Mary Morello, the mother of guitarist Tom Morello from the band Rage Against the Machine, has died at the age of 102.
The civil rights activist and former public school teacher lived in Libertyville.
Her love for the First Amendment led Morello to form a group opposed to censoring lyrics and to exercise free speech by swearing when she introduced her son’s band at shows in Chicago.
Rage Against the Machine posted a clip of that on social media to announce her death on Sunday.
Former Chicago Tribune rock music critic Greg Kot told WBBM Morello was proud of her son and his band’s political messages of lifting up the working class.
In the 1980s, Morello formed Parents for Rock and Rap in response to efforts by Tipper Gore and others to get record labels to attach warning stickers to music with explicit content.
She encouraged students to question systemic injustice in social studies classes that she taught at Libertyville High School for 22 years.
After retirement, she tutored younger kids in North Chicago and adults at a Salvation Army center in Waukegan.
Kot, who hosts the long-running podcast Sound Opinions, says he got to know Mary over the years.
She would call or write to him about pieces he wrote and even asked him to read to her third graders.
He says many of them related to her because she was a single mother who raised a biracial child in the ‘60s.
Tom Morello wrote of her passing “Mary Morello is forever with the Rebels of Light & Song”.
