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The Devil Is Here in These Hills by James Green Pdf
“The most comprehensive and comprehendible history of the West Virginia Coal War I’ve ever read.” —John Sayles, writer and director of Matewan On September 1, 1912, the largest, most protracted, and deadliest working-class uprising in American history was waged in West Virginia. On one side were powerful corporations whose millions bought armed guards and political influence. On the other side were fifty thousand mine workers, the nation’s largest labor union, and the legendary “miners’ angel,” Mother Jones. The fight for unionization and civil rights sparked a political crisis that verged on civil war, stretching from the creeks and hollows of the Appalachians to the US Senate. Attempts to unionize were met with stiff resistance. Fundamental rights were bent—then broken. The violence evolved from bloody skirmishes to open armed conflict, as an army of more than fifty thousand miners finally marched to an explosive showdown. Extensively researched and vividly told, this definitive book about an often-overlooked chapter of American history, “gives this backwoods struggle between capital and labor the due it deserves. [Green] tells a dark, often despairing story from a century ago that rings true today” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
The West Virginia Coal Wars by Charles River Charles River Editors Pdf
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the coal wars from Mother Jones and other important participants *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser." - Mother Jones America is famous around the world for being the land of opportunity, and in many respects it has been for the nearly 400 years since its colonization. However, that opportunity has always come at some sort of price. In the times of wooden sailing vessels, men and women risked life and limb to sail across the Atlantic on small, creaking ships, but later, transportation became safer and easier with the invention of the coal powered steam engine. Over time, coal came to be used to power other advances in industry and technology, such as plants that produced steel and electricity. By the dawn of the 20th century, it seemed that there was nothing that the country could not accomplish, and that the future was brighter than ever. But then, as always, there was the price. The vast majority of people burning coal to heat their farms and homes, and those watching skyscrapers rise over the city's landscape, likely never stopped to think about the price thousands of miners across the country were paying for these and other conveniences. Many never knew that coal had to be dug from the ground, typically in dark mines where dust poisoned miners' lungs, and that these men barely made enough to feed and clothe their families despite their hard days of toil. The people using the coal wanted it to be cheap, the miners wanted to earn enough money to survive, and the companies wanted to turn a profit. In some ways, it seems safe to say that conflict was inevitable, but while there were numerous labor disputes during the early decades of the 20th century, few were as violent as the one that erupted in the hills of West Virginia in 1912. In fact, this conflict, which lasted about a decade, has rightly been called a war because men and women killed and were killed on its battlefields, culminating with the largest domestic insurrection since the Civil War in 1921. The coal companies' army was a hired force, professional gunfighters brought in to stop miners. But while they had the best training and the best weapons, they did not have Mother Jones - Mary Harris Jones - perhaps the most inspirational union organizer in United States history. With the help of Frank Keeney and other miners like him, Jones successfully brought the owners to their knees and won the right to unionize for miners who had only dreamed it might be possible. Now that a century has passed and mining is at least somewhat safer than it was, those working today can thank Jones and Keeney, not to mention the ones who died at the hand of hired guns, for what freedom they do have to fight for a living wage. 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. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the West Virginia mine wars like never before, in no time at all.
The Road to Blair Mountain by Charles B. Keeney Pdf
"Keeney delivers a riveting and propulsive story about a nine-year battle to save sacred ground that was the site of the largest labor uprising in American history. . . . He unveils a powerful playbook on successful activism that will inspire countless others for generations to come." --Eric Eyre, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic In 1921 Blair Mountain in southern West Virginia was the site of the country's bloodiest armed insurrection since the Civil War, a battle pitting miners led by Frank Keeney against agents of the coal barons intent on quashing organized labor. It was the largest labor uprising in US history. Ninety years later, the site became embroiled in a second struggle, as activists came together to fight the coal industry, state government, and the military- industrial complex in a successful effort to save the battlefield--sometimes dubbed "labor's Gettysburg"--from destruction by mountaintop removal mining. The Road to Blair Mountain is the moving and sometimes harrowing story of Charles Keeney's fight to save this irreplaceable landscape. Beginning in 2011, Keeney--a historian and great-grandson of Frank Keeney--led a nine-year legal battle to secure the site's placement on the National Register of Historic Places. His book tells a David-and-Goliath tale worthy of its own place in West Virginia history. A success story for historic preservation and environmentalism, it serves as an example of how rural, grassroots organizations can defeat the fossil fuel industry.
Author : Lon Savage Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre Page : 216 pages File Size : 52,8 Mb Release : 1990-09-11 Category : History ISBN : 9780822971429
The West Virginia mine war of 1920-21, a major civil insurrection of unusual brutality on both sides, even by the standards of the coal fields, involved thousands of union and nonunion miners, state and private police, militia, and federal troops. Before it was over, three West Virginia counties were in open rebellion, much of the state was under military rule, and bombers of the U.S. Army Air Corps had been dispatched against striking miners. The origins of this civil war were in the Draconian rule of the coal companies over the fiercely proud miners of Appalachia. It began in the small railroad town of Matewan when Mayor C. C. Testerman and Police Chief Sid Hatfield sided with striking miners against agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who attempted to evict the miners from company-owned housing. During a street battle, Mayor Testerman, seven Baldwin-Felts agents, and two miners were shot to death. Hatfield became a folk hero to Appalachia. But he, like Testerman, was to be a martyr. The next summer, Baldwin-Felts agents assassinated him and his best friend, Ed Chambers, as their wives watched, on the steps of the courthouse in Welch, accelerating the miners’ rebellion into open warfare. 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.
Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals by David Alan Corbin Pdf
A sobering account on the human cost of a landmark industrial conflict retraces the West Virginia coal mining rebellions of the early 20th century as culled from articles, speeches, union transcripts and Senate committee testimonies by miners and their families. Original.
Author : Howard Burton Lee Publisher : West Virginia University Press Page : 238 pages File Size : 50,5 Mb Release : 1969 Category : Business & Economics ISBN : WISC:89058504218
In the first half of the 20th century, strikes and Union battles, murders and frame-ups, were common in every industrial center in the U.S. But none of these episodes compared in scope to the West Virginia Mine Wars. The uprisings of coal miners that defined the Mine Wars of the 1920’s were a direct result of the Draconian rule of the coal companies. The climax was the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest open and armed rebellion in U.S. history. The Battle, and Union leader Bill Blizzard’s quest for justice, was only quelled when the U.S. Army brought guns, poison gas and aerial bombers to stop the 10,000 bandanna-clad miners who formed the spontaneous “Red Neck Army.” Over half a century ago, William C. Blizzard wrote the definitive insider’s history of the Mine Wars and the resulting trial for treason of his father, the fearless leader of the Red Neck Army. Events dramatized in John Sayles film Matewan, and fictionalized in Denise Giardina’s stirring novel Storming Heaven, are here recounted as they occurred. This is a people’s history, complete with previously unpublished family photos and documents. If it brawls a little, and brags a little, and is angry more than a little, well, the people in this book were that way.
The West Virginia Coal Wars by Captivating History Pdf
Did you know the coal fields of West Virginia were the scene of violence and strife between coal miners and coal company management in the early 20th century? The West Virginia Coal Wars are often overlooked in US history. It is time that changed. Several lessons can be learned from what happened during the West Virginia Coal Wars. These confrontations led to developments in labor relations that define collective bargaining to this day. There were heroes and villains, saints and sinners, and a mountain culture that was inexorably changed. It is a story that is fascinating and disturbing at the same time. This book holds some fascinating tidbits of information many people do not know, including the following: The impact of company stores The role minorities played in the coal wars The story behind the term "redneck" Safety hazards the coal miners faced Organizations that supported the miners and better working conditions This book on the West Virginia Coal Wars lets us look down the mine shafts of West Virginia into the dark world of exploitation and worker abuse that was common one hundred years ago. The hills were alive with sounds of gunfire as coal miners and their union stood up against management. The West Virginia Coal Wars is a fascinating journey through the dark mountains of Appalachia and the struggle its people endured to win basic rights and respect.
This book offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the “Great Coalfield War.” In a story of transformation, Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century.
Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields by David Corbin Pdf
Between 1880 and 1922, the coal fields of southern West Virginia witnessed two bloody and protracted strikes, the formation of two competing unions, and the largest armed conflict in American labor history--a week-long battle between 20,000 coal miners and 5,000 state police, deputy sheriffs, and mine guards. These events resulted in an untold number of deaths, indictments of over 550 coal miners for insurrection and treason, and four declarations of martial law. Corbin argues that these violent events were collective and militant acts of aggression interconnected and conditioned by decades of oppression. His study goes a long way toward breaking down the old stereotypes of Appalachian and coal mining culture. This second edition contains a new preface and afterword by author David A. Corbin.
"Oral histories with participants in and observers of the Battle of Blair Mountain and other Appalachian mine wars of the 1920s and 1930s, supplemented with introductory material, maps, and photographs"--
For fans of Steve Sheinkin and Deb Heiligman, a riveting true story of the West Virginia coal miners who ignited the largest labor uprising in American history. In May of 1920, in a small town in the mountains of West Virginia, a dozen coal miners took a stand. They were sick of the low pay in the mines. The unsafe conditions. The brutal treatment they endured from mine owners and operators. The scrip they were paid-instead of cash-that could only be used at the company store. They had tried to unionize, but the mine owners dug in. On that fateful day in May 1920, tensions boiled over and a gunfight erupted-beginning a yearlong standoff between workers and owners. The miners pleaded, then protested, then went on strike; the owners retaliated with spying, bribery, and threats. Violence escalated on both sides, culminating in the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in United States history. In this gripping narrative nonfiction book, meet the resolute and spirited people who fought for the rights of coal miners, and discover how the West Virginia Mine Wars paved the way for vital worker protections nationwide. More than a century later, this overlooked story of the labor movement remains urgently relevant.
Author : Howard Burton Lee Publisher : West Virginia University Press Page : 240 pages File Size : 47,7 Mb Release : 1969 Category : Business & Economics ISBN : STANFORD:36105033765954
Matewan Before the Massacre by Rebecca J. Bailey Pdf
On May 19, 1920, gunshots rang through the streets of Matewan, West Virginia, in an event soon known as the "Matewan Massacre." Most historians of West Virginia and Appalachia see this event as the beginning of a long series of tribulations known as the second Mine Wars. But was it instead the culmination of an even longer series of proceedings that unfolded in Mingo County, dating back at least to the Civil War? Matewan Before the Massacre provides the first comprehensive history of the area, beginning in the late eighteenth century continuing up to the Massacre. It covers the relevant economic history, including the development of the coal mine industry and the struggles over land ownership; labor history, including early efforts of unionization; transportation history, including the role of the N&W Railroad; political history, including the role of political factions in the county's two major communities--Matewan and Williamson; and the impact of the state's governors and legislatures on Mingo County.