On January 30, 1920, the United Mine Workers of America launched a concerted effort to unionize southern West Virginia. Relations between the UMWA and coal operators had regularly turned violent over the previous 30 years.
However, the two sides had reached a tenuous truce during World War I. During the 19 months the United States was involved in the war, coal production soared and miners’ wages rose.
When the fighting in Europe ended, though, there was too much coal for the available demand. Prices plummeted, and coal operators began cutting wages. Conflicts between UMWA organizers and coal operators again turned violent in 1919.
The UMWA’s 1920 campaign to unionize southern West Virginia focused on Logan and Mingo counties—which had one of the largest nonunion mining workforces in the country. This push to organize southern West Virginia escalated tensions with coal operators, leading to the Matewan Massacre and a virtual state of war in Mingo County, which raged for more than a year.
Ultimately, the UMWA’s campaign ended after the miners’ failed march on Logan County and their defeat at the Battle of Blair Mountain.
It’s been nearly a century since thousands of pro-union miners marched into Logan County, West Virginia, to protest abuses by coal operators in what used to be largely anti-union territory.
Marchers were met at Blair Mountain in Logan County by an army of men, fighting on behalf of anti-union mine guards and local law enforcement. The battle was so heated that then-president Warren Harding called in Army troops to restore order.
This Labor Day, present-day members of the United Mine Workers of America marched from Marmet in Kanawha County to Racine in Boone County, to commemorate what they say was one of the greatest events in the nation’s labor history.
Credit Emily Allen / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
UMWA International President Cecil Roberts speaks to attendees of the 2019 UMWA Labor Day Picnic.
“This is the greatest insurrection in the history of these United States of America, other than the Civil War,” UMWA International President Cecil Roberts said. “We should be teaching this in every classroom in America.”
Unlike the reception union miners received nearly a hundred years ago at Blair Mountain, Monday’s march ended with a celebratory picnic at John Slack Park. Folk music played and veterans and union members alike removed their caps for the national anthem.
But Monday’s picnic wasn’t all about history. Roberts had much to say about the state of the country’s coal industry today, and his group’s concerns with mining jobs leaving the country.
“We don’t make anything here. We import things from China and every third-world country in the world,” Roberts said. “I say, make what we need in America. Protect coal mining jobs.”
Much of Roberts’ speech related to the upcoming 2020 election. He said elected officials should be held accountable for promises they’ve made regarding development of “clean coal” technology, which would reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal.
“We have to develop the technology that we need to burn coal cleanly in America,” Roberts said.
But despite substantial federal investment, technology has not been adopted by the electric utility industry, which has instead opted for cheaper, cleaner natural gas and other alternative fuels.
“It needs to be abolished,” Roberts said. “When I hear one of these candidates say they are for that, then I will know that they really support organized labor.”
Roberts will speak Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Topics include legislation on climate change, and the “Green New Deal” proposal adopted by several Democratic presidential candidates, which envisions a large-scale transition from fossil fuels.
On August 30, 1921, John Wilburn of Blair assembled between 50 and 75 armed men to attack Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin’s troops, which were entrenched at the pinnacle of Blair Mountain.
The 45-year-old coal miner and Baptist preacher told his followers it was time for him to lay down his Bible, take up his rifle, and fight for the union.
After camping that night, the group, which included two of his sons, ran into Logan Deputy John Gore and two nonunion miners—all three belonging to Chafin’s army. Both sides opened fire. Gore and Chafin’s two other men were shot dead. One of Wilburn’s men, a black miner, was also killed.
Both Wilburn and his son, John, were sentenced to 11 years for murder. However, Governor Ephraim Morgan reduced each of their sentences to five years, and Governor Howard Gore later pardoned the Wilburns after they’d served three years in the state penitentiary. John Wilburn and his son were two of the few people ever convicted for their roles in the Battle of Blair Mountain—the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War.
