ALAN GRAYSON – UNION EMAILS 2016
BATTLE OF BLAIR MOUNTAIN

Alan Grayson’s emails are always interesting, but these last two were eye-opening to me. I had never heard of the Colorado and West Virginia coal miners strikes, both of which amounted to warfare on both sides of the struggle. The interracial strife on the subject of labor is also part of this WV story. From Wikipedia, the last article, see their section “Future of site[edit].” It is heartbreaking.

See below http://www.mountainpartywv.com/tag/koch-brothers/, WV’s Jim Crow Jubilee: An Open Letter. That is not years in the past, but 2016 in the WV Legislature.



Alan Grayson’s Email
Labor Day, 9/5/16

The Second Civil War
Alan Grayson Sep 5 at 2:34 PM
To
Lucy Warner

Dear Lucy,

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. In 1925, convicted miners were paroled. In 1932, Democrats won both the State House and the White House. In 1935, President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act. Eleven years after the Battle of Blair Mountain, the United Mine Workers organized the southern coal fields in West Virginia.

The Battle of Blair Mountain did not have a happy ending for Sheriff Hatfield, or his wife, or the 100 men, women and children who died, or the hundreds who were injured, or the thousands who lost their jobs. But it did have a happy ending for the right to organize, and the middle class, and America.

Now let me ask you one thing: had you ever heard of this landmark event in American history, the Battle of Blair Mountain, before you read this? And if not, then why not? Think about that.

Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson

On this Labor Day, if you would like to contribute to our continuing efforts to organize-organize-organize, then click here >>

CONTRIBUTE

Paid for by the Committee to Elect Alan Grayson



Modern-day racists in WV Legislature Show Their Colors:

http://www.mountainpartywv.com/tag/koch-brothers/

WV’s Jim Crow Jubilee: An Open Letter
January 27, 2016
Communication Director

Members of the 82nd West Virginia Legislature,

In America, there are two large groups of working people remaining to be organized. These are minorities and management. Among conservative capitalists, there is an abject fear of unionization of these groups. American capitalists strive to beat down worker organization, and have forbidden organizing of management by Federal law.

Compare such attitudes with those in Europe, where such organizations are encouraged.

Senator Karnes and Delegate Overington requested not to receive these emails.

[NOTE: The anti-black anti-labor quotation by Vance Muse, founder of the “right to work” anti-labor campaign, clearly written to cause white union members to withdraw their membership, reads as follows: “From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call “brother” or lose their jobs.”]

There is no coincidence that the most heavy handed treatment of the laboring class began in RECONSTRUCTION following the Civil War. “Separate but Equal,” Jim Crow Laws, Wade Hampton Clauses, are notions with which everyone is familiar. The results in the states of the old Confederacy are telling.

During the period between 1865 and 1915, the States of the old Confederacy saw a twofold growth of economic wealth. Compare this with the forty fold growth of the rest of the nation. Everyone has heard of “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags,” who preyed upon the RECONSTRUCTED SOUTH.

In Charles Town, one such person served in Jefferson County as a Captain in a Pennsylvania Regiment. He saw opportunity after the war, and remained. He managed to get himself elected to the WV House of Delegates. As a lawyer, he exploited and cheated widows out of their lands and assets.

His son, also an attorney, attached himself to the Prosecution Team in the trials of Bill Blizzard and Southern WV Coal Miners. The miners were charged with treason and a host of other crimes against the State of West Virginia. This gentleman loathed organized labor, Bolsheviks, foreigners, persons of color, etc.

This man had a favorite phrase to describe his feelings toward the tenants and sharecroppers on his farms. That phrase was “KILL A HORSE; BUY ANOTHER. KILL A (N-word); HIRE ANOTHER.” (This writer heard these words many times from this man’s lips.)

This man was associated with the leading proponent of the first RIGHT TO WORK movement in Texas in the 1930’s.

Founded by Vance Muse, the CHRISTIAN AMERICAN ASSOCIATION (CAA) worked actively against the NEW DEAL. CAA supported programs and laws which were anti-labor, anti-minority, anti-progressive, anti-Catholic and anti-social legislation. Vance Muse was a prominent figure in EXTREME RIGHT of Southern Politics.

