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The West Virginia Coal Wars A Captivating Guide To The Mine Wars And The Battle Of Blair Mountain The Largest Labor Uprising In The History Of The United States Of America
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Book Synopsis The West Virginia Coal Wars by : Captivating History
Download or read book The West Virginia Coal Wars written by Captivating History and published by . This book was released on 2023-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Mine Wars written by Steve Watkins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis The Battle of Blair Mountain by : Robert Shogan
Download or read book The Battle of Blair Mountain written by Robert Shogan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2006-07-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of Blair Mountain covers a profoundly significant but long-neglected slice of American history - the largest armed uprising on American soil since the Civil War. In 1921, some 10,000 West Virginia coal miners, outraged over years of brutality and lawless exploitation, picked up their Winchesters and marched against their tormentors, the powerful mine owners who ruled their corrupt state. For ten days the miners fought a pitched battle against an opposing legion of deputies, state police, and makeshift militia. Only the intervention of a federal expeditionary force, spearheaded by a bomber squadron commanded by General Billy Mitchell, ended this undeclared civil war and forced the miners to throw down their arms. The significance of this episode reaches beyond the annals of labor history. Indeed, it is a saga of the conflicting political, economic and cultural forces that shaped the power structure of 20th century America.
Book Synopsis The Road to Blair Mountain by : Charles B. Keeney
Download or read book The Road to Blair Mountain written by Charles B. Keeney and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.
Book Synopsis Thunder In the Mountains by : Lon Savage
Download or read book Thunder In the Mountains written by Lon Savage and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1985-06-15 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis When Miners March by : William C. Blizzard
Download or read book When Miners March written by William C. Blizzard and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2010-07-09 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis The Devil Is Here in These Hills by : James Green
Download or read book The Devil Is Here in These Hills written by James Green and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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).
Book Synopsis The West Virginia Coal Wars by : Charles River Editors
Download or read book The West Virginia Coal Wars written by Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *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.
Book Synopsis Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals by : David Alan Corbin
Download or read book Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals written by David Alan Corbin and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strikes and union battles occurred throughout American industry during the early part of the twentieth century, but none of these stories compare to the West Virginia Mine Wars of 1912 and 1921. These two workers’ rebellions quickly drew national attention to an area known principally for its “black gold,” the coal that was vital for U.S. factories, power plants, and warships of that age. In 1912, miners struck against the harsh conditions in the work camps of Paint and Cabin Creeks and coal operators responded with force. The ensuing battles caused the West Virginia governor to declare martial law, prompting Samuel Gompers to dub the state “Russianized West Virginia [where] the people can be naught but serfs.” There was little improvement in working conditions by 1921, when another army—thousands of union miners—went up against similar numbers of state police, local deputies, and paid company guards. The weeklong Battle of Blair Mountain ended only after President Warren Harding sent 2,000 U.S. troops and a small unit of bombers to pacify the region Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals tells the story of these union battles as seen by the leaders, rank-and-file participants, and the journalists who came to West Virginia to cover them for papers including The Nation and the New York Times. Union leaders like Gompers, Frank Keeney, Fred Mooney, Bill Blizzard, and Mother Jones discuss the lives and struggles of the miners for their union. The book also contains articles, speeches, and personal testimony heard by two U.S. Senate committees sent to investigate West Virginia’s labor problems. In this testimony, miners and their family members describe life and work in the coal camps, telling why they participated in these violent episodes in West Virginia history. Special attention is given to the role of Huntington’s own radical newspaper, The Socialist and Labor Star, a forgotten monument in the history of American heresy and radicalism.
