Blair Mountain, WV
The Battle Then and Now
Thursday, August 31st, 2006
Lucas Brown and Lauren Benningfield, AV Staff
These entries are based on research or interviews conducted by Appalachian Voices staff and volunteers- we’d love for you to add another story or eulogy, and let us know if you’d like to request a change.
History of the Homeplace
Blair Mountain’s heritage is rooted in local miners fighting for their rights. In 1921, Blair was the battlefield for the clash between over ten thousand miners fighting for the right to unionize, and the anti-union forces of the local sheriff and neighboring non-union counties. Labor organizers had decided to march on the area in protest of Sheriff Chafin’s harsh and violent treatment of union supporters, and they knew that they were “calling for the union to gamble its future in one desperate show of force” - if the march was successful in the Logan County, “the bastion of nonunion labor,” then the United Mine Workers would be able to organize in any mine in the state. If they failed, it would take years to recover.
Miners started pouring in from all over the coalfields, either hiking in on the roads or hijacking trains to carry carloads of miners to the area. When President Harding threatened to send in Federal troops , the miners voted to go home rather than take on the whole U.S. army. False rumors started to spread, however, that Sheriff Chafin was shooting women and children, and the miners turned back around and “the greatest domestic armed conflict in American labor history” began. After days of brutal fighting, in which home-made bombs dropped from planes marked the only time the U.S. has bombed its own soil, federal troops arrived and the weary miners dispersed. Though ending in a defeat, the march and battle prompted a series of investigations into the harsh conditions of Appalachian coal mining, and an awareness of these conditions and of the miners’ struggle spread throughout the nation.
The Battle Today
Now, Blair Mountain is the site of another battle. Local residents, including descendants of the 1921 miners, have been fighting Arch Coal’s mountaintop removal mines for years.
In 1993, Arch Coal and its land agents began a plan to buy out all the nearby residents, so that no one would be around to complain about the mine’s blasting, dust, and sludge. “Our philosophy is not to… impact people,” said David Todd, a spokesman for Arch Coal. “And if there are no people to impact, that is consistent with our philosophy.” Enacting this plan to turn an entire community’s homeplace into an industrial mine with “no people to impact,” Arch Coal bought more than half of the homes in Blair, forcing every resident who sold to sign an agreement saying that they would never protest strip mining again, and that they would never move back to any area near Arch Coal’s mines. Those who have stayed deal with the pervasive dust, dried wells, and airborne flyrocks from the blasting that all come from the 24 hour per day, 365 days per year operation of the mine.
According to Barry Sarifin of Nightline, “People here say that in the old days, communities turned into ghost towns when the coal ran out. Now, they turn into ghost towns when mountaintop mines move in.”
Several organizations, including the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the Sierra Club, are trying to get this landmark into the West Virginia State Historic Preservation office’s registry.