Muse, along with his sister, opposed child labor laws, female suffrage, integration, compulsory education, public health, and all Progressive changes in the Southern political landscape. To Muse, it was absolutely onerous to think of a white union man calling a black union man “BROTHER.”

Muse was an oil industry lobbyist. He and the CAA were subsidized by southern oil companies and northeastern industrialists.

Though efforts at passing RIGHT TO WORK LAWS in Texas and Louisiana eluded Muse and the CAA, he had great success after World War II in the other states of the old Confederacy as well as the agricultural states of the Great Plains.

It was in Kansas that Fred Koch, who made his money creating an oil industry for Josef Stalin, spearheaded the passage of RIGHT TO WORK in that state. Fred Koch was a contributor to CAA the father of Charles and David Koch, who need no further introduction.

Other prominent Texans who loathed unions and blacks belonging to unions were the HUNT BROTHERS of HLH Inc.

Since the racist roots of RIGHT TO WORK are now exposed, the legislation is called WORKPLACE FREEDOM. This is similar to putting lipstick on a pig. WORKPLACE FREEDOM, aka RIGHT TO WORK, is intended to create castes and sub castes of minority American workers. These minorities, and poor whites, are to berelegated to the lesser levels of the social and economic structures.

By enacting WORKPLACE FREEDOM, this will be the fate of all but the elitist West Virginians.

Ask yourself this question. ARE YOU WILLING TO VOTE THIS BURDEN UPON YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS?

DANNY LUTZ
MODERATOR
THE JEFFERSON FORUM

District 16 Chair for the Executive Committee, WV Mountain Party
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/right-to-work/
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188025/right-work-laws-built-racist-foundations
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188025/right-work-laws-built-racist-foundations

http://www.southernstudies.org/2012/12/the-racist-roots-of-right-to-work-laws.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vance_Muse



http://progressivearmy.com/2016/01/25/senator-robert-karnes-bully-of-the-people/

Watch: Republican State Senator Insults His Own Constituents (VIDEO)
Republican Senator Karnes has a very low opinion of those who participate in the political process

By Pamela Elaine - January 25, 2016

Video -- Sen Karnes (R) and Sen Douglas Facemire (D).


On January 13, the West Virginia Senate narrowly passed Bill SB 1: WV Workplace Freedom Act. Senator Robert Karnes, Chair of Agricultural and Rural Development and Natural Resources Committees, had nothing but disdain and condescension for the people of West Virginia who dared to show up and speak their minds about what affects their livelihood.

Don’t let the small town, one of the people, persona fool you. As workers took the time out of their day and their paychecks to participate in the lawmaking process, showing up to make their voices heard, the Senator let the people know how he really felt about them as you can see in the following video: Sen Karnes (R) and Sen Douglas Facemire (D).

Regardless of your feelings on unions and right to work laws what should be noted here is that the Senator doesn’t care what the people he represents have to say– unless they agree with him. Citizens of West Virgina, do you believe that this man could possibly be voting in your favor when this is the way he treats you face to face when the big cameras aren’t rolling?

When those carefully chosen words, designed to rally people who already support him aren’t planted in front of him? I have doubts that he could and you should too, especially when he seemed more that confident in his right to say what he did without fear of censure and the silence of his party seems to suggest they support this sort of thinking. The beyond insulting insinuation that these people who put blood, sweat, and tears into taking care of their families are lazy is not one that should be ignored.

They don’t want us there watching and keeping an eye on what they are doing. An ignorant populace is a much easier to control populace, and we upset the apple cart when we show up and hold these lawmakers responsible for the effects the laws they pass have on our families and us.

All I can say to my home state is that every election counts and remember how you are treated and by whom and continue to show up.



It Began With The Matewan Massacre, May 19, 1921:

http://www.signalscv.com/archives/41519/

Diana Shaw: Walker should learn from Big Labor’s history
Democratic Voices
By Diana Shaw
March 8, 2011 1:55 a.m.

My sympathies to Wisconsin’s taxpayers, marching in the snow to stop Gov. Scott Walker and his Republican legislature from terminating their collective bargaining rights.

