Courses
West
Virginia History, Ronald Lewis, WV University
Course site in West Virginia history; rich
resource for timelines and photographs under "Course Materials" section.
Current Coal News
Coal
Sludge
Oct 18, 2000 spill in eastern
Kentucky. NPR report. See also
Buffalo Creek.
Coal
Slurry
Coal Slurry NPR's Adam Hochberg reports on a coal mine pond that gave
way in eastern Kentucky, releasing 250-million gallons of thick black
sludge that polluted streams, killed fish and cut off drinking water
supplies. Cleanup is under way. (5:45)
Appalshop's
Community Media Initiative
In addition to the site's other
resources, there is a prominent link from the home page to photos and
press coverage of the Martin County coal sludge disaster.
Denise Giardina
Keller's notes and links for
Storming Heaven
Author
Lends Voice to Protest
West Virginia author Denise
Giardina on Saturday urged state residents to take back their state
from "King Coal" and work to abolish mountaintop removal
mining.
Chat
with Author Denise Giardina
Coffee
with Denise Giardina
Slashing
The Homemade Quilt in Denise Giardina's Storming Heaven
Cecelia Conoway
Giardina dramatizes four points of view, including gender differences:
a mountain fellow who grows up with the old ways; a younger man born on the eve of
industrialization; a modern mountain woman whose family lives in both worlds; and an
Italian immigrant woman relocated in the coal camp. Their threatened lives are symbolized
by tattered folklife motifs: a regendered midwife, a blasted stargazer, an exiled banjo
songster, a slashed quilt, and a skewered butterfly. Nonetheless, the characters find
strategies of resistance and continue to create cooperative social systems.
TNT Inks Exclusive
Television Production Deal
Full-Text Articles About Mine Wars
West Virginia Mine Wars
compiled by the West Virginia State Archives
The United
States Army and the Return to Normalcy in Labor Dispute Interventions: The Case of the
West Virginia Coal Mine Wars, 1920-1921
by Clayton D. Laurie
Labor
An Eclectic List of Events in
U.S. Labor History
. . .In many instances, government troops were
called out to crush strikes, at times firing on protesters. Presented below are a few of
the many incidents in the (too often overlooked) tumultuous labor history of this country.
Labornet's
Labor Quotes
Check out links to quotes from Mother Jones, Joe Hill, and
Eugene Debs.
Holt Labor
Library Internet Links
Index of Web resources including a list of
"Electronic Archives."
Indiana University's Division of Labor Studies
Includes a useful index of links to other labor sites.
Illinois Labor History Society
This site provides a number of some tangentially related materials under "Labor
History Articles," including information on Mother Jones, women in the Knights of
Labor, and a 1908 photograph of a young boy working a Welch, WV mine. The site also
provides an index to other labor sites. Most significant, however, is what isn't
here. In a timeline and study plans in American Labor History for history teachers,
West Virginia is not mentioned even once.
Publications
by the I.W.W.
Great digital archive.
A Short History of
American Labor
This brief history of more than 100 years of the modem
trade union movement in the United States can only touch the high spots of activity and
identify the principal trends of a "century of achievement." In such a
condensation of history, episodes of importance and of great human drama must necessarily
be discussed far too briefly, or in some cases relegated to a mere mention.
Storming
Heaven
. . .dedicated to the radical and transformative politics of the
Left. The source of the name is Marx's Letter to Dr. Kugelmann Concerning the Paris
Commune, dated 12 April 1871, in which Marx said the Paris workers were "storming
heaven."
Strikebreakers:
Scabs, Finks, and Violence
This "webliography" by Bennington student Kenyon Zimmer provides some
useful links. Of particular interest may be a link to a review of a recent book on
the Baldwin-Felts Agency that questions their depiction as "gun-thugs" and
proposes they were heroes. There is also a link to Jack London's speech regarding
scabs to the Oakland Socialist Party Local on April 5, 1903 and other socialist writings
by London.
UMWA
We Always Remember
A Pamphlet of Materials on the Repression of the IWW in the
first Red Scare in the United States of America, 1917 - 1920.
IWW, Industrial Workers of the World
(Wobblies)
In Matewan, Joe Kenehan tells Sephus, "I was with the Wobblies."
"Me too," Sephus replies," Back when it meant something."
