Not many know of a battle between 10,000 West Virginia miners and the hired guns of their bosses.
Last December, a reporter at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Amelia Knisely, was dismissed soon after her stories about a troubled state agency reportedly angered one of its then leaders. Journalists don't like to see our own mistreated — especially for speaking truth to power — so the story made waves beyond my home state. "This is the kind of stuff you'd expect in Russia," one editorial read. (W.V.P.B. denies it fired Knisely for her investigations and argues that she was never supposed to be a long-term employee.) |
This degree of capture leads to all sorts of bad outcomes, including the practice of sweeping inconvenient truths under the rug — but how to explain? The best way I could figure was to write about the Battle of Blair Mountain, and the state's attempts to cover it up, in a guest essay. |
The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest working-class uprising in U.S. history and the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War. It began during the late summer of 1921 when 10,000 armed-to-the-teeth coal miners of different races and nationalities charged up the face of Blair Mountain to confront their enemy: the hired guns of the coal companies who had terrorized them and their families for years. |
Yet growing up in West Virginia, I never heard this story. Nor did I know that a "redneck" is what the Logan County jailer called the striking miners — so named for the red handkerchiefs they wore about their necks. For decades, the state has suppressed this history. It wasn't until the pandemic, when I came home after being away for years, that I learned about it for the first time. |
I was especially shocked to discover that the Logan County sheriff bombed the miners from airplanes, just a few short months after the Tulsa Race Massacre. As the country begins to relearn our racial history through The 1619 Project and other efforts at memory reclamation, my hope is that stories like Blair Mountain will remind white Americans that we have had key chapters of our history omitted from textbooks, too. Especially chapters — it seems no accident — that show the Black and white working class working together. |
It turns out ignorance, much like poverty, is a state manufactured and maintained. |
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