Confused by my opening words? Maybe you’ve bought into the carefully framed anti-labor spin that hard-working taxpayers and greedy unions are irreconcilable polarities. But union workers are indeed taxpayers, and they are making their voices heard across the land.

If we refuse to learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

Denying workers a say in their own destinies has had unfortunate consequences in the past. People have died for the right to bargain.

With multinational corporate power tugging at our seams, we cannot succumb to thinly veiled power grabs and greed if we are to prosper.

Notwithstanding what you’ve heard, events in Wisconsin are not about a budget. If they were, Walker would agree to the financial concessions offered by the unions.

No, Walker knows that unions support his Democratic opponents. Like any politician, he wants to get rid of his opponents. That is what this fight is about.

Hammering out compromises at the collective bargaining table is a civilized way to let off the steam that naturally grows out of the opposing interests of labor and management.

If you don’t understand what I mean by “steam,” the largest labor battle in U.S. history, the Battle of Blair Mountain, is instructive.

In the late 1800s, coal companies created company towns, paying private detectives to intimidate, evict and even murder challengers.

Yet by 1920, most of America’s coal miners had organized unions to present and work out their grievances, resulting in improved wages and working conditions. Among the last anti-union holdouts were the companies in southern West Virginia.

In Matewan, every single miner joined the union — and every single miner was fired. On May 19, 1921, 12 company detectives marched into town to evict these miners and their families, starting with a woman and her children, forced into the rain at gunpoint.

The town’s 27-year-old sheriff, Sid Hatfield, and a group of deputized miners confronted the thugs. In the end, 10 men, including the town’s pro-union mayor and some detectives, lay dead.

The Matewan Massacre, as it came to be known, made a hero out of young Hatfield, and energized the state’s miners, who vowed to unionize the rest of West Virginia.

That summer, as the unarmed Hatfield and his deputy climbed the stairs of the county courthouse with their wives, they were ambushed and gunned down by company detectives.

The young hero’s death enraged miners, who gathered by the thousands to march across the mountains and valleys of West Virginia into nonunion Logan County. They were met by Sheriff Chafin, itching for a fight.

On the company dole, with an arsenal of World War I-era planes and bombs, Chafin’s smaller forces were spread across the ridge of Blair Mountain, their guns aimed down at the hapless miners.

The intimidated miners turned around, but upon hearing that Chafin’s men were shooting union sympathizers, they decided to fight. To identify each other, they wore red bandanas around their necks. (A possible origin of the term “rednecks.”)

In the end, 100 miners and 30 company men died, many were injured, and almost 1,000 miners were imprisoned, some for years.

Union membership plummeted in West Virginia and across the country, but the companies’ victory was pyrrhic. Union leadership took a page from Sheriff Chafin’s book.

Realizing Chafin’s political power was financed by the companies, they too entered the political arena. With labor support, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. By 1935, all of West Virginia’s coal mines were unionized.

This is the history that Walker, financed by the billionaire Koch brothers, is so cavalierly trying to nullify.

Given the blood and sacrifice played out at Blair Mountain, it is unlikely organized labor is going to give up this fight. That’s why it’s marching in the freezing cold.

Labor didn’t start this recession. Yet, teachers, nurses, librarians, cops, firefighters and janitors are being asked to pay for Wall Street’s shenanigans.

Our prosperity depends upon the wages they’re paid circulating into our economy, paying for cars, furniture, houses, clothes, and yes, taxes to pave our streets and build our infrastructure. They are the middle class, the backbone of this nation, and they set this country apart from others.

I oppose the elimination of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. I’m glad an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicates that 62 percent of America agrees with me.

Diana Shaw is a Santa Clarita Valley resident and an entertainment attorney. She represents the 38th Assembly District on the L.A. County Democratic Central Committee and the State Democratic Central Committee. Her column reflects her own views and not necessarily those of The Signal. “Democratic Voices” is written by local Democrats and runs Tuesdays in The Signal.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021968101

Wed Dec 12, 2012, 06:10 PM
Luminous Animal (27,310 posts)

http://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/right-to-work
You Hate "Right To Work" Laws More Than You Know. Here's Why

Vance Muse was a racist political operative and lobbyist from the state of Texas — the native habitat for all America’s vermin —as Satanically vile as “Turd Blossom” Rove, a racist smear-peddler like Andrew Breitbart, only without Breitbart’s degenerate heart and fondness for blow.

