Between the dates of August 25th, 1921 and September 2nd, 1921, a fierce battle between striking American coal miners and the combined forces of the West Virginia State Police, Logan County Sherrif’s Department, and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency would take place. The West Virginia Mine Wars were two decades of fighting between coal miners and their employers over the workers' right to belong to a union. Much neglected in historical accounts, Thunder in the Mountains is the only available book-length account of the crisis in American industrial relations and governance that occured during the West Virginia mine war of 1920-21. The West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey provides an interactive map of underground and surface coal mining activity in West Virginia. Suite 200 Decades of automation and changes in the energy market have dried up the coal jobs in West Virginia, and years of anti-union campaigns have frayed old loyalties. In 1921, around 10,000 coal miners in Logan County, West Virginia… For two decades at the beginning of the 20 th century, coal miners in southern West Virginia fought against the brutal conditions of work — long … Manage My Data, all but one were acquitted of treason charges, Mass Graves of 13th-Century Crusaders Reveal Brutality of Medieval Warfare, Saudi Arabia's Camel Site Predates Stonehenge, Kansas Boy's Bug Collection Garners Blue Ribbon at State Fair—and Federal Investigation, Ornate Medieval Shield Looted by the Nazis Will Be Returned to the Czech Republic, See Edward Sherriff Curtis' Photos of Indigenous Alaskan Culture. Of all the great voices of the miners during the West Virginia Mine Wars, Bill Blizzard is the only one to be able to see his work through to the very end. Mr. Roberts, who has spent much of this summer rallying hundreds of union coal miners on strike in Alabama, sees this as a natural consequence of hard times. Warrior Met Coal went on to hire more than 1,000 miners in 18 months, including 350 hourly miners and 150 salaried employees for a new $19 million portal facility on the company’s No. "This book reminded me of the love I have for my history that is enriched by a mining town that my parents were raised in and the stories that were passed down." - Reader. “There are two sides to every story,” said James Baldwin, who sits on a bench in front of the Mexican restaurant, waiting to tell tourists of the “brave” detectives who were killed in a shootout after they evicted the families of striking miners from company-owned houses. The 2018 wildcat teachers strike in West Virginia demonstrated the power of public-sector workers to shame legislators and win concessions. An ensuing gunfight left seven of the detectives dead on the main street of Matewan. “National papers sold a lot of copies by portraying the area as a lawless land where the mountaineers were inherently violent,” Martin says. Above, West Virginia Mine Wars Museum; inset, AP/Chris DorstAbove, West Virginia coal miners after 1921 battle at Blair Mountain. The coal mining industry has brought a lot of life to West Virginia. State officials demanded that any mention of Blair Mountain be stripped from federal oral histories. “It set the stereotype that they were used to feuding and they were people who don’t care about anything but a gun and a bottle of liquor,” says Steele. © 2021 by the Institute for Public Affairs (EIN: 94-2889692). During the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, West Virginia workers fought for their rights in a bloody campaign to unionize the coal mines. There were at least 16 confirmed deaths in the battle, though no one knows exactly how many were killed before the US Army marched in to put a stop to the fighting. Found insideThe Last Voyageurs tells the story of this American odyssey, where a group of young men discovered themselves by pretending to be French explorers. General William ââBillyâ Mitchell, founder of the modern United States Air Force, ordered in four planes capable of dropping bombs on the miners, as well as 17 fighters fitted with machine guns. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $25.49 an hour. None of these are state-sponsored, although to the surprise of the organizers, the West Virginia governor, Jim Justice, a billionaire owner of coal companies, issued a proclamation in recent days in which he recognized the “significance” of the battle as a “fight for fair treatment of working peoples.” Click here to learn more! For most of the 20th century, silence about it served mutual interests. Mr. Blizzard was charged with treason and murder, though he was acquitted, and some of the most prominent labor leaders faced permanent ostracism. A History of Coal in West Virginia by Dr. Stuart McGehee Coal has a rich heritage in West Virginia and has contributed significantly to the progress and well-being of West Virginians since it was first discovered in what is now Boone County in 1742 by Peter Salley, more than a century before West Virginia became a state. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., appearing with Roberts at the Press Club event, said measures to help coal miners in West Virginia and other rural states must be part of the $2.3 trillion infrastructure package taking shape in Congress. According to one version of the story, the Baldwin-Felts agents tried to arrest Hatfield when he attempted to prevent the evictions from taking place. It was once called "The Heart of the Nation's Coal Bin." Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of the union, most of the strikers faced elimination of their jobs and an ongoing struggle for pensions and health benefits. Coal Battle-Centennial A statue of a coal miner is shown Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021, at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, W.Va. When the conflict concluded, hundreds of miners were indicted for murder, and more than a dozen were charged with treason. Yet no occupation was so central to the industrial power of the United States. Mine workers union endorses Biden energy policies in exchange for job training. She is also the author of The Last Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle's Journey Across America. Over 12 miles and five days, the sheriff’s men fought the miners, strafing the hillsides with machine-gun fire and dropping homemade bombs from planes. People desperate for work tend to view any critic of the coal industry, including those championing oppressed miners of 100 years ago, as a threat to their livelihoods. In one successful protest, 400,000 UMWA went on strike nationwide in 1919, securing higher wages and better working conditions. Nearly 60 years after the Civil War, thousands of Americans were about to fight for their right to unionizeâââand for the dignity of labor. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $25.49 an hour. And while we progressives now call on the United States to eliminate fossil fuels of every kind and shut down every coal mine to stave off the worst effects of climate change, we should recognize miners as brave and maligned workers who deserve retraining for new occupationsâââand financial security. Working conditions were brutal for coal miners, and unionization was violently suppressed. Mr. Keeney’s great-grandson, Charles B. Keeney, a history professor at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, had trouble getting his own family to talk about the uprising. Stoll wrote Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia (2017). Later, when she came to West Virginia University to study public history, she was hired to help collect oral histories in Matewan and Mingo County. She wrote Matewan Before the Massacre because she couldn't let the story go. 7. In exchange, they want assurances for "clean energy" jobs as part of President Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure package. As of Sep 5, 2021, the average annual pay for the Coal Mine jobs category in West Virginia is $53,029 an year. After the war, in addition to attacks on their livelihoods, non-union West Virginia coal miners worked anywhere between 12 to 20 hour days under unsafe and appalling working conditions, without any breaks, and were paid menial wages by the pound of coal extracted. In violation of the state constitution, the political leadership of West Virginia allowed mining companies to brutally crush any effort by miners to unionize. To stop the march, he recruited over 1,000 volunteers, many of them deputies, and equipped them with machine guns and high-powered rifles, billing the coal companies. Fearless journalism, emailed straight to you. The West Virginia Coal Wars: The History of the 20th Century Conflict Between Coal Companies and Miners looks at the tumultuous fight on both sides of the lines. As the rich mine owners got richer, union-organized strikes became a way for miners to protect their salaries. In 1997, the Hobet mine, a 25-year-old operation in rural West Virginia, was acquired for the first time by a public company, Arch Coal. America’s largest coal miners’ union supports clean energy (with conditions) The death of coal in the United States has not been exaggerated. Despite this strike, tensions continued between the coal barons and the miners. The participants kept quiet out of self-protection and solidarity. UMWA Associate Membership. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union. The United Mine Workers, formed in a merger of the two major coal miners’ unions in 1890, won a series of major strikes and became the largest labor union in the country in the years before World War I. She has previously written for The Atlantic, Salon, Nautilus and others. In the late 1920s, operators introduced machines into the mines, including the coal loader. In this book, Keith Dix explores the impact of technology on miners and operators during a crucial period in industrial history. Not long ago, a local historian found a document in the attic of the Logan County courthouse, listing hundreds of miners who were charged for taking part in the Battle of Blair Mountain. CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Fed up with the deadly work and poor wages and living conditions, thousands of coal miners marched to unionize in West Virginia a century ago, resulting in a deadly clash and the largest U.S. armed uprising since the Civil War. Frank Keeney, who roused thousands to fight as head of the U.M.W.A. Inset, West Virginia teachers in 2018 strike wore red bandanas in tribute to those miners. Listen • 15:25. Martin cites the failure of the Employee Free Choice Act to pass in Congress (which was aimed at removing barriers to unionization), the closure of the last union coal mine in Kentucky in 2015, the loss of retirement benefits for former miners, and the surge in black lung disease as evidence of unions’ fading power. As union activity grew, the miners pushed directly for higher pay and better conditions while also seeking legislation to improve their lots. “Following World War I, there was an increasing concentration into fewer hands of industrial corporate power,” says Bailey. Today, the battlefield is owned in large part by coal operators, who until recently planned to strip mine Blair Mountain itself. It embarked on … Between 1880 and 1940, thousands of blacks, poor native-born whites and immigrants migrated and worked alongside one another in the southern coalfields of West Virginia. The entire event was covered rabidly by the national press, says Chatham University historian Louis Martin, who is also a founding member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. The use of redneck to designate "a union member" was especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s in the coal-producing regions of southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania, where the word came to be specifically applied to a miner who belonged to a union. The chief mission of remembering Mine Wars history on the ground has remained with Mr. Keeney and his small cadre of activists, residents and retired union miners. One hundred years ago this month, thousands of coal minersâââalong with hundreds of farmers, merchants and ministersââârallied south of Charleston, West Virginia, before marching southwest toward Mingo County to unionize its coal mines. Keeney, whose great-grandfather Frank Keeney was president of the United Mine Workers union’s District 17 in West Virginia during the uprising, planned to march along with Roberts this weekend. Deadly 1921 coal miner revolt in West Virginia remembered. ââKill a mule, buy another,â went a minersâ saying, ââkill a man, hire another.