In August 1921, armed coal miners from the Kanawha Valley and the southern counties of Boone, Fayette, Mingo, McDowell, and Logan gathered at Marmet in Kanawha County. The miners proposed to march to Logan and Mingo counties to rescue union miners who had been jailed or mistreated in attempts to unionize the mines. Their efforts brought on the most spectacular confrontation in West Virginia’s labor history, the culminating event in the era known as the Mine Wars.
While accurate figures are not available, sources estimate the number of miners who participated in the march at anywhere from 7,000 to 20,000. Many were veterans of World War I, and they organized themselves like an army division. The marchers had medical and supply units, posted guards when appropriate, and used passwords to weed out infiltrators. Marchers commandeered trains and other vehicles to take them to Logan County and confiscated supplies from company stores along the march.
State authorities, led by Governor Morgan, quickly organized a group of state police, volunteer militia companies, and coal company employees to keep the miners from invading Logan County. The opposing forces came together at Blair Mountain, near the Boone and Logan borders. The well-armed miners and their opponents battled along the ridge of Blair Mountain, resulting in several deaths. Like other statistics in this event, the exact numbers of killed and wounded are mere conjecture.
Morgan urgently requested federal intervention to end the bloodshed. President Warren G. Harding responded with 2,500 federal troops, including a bomber squadron under aviation pioneer Gen. William ‘‘Billy’’ Mitchell. The federal troops quickly brought the conflict to an end, and the miners returned home. Several hundred miners and their leaders were charged with various crimes from murder to treason. Most were given minor sentences, but serious attempts were made to punish William ‘‘Bill’’ Blizzard, one of the march leaders, who was charged with treason. He was tried in Charles Town, Lewisburg, and Fayetteville before the charges were eventually dropped.
The armed march and the Battle of Blair Mountain resulted in little or no gain for union miners, but the hostilities created by labor strife from the early 1900s to the 1920s color labor relations in West Virginia to the present.
In 2006, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated Blair Mountain as one of the country’s “Most Endangered Historic Places.” The National Park Service added Blair Mountain to its National Register of Historic Places in March 2009. Nine months later, however, the park service reversed its decision following a dispute about property ownership. Several groups—including the Sierra Club and the Friends of Blair Mountain—want the site protected from surface mining. They filed suit in an attempt to have the park service’s decision reversed. On June 27, 2018, the keeper of the National Register declared the removal erroneous and reinstated Blair Mountain’s listing.
The West Virginia Mine Workers Union was founded on March 19, 1931. It was a radical alternative to the United Mine Workers of America, known as the UMWA. The new union was the brainchild of Frank Keeney, who had been a key UMWA leader during the West Virginia Mine Wars.
After the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, UMWA national president John L. Lewis began exerting greater control over local union matters. The year after the battle, Keeney had agreed to a temporary wage cut for miners. Lewis used the wage cuts as an excuse to fire Keeney.
But Keeney retained a strong following among miners. By March 1931, UMWA membership in West Virginia had dwindled to fewer than 600 members. Keeney launched his new union and, within weeks, had enrolled more than 20,000. He called a major strike that summer, but the costs virtually bankrupted the upstart union. Within two years, his union was broke, and the UMWA again became the dominant miners union in West Virginia.
A few years later, Keeney dropped out of the labor movement entirely. He died in 1970 at age 88.
Labor leader Fred Mooney was born in Kanawha County on January 23, 1888. At age 13, he began working in coal mines as a trapper boy.
Six years later, at the young age of 19, he became secretary-treasurer of District 17 of the United Mine Workers of America.
Mooney was part of a more radical leadership team that also included district President Fred Keeney and Vice President Bill Blizzard. This was a particularly active period in the Mine Wars—a violent time that pitted miners against coal operators. Mooney was a key union organizer in Mingo County in the weeks leading up to the Matewan Massacre.
And, he helped oversee the 1921 armed march on Logan and Mingo counties. The march culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain. His most lasting contribution to history is his autobiography, Struggle in the Coal Fields.
In it, he provided firsthand accounts of the Mine Wars and the subsequent trials, in which more than 500 miners were indicted for treason and murder. Almost all, including Mooney, were acquitted. Fred Mooney committed suicide in Fairmont in 1952 at the age of 64.