......

Among Vance Muse’s “reactionary enterprises”: He lobbied against women’s suffrage, against the child-labor amendment, against the 8-hour workday, and in 1936, Muse engineered the first split in the South’s Democratic Party by peeling off the segregationists and racists from the New Deal party, a political maneuver that eventually led to Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and at last a Republican right-wing takeover of the South, and with it, the collapse of the old New Deal coalition. Which worked out fine for Vance Muse, since he was a covert Republican himself, serving “for years” as the Republican Party state treasurer in Texas.

That first attempt at splitting the Democratic party by peeling away the Southern segregationist-fascists took place in 1936, when Georgia’s brutal white supremacist governor, Eugene Talmadge, organized a “grassroots” convention with Vance Muse’s help. To stir up anti-FDR and anti-New Deal hate in the South, Vance Muse used photographs he acquired showing First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt being escorted by two African-American professors at Howard University. Muse used that photo to stir up the white supremacists in Georgia, he leaked it to as many newspapers as he could, and he even brandished it around a Senate hearing he was called before in 1936. Those hearings revealed that the anti-FDR “convention” that Vance Muse put on, through his “Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution”— which featured guests of honor like Gerald L K Smith, America’s leading anti-Semite and godfather to the modern American Nazi movement — was financed not only by Confederate sponsors like Texan Will Clayton, owner of the world’s largest cotton broker, but also reactionary northeast Republican money: the DuPont brothers, J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil, Alfred Sloan of General Motors... That unholy alliance of Northeastern and Confederate plutocrat money financed the first serious attempt at splitting the Southern Democrats off by exploiting white supremacism, all in order to break labor power and return to the world before the New Deal — and to the open shop.

The article is chocked full of useful information and well worth reading in its entirety.

I'll end this with a quote from Vance Muse the opens the linked article.

“From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.”
— Vance Muse, founder of the “right to work” anti-labor campaign



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

Battle of Blair Mountain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and one of the largest, best-organized, and well-armed uprisings since the American Civil War.[1] For five days in late August and early September 1921, in Logan County, West Virginia, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, called the Logan Defenders,[2] who were backed by coal mine operators during an attempt by the miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired,[3] and the United States Army intervened by presidential order.[4]

Background[edit]

Photograph -- Child Labor in American coal mines, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 1906
See also Coal Wars.

On May 19, 1920, 12 Baldwin-Felts agents, including Lee Felts, arrived in Matewan and promptly met up with Albert Felts, who was already in the area. Albert and Lee were the brothers of Thomas Felts, the co-owner and director of the agency. Albert had already been in the area, and had tried to bribe Mayor Testerman with 500 dollars to place machine guns on roofs in the town, which Testerman refused.[5] That afternoon, Albert and Lee along with eleven other men set out to the Stone Mountain Coal Company property. The first family they evicted was a woman and her children, whose husband was not home at the time. They forced them out at gunpoint, and threw their belongings in the road under a light but steady rain. The miners who saw it were furious, and sent word to town.[6]

As the agents walked to the train station to leave town, Police Chief Sid Hatfield and a group of deputized miners confronted them and told the agents they were under arrest. Albert Felts replied that in fact, he had a warrant for Sid's arrest.[7] Testerman was alerted, and he ran out into the street after a miner shouted that Sid had been arrested. Hatfield backed into the store, and Testerman asked to see the warrant. After reviewing it, the mayor exclaimed, "This is a bogus warrant." With these words, a gunfight erupted and Sid Hatfield shot Albert Felts. Mayor Testerman and Albert and Lee Felts were among the 10 men killed (3 from the town, and 7 from the agency).[7]

This gunfight became known as the Matewan Massacre, and its symbolic significance was enormous for the miners. The seemingly invincible Baldwin-Felts had been beaten.[8] Sid Hatfield became an immediate legend and hero to the union miners, and became a symbol of hope that the oppression of coal operators and their hired guns could be overthrown.[9] Throughout the summer and into the fall of 1920, the union gained strength in Mingo County, as did the resistance of the coal operators. Low-intensity warfare was waged up and down the Tug River. In late June, state police under the command of Captain Brockus raided the Lick Creek tent colony near Williamson, West Virginia. Miners were said to have fired on Brockus and Martin's men from the colony, and in response the state police shot and arrested miners, ripped the canvas tents to shreds, and scattered the mining families' belongings.[10] Both sides were bolstering their arms, and Sid Hatfield continued to be a problem, especially when he converted Testerman's jewelry store into a gun shop.[11]

