Blair Mountain Fighting
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The Battle of Blair Mountain, WV, lasted from August 25 to September 2, 1921, and was the largest labor uprising in American history. The wiki says it was "one of the " best-organized, and well-armed uprisings since the American Civil War "in Logan County , West Virginia , some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, called the Logan Defenders,who were backed by coal mine operators during an attempt by the miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields.
Sounds like something I should have heard about in American History class. But I didn't, and that's a disgrace. I learned about it today, in an email from progressive Congressman Alan Grayson, reprinted below:
Today is Labor Day, and last week marked the 95th anniversary of the most brutal confrontation in the history of the American labor movement, the Battle of Blair Mountain.
For one week during 1921, armed, striking coal miners battled scabs, a private militia, police officers and the U.S. Army. One hundred people died, 1,000 were arrested, and one million shots were fired. It was the largest armed rebellion in America since the Civil War.
This is how it happened. In the '20s, West Virginia coal miners lived in "company towns." The mining companies owned all the property. They literally ran union organizers out of town -- or killed them.
In 1912, in a strike at Paint Creek, the mining company forced the striking miners and their families out of their homes, to live in tents. Then they sent armed goons into that tent city, and opened fire on men, women and children there with a machine gun.
By 1920, the United Mine Workers had organized the northern mines in West Virginia, but they were barred from the southern mines. When southern miners tried to join the union, they were fired and evicted. To show who was boss, one mining company tried to place machine guns on the roofs of buildings in town. In Matewan, when the coal company goons came to town to take it upon themselves to enforce eviction notices, the mayor and the sheriff asked them to leave.
The goons refused. Incredibly, the goons tried to arrest the sheriff, Sheriff Hatfield. Shots were fired, and the mayor and nine others were killed. But the company goons had to flee.
The government sided with the coal companies, and put Sheriff Hatfield on trial for murder. The jury acquitted him. Then they put the sheriff on trial for supposedly dynamiting a non-union mine. As the sheriff walked up the courthouse steps to stand trial again, unarmed, company goons shot him in cold blood. In front of his wife.
This led to open confrontations between miners on one hand, and police and company goons on the other. Thirteen thousand armed miners assembled, and marched on the southern mines in Logan and Mingo Counties. They confronted a private militia of 2,000, hired by the coal companies.
President Harding was informed. He threatened to send in troops and even bombers to break the union. Many miners turned back, but then company goons started killing unarmed union men, and some armed miners pushed on. The militia attacked armed miners, and the coal companies hired airplanes to drop bombs on them.
The U.S. Army-Air Force, as it was known then, observed the miners' positions from overhead, and passed that information on to the coal companies.
The miners actually broke through the militia's defensive perimeter, but after five days, the Army intervened, and the miners stood down. By that time, 100 people were dead. Almost a thousand miners then were indicted for murder and treason.
No one on the side of the coal companies was ever held accountable.
The Battle of Blair Mountain showed that the miners could not defeat the coal companies and the government in battle. But then something interesting happened: the miners defeated the coal companies and the government at the ballot box, as pro-labor candidates won victories.
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