Supply: The New York Instances
September 7, 2021
BLAIR, W.Va. – On the shoulder of a lonely stretch of freeway miles into the hills, an indication stands within the weeds. ‘Battle of Blair Mt.,’ it says, informing the tumbledown cinder block constructing throughout the highway that right here, 100 years in the past, was the most important armed labor rebellion in U.S. historical past.
In late August 1921, hundreds of rifle-bearing coal miners marched to this thickly wooded ridge in southern West Virginia, a marketing campaign that was ignited by the daylight assassinations of union sympathizers however had been constructing for years within the oppressive despair of the coal fields. The miners’ military was met at Blair Mountain by hundreds of males who volunteered to battle with the Logan County sheriff, who was within the pay of the coal corporations. Over 12 miles and 5 days, the sheriff’s males fought the miners, strafing the hillsides with machine-gun hearth and dropping home made bombs from planes. There have been a minimum of 16 confirmed deaths within the battle, although nobody is aware of precisely what number of had been killed earlier than the US Military marched in to place a cease to the preventing.
The roadside marker and the spent shell casings discovered within the hillsides are the one reminders at Blair Mountain that this befell.
The nation has begun wrestling in recent times with its buried trauma, memorializing vile and suppressed histories just like the Tulsa Race Bloodbath. The Battle of Blair Mountain, the end result of a sequence of violent conflicts referred to as the Mine Wars, would additionally appear to be a candidate for such exhumation.
The military of miners that got here to Blair Mountain was made up of Black and white individuals, new immigrants and other people with deep roots in Appalachia. They did perilous work underneath circumstances near indentured servitude: They had been saved in line by armed guards and paid solely in firm scrip, with their pay docked for the prices of housing, medical care and the instruments they used within the mines. These circumstances finally erupted within the largest rebellion because the Civil Conflict.
However whereas there are commemorations this weekend in West Virginia, together with talks, rallies and re-enactments, a century of silence enforced by energy and concern has left the battle practically forgotten elsewhere.
‘It is among the most superb confrontations between staff and managers ever on this nation and nobody is aware of about it,’ mentioned Cecil Roberts, the president of the United Mine Staff of America and a great-nephew of Invoice Blizzard, who led the miners’ military in 1921. ‘It appears to be nearly inconceivable until there is a concerted effort for individuals to not find out about it.’
The Mine Wars period was bloody, with a minimum of 100 deaths in shootouts and violent crackdowns. For many of the twentieth century, silence about it served mutual pursuits. The individuals saved quiet out of self-protection and solidarity. Mr. Blizzard was charged with treason and homicide, although he was acquitted, and among the most outstanding labor leaders confronted everlasting ostracism. Frank Keeney, who roused hundreds to battle as head of the U.M.W.A. native, spent the latter a part of his life as a car parking zone attendant.
Mr. Keeney’s great-grandson, Charles B. Keeney, a historical past professor at Southern West Virginia Neighborhood and Technical Faculty, had hassle getting his circle of relatives to speak concerning the rebellion. As a substitute, he realized about it from stray remarks at household cookouts and from older strangers, who informed him star-struck tales after approaching him after they realized of his household connection.
However it was primarily the coal business and its supporters in state authorities, Mr. Keeney and different historians mentioned, who tried to smother any public dialogue of the historical past. State officers demanded that any point out of Blair Mountain be stripped from federal oral histories. A 1931 state regulation regulated the ‘research of social issues’ and for many years, the Mine Wars had been left solely out of faculty historical past textbooks. At this time, the battlefield is owned largely by coal operators, who till lately deliberate to strip mine Blair Mountain itself.
This was narrowly averted in 2018 after Mr. Keeney and a gaggle known as Buddies of Blair Mountain succeeded in a nine-year marketing campaign, resisted at nearly each flip, to have the positioning positioned on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations. However even that doesn’t forestall logging or pure fuel exploration, he mentioned.
‘In an excellent world, it needs to be a state park,’ mentioned Mr. Keeney. As a substitute, he climbs by way of steel gates blocking the roads into the mountain to see what industrial actions could also be occurring exterior of public view.
In current a long time, the Mine Wars have steadily drawn extra consideration, with a critically acclaimed film; critical historical past books; an exhibit within the state museum; and specific allusions to it through the 2018 state academics’ strike.
Earlier this 12 months, a great-grandson of one of many coal firm detectives even confirmed up within the little city of Matewan, as soon as a citadel of union resistance, and commenced providing excursions.
‘There are two sides to each story,’ mentioned James Baldwin, who sits on a bench in entrance of the Mexican restaurant, ready to inform vacationers of the ‘courageous’ detectives who had been killed in a shootout after they evicted the households of putting miners from company-owned homes.
The historical past is being talked about extra, however nonetheless solely in ‘bits and items,’ mentioned Stan Bumgardner, the editor of Goldenseal, the state historical past journal. ‘It is lacking within the public sphere.’ The occasions of the Mine Wars are famous far much less vigorously than these of the tourist-pleasing Hatfield-McCoy feud, broadcast on indicators throughout southern West Virginia.
The chief mission of remembering Mine Wars historical past on the bottom has remained with Mr. Keeney and his small cadre of activists, residents and retired union miners. In 2015, they opened the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, privately funded and situated in a union-owned constructing in Matewan. They’ve additionally organized the primary occasions for the centennial of the Battle of Blair Mountain, together with a re-enactment of the march this weekend. None of those are state-sponsored, though to the shock of the organizers, the West Virginia governor, Jim Justice, a billionaire proprietor of coal corporations, issued a proclamation in current days wherein he acknowledged the ‘significance’ of the battle as a ‘battle for honest therapy of working peoples.’
Mr. Keeney mentioned highly effective pursuits weren’t the one opposition to his trigger. Previous re-enactments of the march have been met with hostility and even assault by individuals alongside the route, a lot of them coal households, who had been angered by the involvement of environmentalists.
Mr. Roberts, who has spent a lot of this summer season rallying a whole bunch of union coal miners on strike in Alabama, sees this as a pure consequence of laborious instances. A long time of automation and adjustments within the vitality market have dried up the coal jobs in West Virginia, and years of anti-union campaigns have frayed previous loyalties. Individuals determined for work are inclined to view any critic of the coal business, together with these championing oppressed miners of 100 years in the past, as a risk to their livelihoods.
Mr. Roberts cited a quote from Jay Gould, the Gilded Age railroad baron: ‘I can rent one half of the working class to kill the opposite half.’
Not way back, an area historian discovered a doc within the attic of the Logan County courthouse, itemizing a whole bunch of miners who had been charged for collaborating within the Battle of Blair Mountain. It might be the one listing of its variety, mentioned Mr. Keeney, who plans to dig into it after the centennial has handed. And it could supply surprises for individuals all through the coal fields and scattered across the nation who had by no means realized that their great-grandfathers had gone to conflict in West Virginia 100 years in the past.
Written by: Campbell Robertson
