Blair Mountain Battlefield

Carrying rifles and wearing red bandanas around their necks (further cementing the term “redneck” in the American vernacular), some 10,000 coal miners marched toward Mingo County, West Virginia, in August 1921, determined to put an end to the Mine Guard System and free their brethren who had been jailed under martial law. Blocking their path were the entrenched forces of local sheriff Don Chafin, dug-in with machine-gun turrets guarding key passes through the steep terrain. After days of fighting, which included bombs dropped from biplanes, the Battle of Blair Mountain ended when federal troops were dispatched. The Blair Mountain Battlefield, an important historical site that commemorates the fight for constitutional rights, and an archaeological trove of trenches, artifacts, and quite possibly human remains, could now be utterly destroyed by drilling or timbering.

History

The largest armed uprising in American history since the Civil War, the Battle of Blair Mountain was the culminating event of the West Virginia Mine Wars, a series of conflicts between miners and coal operators spanning nearly a decade. In August 1921, an estimated 10,000 armed coal miners marched south from the state capitol at Charleston, West Virginia, towards the anti-union counties of Logan, Mingo, and McDowell. Their intent was to end the notorious Mine Guard System, which enabled the coal companies, backed by a private force of armed guards, to rule the coalfields as a police state in which the right to free speech, assembly, and other basic rights were forfeited as a condition of employment.

Map of the Blair Mountain Battlefield, WV, 1921, image courtesy West Virginia Mine Wars Museum.

Eight in ten West Virginia miners then lived in unincorporated “company towns” without elected officials or independent police forces. Mine guards (nominally employed by the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency) maintained order, installing machine-gun turrets and searchlights to help quell any rebellion. The miners and their families rented company houses—one-room hovels, always within walking distance of the mine; were paid in company currency called “script”; and bought goods at company stores with set prices. Company representatives even controlled the mail, often removing what they considered to be “subversive” (pro-union) literature.

As the miners marched south in late August, company forces, deputized and led by Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin, set up ten miles of defensive positions north of the town of Logan along ridgelines stretching from Blair Mountain northwards to Mill Creek. The battle continued for four days before federal troops intervened and the miners, unwilling to fight U.S. soldiers, laid down their arms. In the aftermath, over 500 miners and their union leadership were arrested and charged with treason and murder. The battle has been called “Labor's Gettysburg” because of its significance to the history of unions and workers’ rights.

The battlefield covers nearly 1,700 acres and is heavily forested with steep slopes. Along ridgelines and at various strategic points, numerous defensive entrenchments, earthworks, and foxholes can be found. Bullet shell casings and buried guns are among the most common artifacts found on the battlefield, and some human remains may be buried there as well.

Shell casings from the Blair Mountain Battlefield, WV, photo courtesy West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, 2016.

The Battle of Blair Mountain was perhaps the most forceful challenge to corporate power in American history, and the battle stands as a prime example of the sacrifices workers made and the struggles they faced in order to achieve union rights, benefits, living wages, safe working conditions, and pensions. It would take more than a decade after the battle for many of the miners’ objectives to be enshrined in law, but all workers in America now benefit from this early-twentieth-century struggle for workers' rights. Looking back today on the events of 1921, Cecil E. Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers of America, sums up their significance this way:

Blair Mountain stands as a pivotal event in American history, where working men and women stood up to the lawless coal barons of the early twentieth century and their private armies and fought for their rights as Americans—and indeed​, the rights of working families all over the world. It is a place where we can all be reminded that workers in this nation were literally forced to fight for their rights, and that those rights must constantly be defended or they will be lost. Blair Mountain is a beacon for all those who support American ideals of democracy, fairness, and freedom, which is what the miners were fighting for.

On a regional level, the conflict helped foster Appalachian stereotypes relating to "hillbillies" and "rednecks." The mainstream media of its day and the powerful corporate interests blamed the violence on the backward, mountain culture of the miners, promoting an historical narrative that has shaped the way Americans view Appalachians and how Appalachians view themselves.