On January 26, 1921, the trial of Sid Hatfield for killing Albert Felts began. This trial was in the national spotlight, and it brought much attention to the miners' cause. Hatfield's stature and mythical status grew as the trial proceeded. Sid Hatfield posed and talked to reporters, fanning the flames of his own stature and legend. All men were acquitted in the end, but overall the union was facing significant setbacks.[12] Eighty percent of mines had reopened with the importation of replacements and the signing of yellow dog contracts by ex-strikers returning to mines.[13] In mid-May 1921, union miners launched a full assault on nonunion mines. In a short time, the conflict had consumed the entire Tug River Valley. This "Three Days Battle" was finally ended by a flag of truce and the implementation of martial law.[14] From the beginning, the miners perceived the enforcement of martial law as being one-sided.[15] Hundreds of miners were arrested; the smallest of infractions could mean imprisonment, while those on the other side of this 'law and order' were seen as immune.[16] The miners responded with guerrilla tactics and violence.[16]

In the midst of this tense situation, Sid Hatfield traveled to McDowell County on 1 August 1921 to stand trial for charges of dynamiting a coal tipple. Along with him traveled a good friend, Ed Chambers, and their two wives.[17] As they walked up the courthouse stairs, unarmed and flanked by their wives, a group of Baldwin-Felts agents standing at the top of the stairs opened fire. Hatfield was killed instantly. Chambers was bullet-riddled and rolled to the bottom of the stairs. Despite Sally Chambers' protests, one of the agents ran down the stairs and shot Chambers once more, in the back of the head point blank.[18] Sid and Ed's bodies were returned to Matewan, and word of the slayings spread through the mountains.

The miners were angry at the way Hatfield had been slain in cold blood, and at how it appeared the assassins would escape punishment.[19] They began to pour out of the mountains and to take up arms.

Miners along the Little Coal River were among the first to militarize, and began actions such as patrolling and guarding the area. Sheriff Don Chafin sent Logan County troopers to Little Coal River area, where armed miners captured the troopers, disarmed them, and sent them fleeing.[20]

On August 7, 1921, the leaders of the UMW District 17, which encompasses much of southern West Virginia, called a rally at the state capitol in Charleston. These leaders were Frank Keeney and Fred Mooney, who were veterans of previous mine conflicts in the region. Both were local, and were well read and articulate. Keeney and Mooney met with Governor Ephraim Morgan, and presented him with a petition of the miners' demands.[21] When Morgan summarily rejected these demands, the miners became more restless and began to talk of a march on Mingo to free the confined miners, end martial law, and organize the county. But directly in the way stood Blair Mountain, Logan County, and Sheriff Don Chafin.[22]

Battle

At a rally on August 7, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones called on the miners not to march into Logan and Mingo counties and set up the union by force. Accused by some of losing her nerve, she rightly feared a bloodbath in a battle between lightly armed union forces and the more heavily armed deputies from Logan County. Yet, feeling they had been lied to again by West Virginia's Governor Morgan, armed men began gathering at Lens Creek Mountain, near Marmet in Kanawha County on August 20. Four days later, an estimated 13,000 had gathered and began marching towards Logan County. Impatient to get to the fighting, miners near St. Albans, in West Virginia's Kanawha County, commandeered a Chesapeake and Ohio freight train, renamed by the miners as the 'Blue Steel Special', to meet up with the advanced column of marchers at Danville in Boone County on their way to Bloody Mingo. During this time, Keeney and Mooney fled to Ohio, while the fiery leader Bill Blizzard assumed quasi-leadership of the miners. Meanwhile, the anti-union Sheriff of Logan County, Don Chafin (1887–1954),[23] had begun to set up defenses on Blair Mountain. Chafin was supported financially by the Logan County Coal Operators Association, creating the nation's largest private armed force of nearly 2,000.

