6 New Monuments To Commemorate March To Blair Mountain

The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum is expanding, and will soon have six new sites in southern West Virginia. 

Phase 2 of the Mine Wars Museum project is entitled “Courage in the Hollers: Mapping the Miners’ Struggle to Form a Union.” It calls for permanent monuments and historic markers at six sites from Charleston to Racine, Madison, Clothier, Logan and Matewan. 

Each will feature large steel sculptures, murals, interpretive signage, and interactive audio components, with a companion podcast, maps and an interactive website highlighting stories of interracial and interethnic solidarity among coal miners.

“The diversity (of) the UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) in particular, was unlike any of the other unions that existed at that time,” said Museum and Communications Manager Thomas Jude. “You didn’t have black and white workers in the same unions, typically, and a lot of the southern unions in the UMWA you had that. And like the miners, when they live in tent camps, you would see multi ethnic people living all amongst each other.”

The project will also depict the struggle for unionization and basic human rights in the Appalachian coalfields, and follow the 50-mile route of the 1921 Miners’ March to the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed labor uprising in U.S. history. 

Jude said the results of that violent conflict helped to shape daily work life today. 

“A lot of the struggle that that these people go through goes on to shape a lot of the the federal legislation for workers across industries, and then a lot of the mining regulations regarding safety as well, including things like our 40-hour work week, the eight hour day, all directly linked to some of these labor conflicts,” he said.

Monuments at each site are expected to be finished by 2028. For more information about the project, visit wvminewars.org or contact the Museum at info@wvminewars.org.