Tag: Frank Keeney

January 17, 1947: Labor Lawyer Harold Houston Dies in Florida

Labor lawyer Harold Houston died in Florida on January 17, 1947, at age 74. When he was young, his parents moved from Ohio to Jackson County and then to Charleston.

In 1901, after getting a law degree from West Virginia University, Houston opened a legal practice in Parkersburg.

By 1912, he’d returned to Charleston and soon became chief attorney and counsel for most of the state’s major labor organizations. Among his clients were striking coal miners, Sid Hatfield and others accused of murder in the Matewan Massacre, and United Mine Workers of America leaders charged with treason following the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain.

After the treason trials, Houston was fired as UMWA counsel by national president John L. Lewis. In 1931, Houston helped Frank Keeney organize the West Virginia Mine Workers Union—which briefly competed with the UMWA. Houston also ran for local, state, and federal offices on the Socialist ticket.

In later years, he was involved in an automobile dealership and a real estate addition in the Spring Hill section of South Charleston that bears his name. He eventually retired to Lake Worth, Florida.

August 28 1921: Armed Miners March on Blair Mountain

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.

March 19, 1931: West Virginia United Mine Workers Union Founded

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.

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