Menu
Idea

coal mining

51
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Black and white photo of Camp Washington Carver, opened in 1942, with a crowd of Black children standing outside the front with an American flag in the forefront.

The Forgotten History of the US's African American Coal Towns

One of the US's newest national parks has put West Virginia in the spotlight, but there's a deeper history to discover about its African American coal communities.
by Stephen Starr via BBC News on October 24, 2022
Map of Pittsburgh Coal Company rate schedules

Coalminers and Coordination Rights

In the two decades before the Hepburn Act’s enactment, two entities vied for the right to coordinate the price and distribution of coal.
by Branden Adams via LPE Project on July 15, 2021

‘They Will Remember Us’: The Miners of Black Harlan

A photographer travels to the heart of Appalachia to spend time with the area's last surviving black former coal miners.
by Radcliffe Roye via New York Review of Books on May 3, 2019
Children bringing home remains of a bed. Coal mining camp, Scotts Run, West Virginia. (1938)

James M. Cain and the West Virginia Mine Wars

Sean Carswell looks into James M. Cain and his time reporting on the West Virginia Mine Wars.
by Sean Carswell via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 25, 2018

The Militant Miners Who Exposed the Horrors of Black Lung

This grassroots movement brought occupational health to American labor, paving the way for the creation of OSHA.
by Jessie Wright-Mendoza, Alan Derickson via JSTOR Daily on September 25, 2018
Coal-stained house in West Virginia.

When Miners Strike: West Virginia Coal Mining and Labor History

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Adena Barnette via Digital Public Library of America on April 7, 2016

The Mine Wars

The desire for dignity runs deep.
by Randall MacLowry via PBS on January 26, 2016
Armed miners at the military headquarters of the United Mine Workers, in Trinidad, Colorado, the month of the Ludlow massacre.

There Was Blood

The Ludlow massacre revisited.
by Caleb Crain via The New Yorker on January 12, 2009
Collage of Chinese laborers.

When an American Town Massacred Its Chinese Immigrants

In 1885, white rioters murdered dozens of their Asian neighbors in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 140 years later, the story of the atrocity is still being unearthed.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on March 3, 2025
View of mountains on the horizon

Who Owns the Mountains?

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land — and tourism — in Appalachia.
by Olivia Paschal via New York Review of Books on November 3, 2024
Rednecks by Taylor Brown.

The Battle of Blair Mountain and Stories Untold

An interview with Taylor Brown, author of the novel "Rednecks."
by Steve Nathans-Kelly, Taylor Brown via Chicago Review of Books on May 21, 2024
Volunteers at Big Creek Missions in Leslie County, Kentucky

Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

I’ve been going back to eastern Kentucky for over a decade. Since 2016, something there has changed.
by Bradley Devlin via The American Conservative on April 22, 2024
Old car holding up a mining chute on the over of the book “The Bootleg Coal Rebellion”

Rock-Fuel and Warlike People: On Mitch Troutman’s “The Bootleg Coal Rebellion”

Native son Jonah Walters finds something entirely too innocent about the tales told about the anthracite industry’s origins.
by Jonah Walters via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 21, 2024
Meeting of the Maguire Men outside a coal mine

Making Sense of the Molly Maguires Today

Who were the Molly Maguires, what did they do, and why did they do it?
by Kevin Kenny via OUPblog on October 11, 2023
Lebanese auto worker Eva Habib in her work coveralls in 1929.

Arab American Labor

On the centrality of the working classes to the Arab American immigrant experience and the pivotal roles Arab Americans played in American labor.
by Akram Khater, Chelsea Lundquist-Wentz, Nicole Ackman, Ginni Leeman, Lindsey Waldenberg via Khayrallah Center For Lebanese Diaspora Studies on September 4, 2023
African American prisoners in Alabama post-Reconstruction.

How the Slavery-Like Conditions of Convict Leasing Flourished After the Collapse of Reconstruction

On the terror that filled the void left by the retreat of federal authority in the South.
by Jefferson Cowie via Literary Hub on November 23, 2022
Photograph shows two white men overseeing African American men hammering boulders as others walk with wheelbarrows.

Locked Up: The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires

Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War – a racist system known as convict leasing.
by Margie Mason, Robin McDowell via AP News on September 19, 2022
Phil Wiggins performs at the Blair Mountain Centennial. | Rafael Barker, collection of the WV Mine Wars Museum.

The Singing Left

At a recent commemoration of the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia, songs of struggle took center stage.
by Kim Kelly via The Baffler on September 21, 2021

What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History

Its legacy lives on today in the struggles faced by modern miners seeking workers' rights.
by Abby Lee Hood via Smithsonian on August 25, 2021
A Blair Mountain coal miner with his rifle slung over his shoulder, 1921.

A Century Ago, West Virginia Miners Took Up Arms Against King Coal

In 1921, twenty thousand armed miners in West Virginia marched on the coal bosses and were met with bombs and submachine guns.
by Arvind Dilawar, Chuck Keeney via Jacobin on June 23, 2021
Front-page photo of James E. Shepperson from the Black newspaper, the Seattle Republican, on Oct. 26, 1900.

How Wyoming’s Black Coal Miners Shaped Their Own History

Many early Wyoming coal towns had thriving Black communities.
by Brigida R. Blasi via High Country News on January 28, 2021
An illustration of a miner breaking off a piece of the star in the style of the "Hamilton: An American Musical" logo.

Talk Like a Red: A Labor History in Two Acts

It’s a simple process that recurs throughout history: workers see injustice, they organize each other, and they fight for change.
by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein via The Baffler on January 5, 2021
Photo taken from behind two men in a machine gun nest

‘The Road to Blair Mountain’

It’s the biggest battle on U.S. soil that most Americans have never heard of.
by Jim Branscome via The Daily Yonder on October 1, 2020

Appalachian Women Fought for Workers Long Before They Fought for Jobs

Two new books recount the leading role women have played in Appalachian social justice movements.
by Heather Duncan via Scalawag on March 25, 2019
Striking miners

A Culture of Resistance

The 2018 West Virginia teachers’ strike in historical perspective.
by Chuck Keeney via Lapham’s Quarterly on March 30, 2018
Black family on their front porch in West Virginia.

These Photos Will Change the Way You Think About Race in Coal Country

The myth that Appalachia is uniformly White lingers, but communities of “Affrilachians” were documented in the 1930s.
by John Edwin Mason via YES! on March 15, 2018

A Cursed Appalachian Mining Town

An intimate portrait of a once-prosperous town in a forgotten corner of America.
by Emily Buder, Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan via The Atlantic on March 13, 2018
Book cover of "What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia."

Appalachia Isn’t Trump Country

A region that outsiders love to imagine but can’t seem to understand.
by Elizabeth Catte, Regan Penaluna via Guernica on March 7, 2018

A New Struggle Coming

On the teachers' strike in West Virginia.
by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via n+1 on March 5, 2018

Carter G. Woodson’s West Virginia Wasn’t ‘Trump Country,’ It Was a Land of Opportunity

In his travelogues, Woodson rhapsodized over what he saw as a love of democracy among hard-scrabble mountain settlers of both races.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee via 100 Days in Appalachia on February 28, 2018
View More
30 of
51

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History