The first skirmishes occurred on the morning of August 25. The bulk of the miners were still 15 mi (24 km) away.

The following day, President Warren Harding threatened to send in federal troops and Army Martin MB-1 bombers. After a long meeting in the town of Madison, the seat of Boone County, agreements were made convincing the miners to return home. However, the struggle was far from over. After spending days to assemble his private army, Chafin was not going to be denied his battle to end union attempts at organizing Logan County coal mines. Within hours of the Madison decision, rumors abounded that Sheriff Chafin's men had shot union sympathizers in the town of Sharples, West Virginia, just north of Blair Mountain—and that families had been caught in crossfire during the skirmishes. Infuriated, the miners turned back towards Blair Mountain, many traveling in other stolen and commandeered trains.

Photograph -- A group of miners display one of the bombs dropped by Chafin's airplanes.

By August 29, battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair. At least one did not explode and was recovered by the miners; it was used months later to great effect during treason and murder trials following the battle. On orders from General Billy Mitchell, Army bombers from Maryland were also used for aerial surveillance. One Martin bomber crashed on the return flight, killing the three members of the crew.[24][25]

Sporadic gun battles continued for a week, with the miners at one time nearly breaking through to the town of Logan and their target destinations, the non-unionized counties to the south, Logan and Mingo. Up to 30 deaths were reported by Chafin's side and 50–100 on the union miners' side, with hundreds more injured or wounded.[citation needed]

Chaffin's forces consisted of 90 men from Bluefield, West Virginia; 40 men from Huntington, West Virginia and about 120 from the West Virginia State Police.[26] 3 of Chafin forces-2 Volunteers and a Deputy Sheriff were killed[27][28] and one miner was fatally wounded[29]

By September 2, federal troops arrived. Realizing he would lose a lot of good miners if the battle continued with the military[citation needed], union leader Bill Blizzard passed the word for the miners to start heading home the following day. Miners fearing jail and confiscation of their guns found clever ways to hide rifles and hand guns in the woods before leaving Logan County. Collectors and researchers to this day are still finding weapons and ammunition embedded in old trees and in rock crevices. Thousands of spent and live cartridges have made it into private collections.

Following the battle, 985 miners were indicted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and treason against the State of West Virginia. Though some were acquitted by sympathetic juries, many[quantify] others were imprisoned for years. The last was paroled in 1925. At Bill Blizzard's trial, the unexploded bomb was used as evidence of the government and companies' brutality, and the trial ultimately resulted in his acquittal.

Legacy[edit]

In the short term, the battle was an overwhelming victory for management. UMW membership plummeted from more than 50,000 miners to approximately 10,000 over the next several years, and it was not until 1935 — following the Great Depression and the beginning of the New Deal under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt — that the UMW fully organized in southern West Virginia.

This union defeat had major implications for the UMWA as a whole. After World War I, as the coal industry began to collapse, union mining was no longer financially sustainable. Because of the defeat in West Virginia, the union was undermined in Pennsylvania and Kentucky also. By the end of 1925, Illinois was the only remaining unionized state which could compete, in terms of soft coal production, with the others listed.

In the long-term, the battle raised awareness of the appalling conditions faced by miners in the dangerous West Virginia coalfields, and led directly to a change in union tactics in political battles to get the law on labor's side via confrontations with recalcitrant and abusive managements and thence to the much larger organized labor victory a few years later during the New Deal in 1933. That in turn led to the UMWA helping organize many better-known unions such as the Steel Workers during the mid-thirties.

In the final analysis, management's success was a pyrrhic victory that helped lead to a much larger and stronger organized labor movement in many other industries and labor union affiliations and umbrella organizations such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Future of site[edit]

