This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain. While the anniversary is still weeks away, organizations and communities in southern West Virginia are already commemorating the centennial.
As part of the Mine Wars, coal miners marched near the Boone-Logan County line from late August to Sept. 3. The march was the largest labor uprising in U.S. history.
It happened in the early 1900’s after coal miners in West Virginia endured years of dangerous conditions underground and brutal political and cultural treatment above ground.
By 1921, the miners decided to fight for their fellow miners in the Mingo County town of Williamson, who were locked up without trial. They were charged with violating martial law, an act that gives absolute power to the federal military during times of “war, rebellion, or natural disaster.” The battle ended when martial law was declared again, and U.S. Army troops disarmed the miners.
The uprising has been largely underreported but organizations and communities are hoping the events this year will provide more opportunities for people to visit and learn about America’s labor history.
Dozens of events are taking place online and in communities that played an important part in the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Mine Wars. Some of those towns include Matewan and Williamson in Mingo County, Madison, in Boone County and Welch in McDowell County.
The next event is a performance of the play “Terror of the Tug” in Summers County at Pipestem Resort State Park amphitheatre on Saturday, Aug. 7 at 8 p.m. The main events are happening Sept. 3 and Labor Day, the first Monday of the month, Sept. 6. Some of the events include outdoor plays, reenactments, tours, virtual roundtable discussions and retracing the march to Blair Mountain.
The anniversary is Sept. 3, so Labor Day Weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the centennial. You can find a list of events commemorating the 100th anniversary at this site.
COVID-19 has taken the lives of nearly 300 West Virginians, and earlier this month, the state lost one of its most powerful and vocal social activists and musicians.
Elaine Purkey passed away Sept. 2 in Ranger, West Virginia at 71 years old.
Purkey grew up a coal miner’s daughter in the mountains of Lincoln County. She was a coal miner’s wife, a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. But much of her life was spent as a musician activist – taking part and writing songs for many of the major union strikes over the past 50 years.
Purkey was internationally known. One of her performances was featured in a PBS documentary. She played in the 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and she is included in a folklife collection in the Library of Congress. But all her inspiration came from the Mountain State.
“I used the term hillbilly as a compliment,” said Rick Wilson, a native West Virginian who works with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker social justice group. “She’s hardcore Southern West Virginia. And, West Virginians, you know, are almost tribal in some ways. There’s just like this real visceral connection to place. I’d have to say it wasn’t just a connection to place, but a connection of solidarity and sympathy for the poor and disadvantaged.”
Purkey learned to play guitar and sing from her family. Legend has it that as a young girl her father would put her on top of a rock to sing to whoever happened to walk by, Wilson said.
Credit Unknown
/
An early photo of Elaine Purkey.
“You didn’t want to hear Elaine sing in a small room because she could just blow you away,” he said.
Wilson and Purkey were friends for over 30 years, first meeting at a coal worker strike and later bonding over their love of music.
Her song ‘One Day More’ is about the 1990-92 Ravenswood Lockout, where nearly 2,000 United Steelworkers Union members demanded safer working conditions. It became one of her most famous songs, featuring in the 2006 Smithsonian Folkways Recordings album ‘Classic Labor Songs.’
It is about union workers outlasting companies by “one day” to get their demands met.
“If the company holds out 20 years, we’ll hold out one day more,” according to the lyrics.
mp3one_day_more.mp3
Listen to Elaine's introduction and performance of the song 'One Day More' at a West Virginia Folklife Program event in Kimball in 2017.
Purkey focused much of her time and songs on issues like clean water, police brutality and teacher strikes, but also lighter things, like teaching Appalachian folk songs to kids at the Big Ugly Community Center and being an active member in Leets Church of Christ in Lincoln County.
She was absorbed by her passions and had a random, yet charismatic sense of humor, Wilson said.
“We used to have a joke that her brain worked like an old-fashioned car with an AM radio driving on curvy mountain roads at night and you never knew what station she was gonna pick up,” he said.
Another friend of Purkey’s was Jeff Bosley, a recording event production engineer based in Huntington. He met Purkey through the music industry 10 years ago and described her as “fire and vinegar.”
“She never stopped, and for us to be in a position here talking about Elaine being stopped, it just, it doesn’t really compute at this point, it just doesn’t,” Bosley said. “She was like an elemental force of nature.”
Bosley recorded Purkey singing the old Hazel Dickens’ song ‘Fire in the Hole’ at the opening of the Mine Wars Museum in Matewan in 2015. Her voice echoed through the building that still bore bullet holes from one of the many labor union strikes during the mine wars years in the early 1900s.
“You can tell them in the country, tell them in the town, the miners down in Mingo laid their shovels down,” according to the ‘Fire in the Hole lyrics. “We won’t pull another pillar, load another ton, or lift another finger till the union we have won.”