The Wobbly
Spirit by Howard Zinn
Mountain Life: Information for Writers
McDowell Counties Recipes
for Survival / The
Bailey Family of Peel Chestnut Mountain
Music
The Labor Movement
History in
Song's index of labor related songs including an index Songs of the Industrial
Workers of the World and The Songs of Joe Hill.
The index for Songs from
the mines is also of interest, though fewer songs date to the time of our study.
History, Images, and Media
AltaVista Image
Search
Please note that the default for the search is to search
"Corbis Images." Although Corbis has a number of images of interest to the
course, if you want to search the Web as well, select the Web checkbox. To
eliminate Corbis or add additional photo archives, use the pulldown menu beside the
"Partner Sites" label.
American
Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
American memory is the online resource compiled by the
Library of Congress National Digital Library Program. With the participation of other libraries and archives, the
program provides a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and
culture of the United States. Over one million items from our historical collections are
currently available online.
American Studies
Crossroads Project: Reference and Research
Finding aids, directories, and indices for American Studies
resources.
1920's
Despite no mention of the march on Blair Mountain, the
site's timeline mentions the Matewan Massacre and provides a quick overview of larger
cultural and political events going on in the U.S. and rest of the world.
Misc. West Virginia
& Coal
Coal
Glossary
Kentucky Department for Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.
Coal Mining
Links
Useful list of links provided by an an anonymous user who
writes This list is a quirky collection of links I have encountered while searching
the web for genealogical and historical resources concerning coalmining and coalminers. It
is reflective of my personal interests and does not pretend to be comprehensive or
objective. I do not list sites which do not have a genealogical or historical component..
Glossary of Coal Mining
Terms
United States Department of Labor Office of Administrative Law
Judges: Judges Benchbook of the Black Lung Benefits Act.
Goldenseal
Goldenseal, the magazine of West Virginia traditional life, takes
its stories from the recollections of West Virginians living throughout the state. Oral
history fieldwork and documentary photography result in four issues per year with articles
on subjects such as labor history, folklore, music, farming, religion, traditional crafts,
food and politics.
Photos from West
Virginia’s Mining History (early 1900's)
from the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health Safety and
Training homepage.
Town of Matewan
Matewan Today. Follow links to the "Battle of
Matewan" and subsequent linked pages. Of particular interest is a page that
includes brief excerpts quoted
from witnesses of the Matewan massacre.
West Virginia Coal Mines, A WVGenWeb
Special Project
A terrific resource complete with photos, articles, interviews; the
site include an entire page of links to materials relating to the coal wars.
West Virginia
Histories Homepage
Primary resource here is an index of links to
bibliographies by subject.
West Virginia Mine
Disasters 1884 - Present
Date, company, mine, location, nature of accident, number of
victims.
Sayle's Matewan
Internet Movie Database: Matewan
Mingo County, West Virginia, 1920. Coal miners, struggling to form a union, are up
against company operators and gun thugs; Black and Italian miners, brought in by the
company to break the strike, are caught between the two forces. Union activist and
ex-Wobbly Joe Kenehan, sent to help organize the union, determines to bring the local,
Black, and Italian groups together. Drawn from an actual incident; the characters of Sid
Hatfield, Cabell Testerman, C. E. Lively, and Few Clothes Johnson were based on real
people.
Matewan
Made for $4 million but looking as if it cost three times that amount,
MATEWAN is the finest work so far from America's best-known independent filmmaker, John
Sayles. This film has the look and feel of a classic, yet surprisingly many critics-so
often longing for the movies of the past-found fault with it for just that reason.
Washington
Post Review
Riddled with labor rhetoric, this coal-dusted tragedy wavers between well-acted propaganda
and historical burlesque. Rambo's reactionism seems almost subtle by contrast.
This rather dismal review critiques the film's stereotypes
while using the following language with no sense of irony.
Shot in bleak, bituminous blues and set to the ballads of the hills,
"Matewan" captures the countryside and the ancient, echoing spell of the
worn-down Appalachians. It serves as a portrait of the people, with their ruined faces and
their odd, isolated English. But it doesn't conjure the dark danger of digging for
dirty ore, the hell of a life bent double and buried alive. Instead, it dramatizes a
strike, the making of a local union and the miners as incipient union men.
The review is interesting for a number of reasons, especially for
considering the reviewer's rhetoric and attitude toward the topic. Compare this
reviewer's take to Sayle's description of what he hoped to capture in the film.
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