Book Synopsis The Blair Mountain War by : George T. Swain
Download or read book The Blair Mountain War written by George T. Swain and published by Woodland Press. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brand new title, The Blair Mountain War: Battle of the Rednecks, tells the true story of the Blair Mountain War, the largest organized armed uprising in US labor history and led almost directly to the national labor laws currently in effect. The title's release comes at a time of controversy surrounding Blair Mountain as state officials ask the National Parks Service to remove the mountain from the National Register of Historic Places. This is on the heels of the historic mountain just being named to the National Register last month, on Monday, March 30th. Objectors seem to be a coordinated campaign by landowning and coal companies that are gathering signatures of property holders to oppose the nomination. "The Blair Mountain War: Battle of the Rednecks is a reprinting of the writings of George T. Swain," said Keith Davis, of Woodland Press, publishers of the title, "and it has great historic significance to southern West Virginia. It will certainly appeal to all lovers of history." At the time of this original manuscript, written in 1927, Swain was a reporter for the county newspaper, The Logan County Banner, in Logan. Here Swain paints a vivid picture, in his most unique style, of West Virginia in bygone days. Here he documents the accounts surrounding the 1921 Blair Mountain War and the struggle between state coal miners, calling themselves "rednecks," and the people of Logan. Granted, Swain was a staunch supporter of the controversial and powerful Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin at the time of this writing, so his particular take on the mine war is from that perspective. When he describes Logan County miners in this manuscript, he portrays them as being largely content and well-treated by mine operators. Yet, the truth was that there was a great deal of discontent in the Logan coalfields in 1921. As the late state historian Robert Y. Spence once wrote: "There was the resentment of difficult work for little pay. There was resentment caused by the mine owners' refusal to negotiate with the miners' union. Most of all, there was resentment of the attitude the mine owners had for the men who worked underground supporting the owners' way of living." Sheriff Chafin and mine operators within the county were defiant over and opposed to the unionization of the Logan field. For this, and for other related events that took place in the state, tensions escalated and, eventually, war ensued. It's been written that the result of this battle at Blair Mountain marked a turning point in the national movement to better the conditions of working people by demanding the legalization of unions. It was the largest armed labor confrontation in U.S. history. To this day, the Blair Mountain War stands as a powerful symbol for workers, even though Swain wearily concludes that the battle was a "foolhardy undertaking." "For historic purposes, this volume has great importance," Davis added, "and it specifically describes what was happening in the City of Logan, and throughout the county, after the miners' march began. Supporters rallied to Logan's defense at the time, and, eventually, federal troops were sent into the city by US President Warren Harding. This bit of West Virginia has national significance." The West Virginia State Archives stated that the mine wars have demonstrated the inability of the state and federal governments to defuse the situations short of initiating armed intervention. Regardless, the details behind The Blair Mountain War remain fascinating and controversial. True American history, The Battle of Blair Mountain is a fascinating account.
Book Synopsis Bloodletting in Appalachia by : Howard Burton Lee
Download or read book Bloodletting in Appalachia written by Howard Burton Lee and published by West Virginia University Press. This book was released on 1969 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book I Come Creeping written by Ellie James and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between August 24 and September 4 of 1921, approximately 10,000 West Virginia coal miners marched to Blair Mountain in Logan County in a militant stand for their right to unionize. Despite its status as the largest labor uprising in United States history, few know or understand the impact of the Battle of Blair Mountain today, even within the borders of West Virginia. This creative project aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to memorialize this period of the West Virginia Mine Wars through the creation of a 10-page comic, titled I Come Creeping, which depicts and is informed by the events and cultural framework leading up to the battle. A summary of the historical context of the Battle of Blair Mountain establishes the content the comic seeks to cover, followed by an overview of the public forgetting which occurred after the battle and target audience which clarifies the need for such a project. The rationale for the use of a comic to communicate such content is grounded in historiographic narrative theory, which holds that the medium of graphic narrative is uniquely situated to deliver history to audiences.
Book Synopsis The West Virginia Mine Wars by : David Corbin
Download or read book The West Virginia Mine Wars written by David Corbin and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Civil War in West Virginia by : Winthrop David Lane
Download or read book Civil War in West Virginia written by Winthrop David Lane and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Matewan Before the Massacre by : Rebecca J. Bailey
Download or read book Matewan Before the Massacre written by Rebecca J. Bailey and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields by : David Corbin
Download or read book Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields written by David Corbin and published by Urbana : University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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"--Back cover.
Download or read book Coal Wars written by Source Wikipedia and published by Booksllc.Net. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 33. Chapters: 1920 Alabama coal strike, Battle of Blair Mountain, Battle of Evarts, Battle of Virden, Bituminous Coal Miners' Strike of 1894, Coal Creek War, Coal Strike of 1902, Colorado Coalfield War (1913-1914), Columbine Mine massacre, Harlan County War, Hartford Coal Mine Riot, Herrin massacre, Illinois Coal Wars, Lattimer massacre, Ludlow Massacre, Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912, Pana Massacre, Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910-1911, West Virginia Coal Wars. Excerpt: The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914. The massacre resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 25 people; sources vary but all sources include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent. The deaths occurred after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking workers. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern Colorado Coal Strike, lasting from September 1913 through December 1914. The strike was organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against coal mining companies in Colorado. The three largest companies involved were the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I), the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company (RMF), and the Victor-American Fuel Company (VAF). In retaliation for Ludlow, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines over the next ten days, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 40-mile front from Trinidad to Walsenburg. The entire strike would cost between 69 and 199 lives. Thomas Franklin Andrews described it as the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States." The Ludlow Massacre...
