Virden, Illinois
Virden is a city in Macoupin and Sangamon counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. The population was 3,231 at the 2020 census. The Macoupin County portion of Virden is part of the St. Louis, Missouri–Illinois Metropolitan Statistical Area, while the Sangamon County portion is part of the Springfield Metropolitan Statistical Area. Virden was the scene of an 1898 coal miners' strike, during which Mary Harris "Mother" Jones played a major role. History Virden sits atop a large seam of coal. After the 1850s, when the Chicago and Alton Railroad was completed, it became possible to mine Virden coal and ship it long distances for a profit. Throughout the second half of the 1800s, Virden prospered and grew as a coal-mining town. A bitter coal strike broke out in 1898. The Chicago-Virden Coal Company, fearing loss of key business in Chicago, refused to allow its Virden mines to be unionized, nor would it pay the nonunionized miners union-scale wages. Instead, the coal company built a timber stockade around its mine head, adjoining the railroad tracks, and hired African-Americans from Southern states as coal miners. The Chicago-Virden Company knew that African-Americans, who were attempting to escape Jim Crow labor conditions, would