In April 2008, Blair Mountain was chosen for the list of protected places on the National Register of Historic Places. This decision was contested by the state of West Virginia, and the listing was placed under review. As of mid-2010, "[s]ubsidiaries of two of the United States' largest coal producers — Arch Coal, Inc., and Massey Energy Company, ... — hold permits to blast and strip-mine huge chunks of the upper slopes and ridge of Blair Mountain, removing much of the mountaintop," the National Geographic reported. Starting in the summer of 2006, Kenneth King, a local avocational archaeologist led a team of professional archaeologists to further investigate the battlefield. King and the team's initial survey "mapped 15 combat sites and discovered more than a thousand artifacts, from rifle and shotgun shell casings to coins and batteries [and] little sign of disturbance" to the site, challenging earlier surveys conducted by Arch.[30] Currently, preservation efforts are being led by the Blair Mountain Heritage Alliance, which is located in Blair, WV and which runs the Blair Community Center and Museum. In addition, in the summer of 2011, a march commemorating the 90th anniversary occurred, tracing the 50-mile march of the miners.[31]

In October 2012, a federal district judge ruled that a coalition of preservation groups did not have standing to sue to protect the historic site.[32] On August 26, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2-1 to overturn the ruling and returned the case.[33]

In fiction[edit]

The Blair Mountain march, as well as the events leading up to it and those immediately following it, are depicted in the novels Storming Heaven (Denise Giardina, 1987) and Blair Mountain (Jonathan Lynn, 2006). The first part of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart (Glenn Taylor, 2008) concerns the relationship between the book's main character and Sid Hastings, his involvement in the Matewan massacre and the ensuing battle. John Sayles' 1987 film Matewan depicts the Matewan Massacre, a small part of the Blair Mountain story. Diane Gilliam Fisher's poetry collection, Kettle Bottom, published by Perugia Press, also focuses on the events of the Battle of Blair Mountain, from the perspective of the miners' families. Journalist Topper Sherwood published a novel, Carla Rising (Appalachian Editions, 2015), based on the miners' strike, the march, and the Battle of Blair Mountain, including the US military intervention.[34]

In music

Tom Breiding's "Union Miner" from "The Unbroken Circle: Songs of the West Virginia Coalfields" (2008) accurately depicts events surrounding the Battle of Blair Mountain from the perspective of a coal miner preparing to march. "Union Miner" can be heard at virtually every event sponsored by the United Mine Workers of America today. Tom Breiding has provided the music for the UMWA's "Fairness at Patriot" campaign (2013–14), the UMWA centennial commemoration of the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado (2014), the inauguration of UMWA officers (2014), and various other Mine Workers events. "The Unbroken Circle: Songs of the West Virginia Coalfields" can be found at http://www.tombreiding.com

"Miners' Rebellion" (2012) by alt country band The Miners tells the story of the Battle of Blair Mountain. The song is contained on The Miners debut EP also entitled Miners' Rebellion.

When Miners March (2007) contains 16 recently written songs (not music from the 1920s) from the audiobook When Miners March — The Battle of Blair Mountain.

"Battle of Blair Mountain" (2004) is a song by folk singer David Rovics and can be found on his album Songs for Mahmud.

The song "Battle of Blair Mountain" (2010) written by Louise Mosrie and Mike Richardson can be found on Louise Mosrie's album Home (Zoe Cat Music/BMI).

The song "Red Neck War" by Byzantine is based on the Battle of Blair Mountain and can be found on the group's 2005 album ... And They Shall Take Up Serpents (Prosthetic Records). The song "Black Lung" by The Radio Nationals (band) is also based on this conflict.[citation needed]

Blair Pathways (2011) is a multimedia project, including a CD and maps, tracing the history of the Blair Mountain area and its labor disputes. It contains music by a number of traditional artists, including Riley Baugus and Tim Eriksen.

Folk punk band My Life in Black and White released the song "Bombs on Blair Mountain" on their 2009 album Hold the Line.

"Blair Mountain" The River Drivers. Found on YouTube.



RELATED: Research -- Right to Work Archives - Mountain Party WV
www.mountainpartywv.com/tag/right-to-work/
Fred Koch was a contributor to CAA the father of Charles and David Koch, who need no further introduction. ... and blacks belonging to unions were the HUNT BROTHERS of HLH Inc. .... source: The Battle of Blair Mountain by Chris Hedges.
Diana Shaw: Walker should learn from Big Labor's history - The Signal
www.signalscv.com/archives/41519/The Santa Clarita Valley Signal
Mar 8, 2011 - ... labor battle in U.S. history, the Battle of Blair Mountain, is instructive. ... is the history that Walker, financed by the billionaire Koch brothers, ...