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It took decades of struggle by American workers to win the right to form and join unions, to bargain collectively for better pay, better conditions, and a better world.
In the coalfields of West Virginia, the mine owners straight-up banned workers from joining the United Mine Workers (UMW) union as soon as it was created in 1890.
The bosses wielded ‘freedom of contract’ like a cudgel against the American working class, making labour union membership grounds for immediate firing.
But American workers were some of the most militant in the world, and West Virginian coalminers some of the most militant in America.
In 1912, the West Virginia Coal Wars began.
It was a decade-long class struggle between mineworkers and mine owners over the rights of labour, and it culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain.
The miners and their families were tough, and many of them gained military experience during World War One.
But the bosses had the money and connections to raise an army of their own, including private detective agencies, strikebreakers, local police, and, when push came to shove, the U.S. Army.
It wasn’t a fair fight but that’s never stopped a determined working class.
Nine years before the Battle of Blair Mountain, millworkers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, walked out in what became known as the 'Bread and Roses Strike'
In 1920, rank-and-file miners in West Virginia persuaded the UMW leadership to launch a union drive.
Supported by labour organisers like Mother Jones, over 3,000 workers in Mingo County joined, despite knowing they’d be immediately fired.
Worse than that, because the oligarchs who owned the mines also owned the ‘company towns’ where coalminers had to live, their families faced immediate eviction, too.
On 19 May 1920, goons from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency – union-busting guns-for-hire – tried to evict a miner’s family in the town of Matewan in Mingo.
After failing to bribe the Mayor to let them proceed, the Detectives shot him dead. The local Police Chief, Sid Hatfield, supported by an armed squad of local miners, returned fire and drove them out.
Over the next year, tensions ratcheted up further, until Hatfield – a rare friend of the workers in a position of authority – was assassinated by Baldwin-Felts agents in broad daylight on 1 August 1921.
The fuse was lit.
Evicted coalminers living on the nearby Little Coal River began armed patrols, but they were quickly routed and arrested by better-armed cops.
Miners elsewhere in West Virginia soon learned of this.
The UMW held a mass rally on 7 August where the miners decided to march on Mingo County to free the imprisoned workers and unionise the coalmines.
But their route went through Logan County, whose sheriff was a vicious union buster.
Roosevelt's New Deal came on the back of many years of fierce class struggle in the 1910s and 20s, particularly by mineworkers
By 24 August, 13,000 coalminers had set out for “Bloody Mingo”. Some even commandeered local trains to speed up the process.
Meanwhile, the Logan sheriff was fortifying Blair Mountain.
He had a private army of 2,000 thugs, all financed by the Logan County Coal Operators Association.
The federal government intervened, too.
President Warren Harding promised the West Virginia coal bosses military support, including even bomber planes recently back from France.
The most intense phase of the Battle of Blair Mountain broke out on 29 August and lasted until 2 September.
Casualties remained low, but a million rounds of ammo were fired. Both sides used the sort of machine guns the US Army had used on the Western Front.
It was only the arrival of federal troops that convinced the coalminers to stand down. Many were war veterans themselves and didn’t want to shoot at their former comrades.
The Battle of Blair Mountain was followed by almost a thousand indictments against mineworkers, many for treason.
And although most were acquitted, the West Virginia coal bosses used their victory to crush unionisation in the state.
It wasn’t until FDR’s New Deal that American coalminers at last got their labour unions.
But the New Deal would never have happened if not for the years of class struggle by American workers like those who fought and died at Blair Mountain.
This is the real working-class history of Appalachia.
Who were our radical ancestors? What's the legacy we're following? To understand the present, we have to look back at our past, and that's exactly what Pete's radical history emails and blog posts do.
With so many remarkable individuals, It's impossible for Pete to choose his favourite figure from radical history, but if he had to, he'd say Sylvia Pankhurst: "She always appreciated that the struggles for feminist, economic, and racial emancipation are linked together, and she did all of her politics with that truth in mind. Also, like me, she's a Mancunian!"
