A Give Away

Did you know that May 15 is give your stuff away day? You put what you don't want at your curb and someone will take it. It is amazing the things you can learn by reading The Final Word by Craig Wilson in the USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/finalword/2010-05-05-final05_ST_N.htm

According to the column you can also go to:

http://giveyourstuffaway.com/

What are you giving away? I've got an extra vaccum cleaner, an extra microwave, some clothes that I haven't worn since George Washington was president, and numerous toys and games. What do you have?

Today's Who Am I.

Yesterday's answer was the amazing women behind President Warren G. Harding's success, Florence Kling Harding.

I was born in Ireland in 1830 or 1837 and died in Maryland in 1930. During my early childhood it was common in Ireland to see British soldiers marching through the streets with the heads of Irish freedom fighters stuck on their bayonets. My paternal grandfather was hanged by the British for being a freedom fighter. My father, also a freedom fighter, after gramps was hanged he was forced to flee Ireland with our family. I attended public schools in Canada and graduated normal school at 17. The next year I began working as a private tutor in Maine. I received a teaching certificate in Michigan at 20. I only taught for about eight months, moving to Chicago to work as a dressmaker. From there I moved to Tennessee to teach school again. In 1861 I met and married a staunch and prominent member of the Iron Molders' Union. I traveled with my hubby in his union organizing. Through him I learned about unions and the psychology of working men. I would advise women that the wife must care for what the husband cares for if he is to remain resolute. We had four children in quick succession. In 1867 my husband and all four children died of yellow fever within a week of each other. I stayed in Memphis nursing other victims until the fever epidemic waned. I moved back to Chicago, working as a dressmaker again. Tragedy soon followed when I lost everything I owned in my home and seamstress shop in the great Chicago fire. It was then that I embarked upon the path that made my name synonymous with social justice. Probably the seeds were sown earlier, while sewing in the homes of wealthy Chicago families. I was quoted as saying: "Often while sewing for lords and barons who lived in magnificent houses on the Lake Shore Drive, I would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lake front.... The contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful to me. My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care."

I began to attend meetings of the newly formed Knights of Labor. I continued to work in Chicago as a seamstress even though I had no fixed home. I began volunteering with the Knights of Labor as an organizer traveling back and forth across the country. I lived with the workers in tent colonies and shantytowns near the mills. In essence I adopted the hard workers of America and they called me 'Mother.' When they asked where I lived I told them that my address was like my shoes it travels with me and that I abide where there is a fight against wrong. I would travel to wherever there was a strike organizing and helping the workers. I would hold educational meetingst. Often I was at odds with union leaders. Because at one of the strikes I attended in Chicago policed fired into the crowd of peaceful strikers I am said to have changed my birth date to 1830 in honor of the strike for an eight-hour work day when the shootings took place. At only five feet tall and dressed in black with just a touch of lace at her throat and wrists I was the perfect picture of a grandmother. Yet when I spoke I was dynamic, energetic and enthusiastic often bringing my audiences to tears, applause and laughter. I was a gifted storyteller with a brilliant sense of humor. Two of my most famous quotes were: "I'm not a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser!" and "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." I joined the coal miners' fight becoming an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America. I knew the gruesome conditions and hazards of their work, and even went into the mines during strikes to convince scabs to quit and support their fellow workers. In 1902 at a rally in West Virginia I was arrested. When I was told my jail would be a hotel I demanded to be put in jail with the other miners. During my career I was arrested or escorted out of town many times only to return again and again. I started to fight for children, saying the following: "Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching their little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads. They crawled under machinery to oil it. They replaced spindles all day long, all day long; all night through. Tiny babies six years old with faces of sixty did an eight hour shift for ten cents a day." In 1903 to dramatize the need to abolish child labor I led a caravan of striking children from the textile mills in Pennsylvania to President Roosevelt's home in New York. We carried banners saying "We want time to play!" and "We want to go to school!" The president refused to meet with us but the "Children's Crusade" caught the public's attention. I helped found the Social Democratic Party. Later I was convicted by a military court of conspiring to commit murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. It created such a fervor that the U.S. Senate ordered a committee to investigate conditions in the coalfields. Before the investigations began he governor set me free. In 1924 I was sued for libel, slander and sedition. The publisher of the Chicago Times won a shocking $350,000 judgment against me. Earlier that year I was attacked by a couple of thugs while staying at a friend's house. I fought them off, causing one to flee and seriously injuring the other. My last public appearance was at my 100th birthday party. I was honored throughout the 1930s by labor activists and a Gene Autry recording. The popular children's song "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" is believed to have been inspired by me. Who Am I?