ElaineTellItWVMWM.mp3
Listen to Elaine sing 'Fire in the Hole.' Recorded by the Friendly Neighbor Show.
“I think Elaine was really singing about what she felt, what her thoughts were and what her experiences were,” Bosley said. “It’s just so sincere and come straight from the heart.”
Purkey truly believed in West Virginia and its ability to persevere, much like her song says in ‘One Day More’, Wilson said.
“I think Elaine’s advice to us in these days, which are really dark in more ways than one, would be to hold out one day more,” he said.
If you have a loved one who has passed away from COVID-19 and you would like us to remember them, reach out at news@wvpublic.org.
The West Virginia Supreme Court has upheld a so-called right-to-work law and handed a defeat to labor unions which had sought to preserve workers’ union dues.
In an opinion released Tuesday, the justices granted summary judgment to the state and overturned a February 2019 ruling by a lower court judge who had sided with the unions.
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey had struck down as unconstitutional some provisions of the 2016 law, which authorized union employees to stop paying dues and fees or, in lieu of that, make payments to a charity or third party.
After the Republican-led Legislature crafted the bill, then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, vetoed it and lawmakers overrode the veto the next day, making West Virginia the 26th “right-to-work” state.
The state chapter of the AFL-CIO and other unions then filed a lawsuit, maintaining the law illegally took their assets since they still have to represent all employees in a union shop, including those that the law would allow to stop paying union dues.
The new law would have required unions and union officials “to work, to supply their valuable expertise, and to provide expensive services for nothing,” Bailey wrote.
But the state Supreme Court ruled the law “does not violate constitutional rights of association, property, or liberty.”
Proponents said the law would attract businesses and give workers more freedom over their ties to unions. Democrats argued the law was solely meant to undercut unions for political reasons, allowing workers to benefit from union representation without paying dues. Democrats also argued the economic benefits were unproven and wages would drop.
“This is a major victory for worker choice,” state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a statement Tuesday. “This is not a pro-union or anti-union decision. It is a ruling that will protect workers, give them a greater voice and make unions stronger in the end.”
A United Mine Workers of America office building in Fairmont, West Virginia, has been named for union President Cecil E. Roberts.
The Exponent Telegram reports lawmakers and union officials gathered in The Friendly City on Thursday to name the building and celebrate Roberts. The union’s website says Roberts is a military veteran and sixth-generation coal miner who first took on the presidential role in 1995.
Democratic Del. Mike Caputo is a former union district vice president. He proposed naming the offices after Roberts, who he says was never afraid to be jailed while fighting on behalf of workers and miners. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin also attended the event and complimented Roberts’ leadership and compassion.
The union bought the new building after its old one suffered a waterline break.
A judge on Wednesday sided with labor unions in striking down key portions of West Virginia’s so-called right-to-work law, including those that allowed workers to stop paying union dues.
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey made the ruling in a lawsuit filed by the state chapter of the AFL-CIO and other unions. The judge said some provisions of the 2016 law violated the state constitution.
Labor unions maintained the law illegally took their assets since they still have to represent all employees in a union shop, including those that the law would allow to stop paying union dues.
Bailey struck down provisions that would authorize union employees to stop paying dues and fees or, in lieu of that, make payments to a charity or third party.
The new law would have required unions and union officials “to work, to supply their valuable expertise, and to provide expensive services for nothing,” Bailey wrote.
After the Republican-led Legislature crafted the bill, then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, vetoed it and lawmakers overrode the veto the next day, making West Virginia the 26th “right-to-work” state.
Proponents said it would attract businesses and give workers more freedom over their ties to unions. Democrats said the law was solely meant to undercut unions for political reasons, allowing workers to benefit from union representation without paying dues. Democrats also argued the economic benefits were unproven and wages would drop.
The law “was nothing more than an attack on our wages, benefits and working conditions,” Teamsters General Secretary Ken Hall said in a statement.
West Virginia AFL-CIO President Josh Sword said Bailey “was right-on with her ruling. We entered into this lengthy legal challenge nearly three years ago because we knew the law violated of the rights of West Virginia workers — and we simply won’t stand for that.”
Curtis Johnson, a spokesman for West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, said Morrisey’s office is reviewing the circuit court’s decision.
A former bookkeeper has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $183,000 in labor union funds in West Virginia.
Prosecutors say 70-year-old Joan Matthews of South Charleston entered the plea Monday in federal court in Charleston to felony embezzlement and theft of labor union assets.
Matthews admitted to stealing from the Charleston Building and Construction Trades Council from 2010 to 2014. The Council is comprised of local building construction trades unions and their members who work in West Virginia and the border counties of neighboring states.
Matthews faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing has been set for Sept. 11.
