Progressive Miners of America represented more than 20,000 miners, but it could not expand beyond Illinois, and World War II brought its heyday to an end, though its memory endured in many Illinois families.
