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Thomas (O'Neal), Mary (audio interview #2 of 2)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Thomas seemed more confused during this second interview held with her in her room at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. In fact, at one point, when we were interrupted by a doorbell ring, she didn't remember that I was there. As a result of this greater confusion, the interview was concluded after a little more than a half hour. 12/17/1974
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- 2020-09-21
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- SUBJECT BIO - Mary Thomas (Oneal) became spokesperson on behalf of the striking miners and their families who were the victims of the Ludlow massacre in 1914. Born in the Ogmore Valley in South Wales of a mining family, Thomas came to the US in 1913 with her two children, seeking her miner husband, who had deserted the family. She arrived in Colorado during the organizing drive of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and initially became involved primarily as a result of her singing talents. After the eviction of the miners from their company-owned housing and the establishment of a tent colony in Ludlow, she became actively involved in the daily affairs of the community. When the tent colony was attacked by the militia on Easter morning, 1914, she played a critical role in saving the lives of many women and children and in assisting the men who had fled to the hills. She was the only woman from among the miners community to be arrested. After her release from jail, Thomas traveled east to talk about the strike, and spoke to audiences in New York and other cities. She also went to Washington, DC, and with the assistance of Judge Ben Lindsey, made a direct appeal to President Wilson for federal troops. Thomas moved to Salt Lake City, where she worked as a waitress, then to Nevada, where she supported her children by running a restaurant, and later a dance hall. She re-married in Nevada, and when the family moved to Los Angeles, she opened her own tailoring business. Thomas wrote a book about her experiences, Those Damn Foreigners (Hollywood, California: 1971). She suffered from short term memory loss at the time of the interview, but her accounts of the Ludlow experience and her speaking tour were consistent both with the material in the book and newspaper accounts. TOPICS - family background and history; attending suffrage meetings; mining strike in Wales; description of town in Wales; mother's produce shop; husband and marital relationship; relationship with in-laws; confronting husband about deserting her and their children; meeting second husband, Don O'Neal; O'Neal's relationship with her children, and his death; effect of Ludlow massacre on her life; and move to California and opening a store Hollywood;
- *** File: lhmthomas3.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-3:50)... Thomas shows the interviewer photographs, one of which shows her with an aunt who was a suffragette and occasionally took Thomas with her to suffrage speeches. During one meeting, sailors and miners heckled the woman speaking and threw things at the stage. Thomas sings the lyrics of a song sung by one of these men in order to rattle the woman into silence. Her aunt was an active suffragette in their town. Her uncle, on the other hand, was a politician. Thomas recounts an incident when he spoke about woman's suffrage, proclaiming: "We love our women and we don't want them mixing up with things like that. Our women ought to be loved." Her aunt yelled out, "When did you have time to love me?" Thomas's mother was not involved in the suffrage movement because she was too busy raising nine children. (3:50-5:41)... Thomas' father was a miner in South Wales, and her brothers started working in the mines when they were ten years old. Many miners took their children to work in the mines because they could fill up more trams with coal and earn more money. Later, children were restricted from working at an early age because people wanted them to get a good education. She expected to marry a miner, commenting: "Yes. I was raised by a miner. That was my home." (5:41-9:07)... Although Thomas' father and brother belonged to a Masonic lodge, there was no union for the miners in Wales. By the time she left, the union was just getting started and it was not yet a strong organization. She talks about men's attitudes, including their resistance to woman's suffrage. When she was ten years old, the miners went on strike. She recalls that the women helped cook and serve meals that were provided by the Salvation Army. (9:07-9:58)... Thomas attended school until she was twelve years old. Her mother did not want her brothers to go to work in the mines too early, and although she believes that children had to be twelve years old in order to work in the mines, many were younger. (9:58-11:39)... All three of Thomas' older brothers died while fighting in the First or Second World Wars. She was born somewhere in the middle of the rest of her siblings. All of her sisters married young, commenting: "We were a family of very good looking girls and we were married off before we had a chance to think." Most of the people in the valley where she was raised were either miners or storekeepers. Her mother owned a small produce shop in town. She eventually gave the shop to Thomas, which is how Thomas earned enough money to pay for her passage to the US. (11:39-19:05)... Thomas was sixteen years old when she married her first husband. He and returned to Wales from the US with his family. He was from a wealthy family and they disapproved of her and treated her badly because she was poor. When he decided to return to the US, he told her that he would send for her and their children. At that time, they had two daughters and she was pregnant with their third child. (She later states that she had two daughters and a son, and was pregnant with her fourth child when her husband left. This baby died shortly after birth). Her husband left because his family teased him about becoming a "slave" and they were the cause of their separation. She was ashamed to tell her family that he had deserted her and she never told them that she was saving her money so that she could go to the US and confront him. Thomas details the acrimonious exchange with her husband when they were re-united in Colorado. During her passage to the US, she had met her future second husband and mentioned that she was in love with this man to her husband. Her plans after arriving in the US were to confront him and get him to support her and their daughters until she could find a job. Even though they were still married, she refused to share a tent with him at the Ludlow camps, and did not tell anyone in the camp about her marital situation. (19:05-22:01)... Thomas' husband went to work elsewhere just before the Ludlow Massacre. She comments that it why she took such a big part in the strike and events after the massacre. After she returned from Washington, DC following the massacre, she moved to Utah to live with her friend Harriet and eventually went to work with Harriet as a waitress. The two eventually moved to Nevada where Thomas divorced her first husband and remarried. Thomas and Harriet rarely saw each other after Harriet married and moved to Canada with her husband. (22:01-26:49)... After Thomas moved to Utah following the Ludlow Massacre, she never saw the people with whom she had become acquainted in Colorado. Thomas talks about meeting her second husband on the passage to the US and how they were reunited in Nevada when he walked into the dance hall and restaurant that she was operating. In the mean time, Thomas sent her daughters back to Wales to live with their maternal grandparents. Her son also was in Wales living with her ex-husband's family, and demanded on returning to the US with his sisters after learning how they had treated his mother. Her second husband was a father figure to her three children until he died in a car accident in the 1920s. Before then, they moved to California and she opened a store in Hollywood. (26:49-28:07)... When asked about how the Ludlow Massacre affected her life, Thomas comments that the people she associated with then treated her well and that she was very popular among the men and women in the encampments. She does not elaborate how this event impacted her political ideas. Instead, she turns to a discussion of her second husband's career and his relationship with her children. (28:07-32:34)... Thomas was not involved in any other political activities when she moved to Colorado. She supported the Ludlow miners because they were unionists. She mentions friends that were angered upon arriving in Ludlow after they learned that it was a union town and that they would be involved in a strike. She returned to England during her second marriage, but was unsuccessful in locating these friends. After her husband died, she supported herself with the income she earned from her store in Hollywood. End of tape.
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