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PITTSBURG —
In December of 1921 the eyes of the nation turned to southeast Kansas as a group of wives, daughters, sisters and sweethearts of striking miners marched to support their menfolk in their struggle for decent pay and safer working conditions.
They were labeled an army of Amazon women, and stories about them appeared in newspapers from New York to California. Now their story is going to be featured in a segment of the PBS program “Sunflower Journeys” sometime during its new season.
Jim Kelly, a segment producer of the show, taped interviews Thursday at the Miners Hall Museum in Franklin with Pittsburg State University archivist Randy Roberts and Linda Knoll, local gifted educator who has done extensive research on the march.
He also taped selected portions of a dramatic piece that Knoll wrote several years ago that includes oral history accounts of the march and poems written by the late Gene DeGruson, area historian.
“I’ve known about the Amazon Army March for years,” Kelly said after taping concluded Thursday. “When I heard that Linda was an expert on the march, I gave her a call.”
The segments taped included Hugh Campbell as a Western Coal Company boss talking to new miners Michael Doue and Tony Sanchez.
“You will be paid in script, redeemable for goods and services at the company store,” he tells them. “If you purchase something available at the company store from an outside merchant, you will be fired immediately without pay.”
Faith Paoni, as Mother Jones, an early labor and community organizer, delivered an impassioned tirade against the company stores.
“The miners call them ‘pluck-me stores’ because they pluck every nickel and dime from a miner’s meager wages, pluck them until they’re as naked as a chicken,” she said.
Mother Jones visited Frontenac in 1922 when she was 93. She was frequently arrested and jailed for her activities in support of labor union, but told her Frontenac audience that “being put in jail for doing the right thing is a badge of honor.”
Off-stage, Paoni noted that she has a special connection to the southeast Kansas miners because she comes from a Pennsylvania coal-mining family. As a talisman, she was carrying in her pocket a small lump of coal given to her by her great-uncle. It came from a mine that her relatives had worked in.
“Many of my relatives died in mines,” Paoni said. “Imagine all these years later to come to Kansas and find something connected to my background.”
In December of 1921 the eyes of the nation turned to southeast Kansas as a group of wives, daughters, sisters and sweethearts of striking miners marched to support their menfolk in their struggle for decent pay and safer working conditions.
They were labeled an army of Amazon women, and stories about them appeared in newspapers from New York to California. Now their story is going to be featured in a segment of the PBS program “Sunflower Journeys” sometime during its new season.
Jim Kelly, a segment producer of the show, taped interviews Thursday at the Miners Hall Museum in Franklin with Pittsburg State University archivist Randy Roberts and Linda Knoll, local gifted educator who has done extensive research on the march.
He also taped selected portions of a dramatic piece that Knoll wrote several years ago that includes oral history accounts of the march and poems written by the late Gene DeGruson, area historian.
“I’ve known about the Amazon Army March for years,” Kelly said after taping concluded Thursday. “When I heard that Linda was an expert on the march, I gave her a call.”
The segments taped included Hugh Campbell as a Western Coal Company boss talking to new miners Michael Doue and Tony Sanchez.
“You will be paid in script, redeemable for goods and services at the company store,” he tells them. “If you purchase something available at the company store from an outside merchant, you will be fired immediately without pay.”
Faith Paoni, as Mother Jones, an early labor and community organizer, delivered an impassioned tirade against the company stores.
“The miners call them ‘pluck-me stores’ because they pluck every nickel and dime from a miner’s meager wages, pluck them until they’re as naked as a chicken,” she said.
Mother Jones visited Frontenac in 1922 when she was 93. She was frequently arrested and jailed for her activities in support of labor union, but told her Frontenac audience that “being put in jail for doing the right thing is a badge of honor.”
Off-stage, Paoni noted that she has a special connection to the southeast Kansas miners because she comes from a Pennsylvania coal-mining family. As a talisman, she was carrying in her pocket a small lump of coal given to her by her great-uncle. It came from a mine that her relatives had worked in.
“Many of my relatives died in mines,” Paoni said. “Imagine all these years later to come to Kansas and find something connected to my background.”
Taping for the “Sunflower Journeys” segment will continue today in Capaldo with a recreation of the march itself.
“I’ve been recruiting women for the march, and we should have some who actually had relatives in the march,” Knoll said.
She added that some women will be bringing their babies or toddlers, which is just what some of the original marchers did.
The dramatic pieces and the recreation of the march will add to the story of the event, according to Kelly.
“Reenactors are a great resource for this program,” he said. “A lot of times you don’t have many photos of an event, and even when you do, the reenactors add an element that you can’t get from a still photograph.”