â A dead minerâs family would be evicted from their company house so that it could be rented to the family of his replacement. A 1931 state law regulated the “study of social problems” and for decades, the Mine Wars were left entirely out of school history textbooks. Locals had a reputation for being violent and unreasonable. But while wages generally increased for miners throughout the period, they tended to rise more slowly in non-union areas, and the union itself struggled throughout the 1920s. Page Content. By Dan Radmacher . Miners' Union Backs Shift From Coal. Copyright © 2021 by the Institute for Public Affairs (EIN: 94-2889692). Either way, the visiting miners had the rare support of pro-union Matewan police chief, Sid Hatfield, and the town’s mayor, Cabell Testerman. Between 1880 and 1920, southern West Virginia’s population grew from 93,000 to 446,000, due almost entirely to the coal industry. People desperate for work tend to view any critic of the coal industry, including those championing oppressed miners of … Hatfieldâs murder set off the ââMarch to Mingo,â the largest armed labor uprising in American history. Act of Vengeance: Directed by John Mackenzie. The two sides came to a head in the conflict in Matewan. How were southern black transformed rural agricultural workers into members of the industrial working class? The largest union of coal miners in the U.S. announced Monday that it would accept a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy as long as the federal government takes care of coal workers through the provision of green jobs and income support for those who become unemployed. Mr. Roberts cited a quote from Jay Gould, the Gilded Age railroad baron: “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” The coal industry was essentially the state’s sole source of work, and massive corporations built homes, general stores, schools, churches and recreational facilities in the remote towns near the mines. Photogrammer/Sheldon Dick. These demoralizing losses caused membership in the UMWA to plummet in southern West Virginia. A year later, Hatfield was murdered by coal-company security agents at a neighboring courthouse. “In an ideal world, it should be a state park,” said Mr. Keeney. The Battle of Blair Mountain was the result of years of bitter labor disputes between the miners and Between 1880 and 1920, southern West Virginia’s population grew from 93,000 to 446,000, due almost entirely to the coal industry. “Unions were anathema to them simply because human labor was one of the few cost items that could be manipulated and lowered.”. More ›. The battle only stopped when federal troops arrived on the order of President Warren Harding. This is a look into the everyday life of the miner, how he strives to work under difficult conditions, surviving in and outside the mine. President Warren Harding sent in infantry troops to stop the miners, many of whom had fought in World War I and hoped the soldiers would support them. On the stairway of the courthouse in August 1921, Hatfield and his deputy, Ed Chambers, were gunned down by Baldwin-Felts agents. This weekend, marchers are retracing the steps of thousands of coal miners who participated in the Battle of Blair Mountain in southern West Virginia. Photo taken by John Collier in … For workers, it was a fight for their rights as humans. This fight between collectivism and individualism, the rights of the worker and the rights of the owner, have been part of America since the country’s founding, Bailey says. This Labor Day weekend, people will gather in West Virginia to mark the centennial of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in U.S. history. The miners experienced something that many of us learned from the Covid-19 pandemic. And fight they did. Women Coal Miners Who Make Their Mark, This West Virginia Morning. The mountains of southern West Virginia are riddled with coal—and bullets. But even that does not prevent logging or natural gas exploration, he said. Instead, he climbs through metal gates blocking the roads into the mountain to see what industrial activities may be going on outside of public view. Union meetings drew upwards of 3,000 workers as frustrations grew. The country has begun wrestling in recent years with its buried trauma, memorializing vile and suppressed histories like the Tulsa Race Massacre. “[Unions] became so dependent on federal labor laws and the National Labor Relations Board that they lived and died by what the federal government would allow them to do,” Martin says. In response to the assassination, an army of miners 10,000 strong began a full-on assault against the coal company and the mine guards. | READ MORE, Lorraine Boissoneault is a contributing writer to SmithsonianMag.com covering history and archaeology. Send us a note with the Letter to the Editor form. Wiki Deep Dives: The 1921 War In West Virginia. The community was founded in the 1890s, but the 1920s coal boom helped this small community grow into a more prosperous settlement. Coal Miners. The Associate Membership is a way for a surviving spouse, family member or general supporter of the United Mine Workers to become part of the movement to restore fairness, justice and dignity for working families. As the years progressed, the union distanced itself even further from the Matewan massacre. At the ideological heart of this conflict that few have heard of was, as Smithsonian writes, a battle between “collectivism and individualism, the rights of the worker and the rights of the owner.”. A statue of a coal miner is shown Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021, at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, W.Va. Coal Battle-Centennial A statue of a coal miner is shown Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021, at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, W.Va. Page Content. Cars are in line to head down to the mine shafts at Maple Hill Mine in Schuylkill County in this 1938 photo by Sheldon Dick. Coal will continue to provide a major portion of energy requirements in the United States for at least the next several decades. In recent decades, the Mine Wars have steadily drawn more attention, with a critically acclaimed movie; serious history books; an exhibit in the state museum; and explicit allusions to it during the 2018 state teachers’ strike. As union activity grew, the miners pushed directly for higher pay and better conditions while also seeking legislation to improve their lots. But since the 1970s, corporations have found ways to undermine the right to unionizeâââby forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings and watch anti-union propaganda, by threatening termination of those who attempt to organize, and by making it known that there is no such thing as a secret ballot. 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