Written in Blood

Description

Written in Blood features the work of Appalachia’s leading scholars and activists making available an accurate, ungilded, and uncensored understanding of our history. Combining new revelations from the past with sketches of a sane path forward, this is a deliberate collection looking at our past, present, and future.

Sociologist Wess Harris (When Miners March) further documents the infamous Esau scrip system for women, suggesting an institutionalized practice of forced sexual servitude that was part of coal company policy. In a conversation with award-winning oral historian Michael Kline, federal mine inspector Larry Layne explains corporate complicity in the 1968 Farmington Mine disaster which killed seventy-eight men and became the catalyst for the passage of major changes in U.S. mine safety laws. Mine safety expert and whistleblower Jack Spadaro speaks candidly of years of attempts to silence his courageous voice and recalls government and university collaboration in covering up details of the 1972 Buffalo Creek flooding disaster, which killed over a hundred people and left four thousand homeless.

Moving to the next generation of thinkers and activists, attorney Nathan Fetty examines current events in Appalachia and musician Carrie Kline suggests paths forward for people wishing to set their own course rather than depend on the kindness of corporations.

Sujets

• Matewan
• Scrip
• Appalachia
• United Mine Workers
• United Mine Workers of America
• Prostitution

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629634531
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Written in Blood
For more than a century, the real history of the working people of our state has been deliberately scrubbed from our children s schoolbooks and our collective knowledge. Written in Blood helps bring the true history of West Virginia working families back into the light of day. Read it. Learn it. Pass it on!
-Mike Caputo, International District 31 vice president, United Mine Workers of America
Written in Blood cuts through the fog and conveys with fearless clarity the truth regarding how common people have been hoodwinked for decades. A must read.
-Dwight Siemiaczko, retired coal miner, past chairman of the UMWA Safety Committee, Local Union 8843, founder and president of the Paint Creek Watershed Association, Inc.
While coal is no longer the nation s dominant fuel for electricity, its history of hardship must never be forgotten. Written in Blood not only provides first-person accounts of struggles for better treatment of miners and safer mines, it also looks forward as West Virginia adjusts to far less coal mining. This book is a vital contribution to the story of the past and the future.
-Penny Loeb, author of Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice from Big Coal and producer and writer of the feature film Moving Mountains
Written in Blood shines a critical light on the untold true history of the West Virginia Mine Wars.
-Mari-Lynn Evans, director and producer of Blood on the Mountain
With Written in Blood, Wess Harris has once again called attention to how the West Virginia state government and the coal industry have struggled to keep our state s real history buried beneath a slag heap of fairy tales and misinformation. His critics will find this book, like his other works, abrasive and filled with alleged distortions about the coal companies abuse and exploitation of the state s coal miners and their families. His supporters will welcome Written in Blood, as Harris once again pushes the boundaries in an effort to reveal that abuse and exploitation.
-David Corbin, author of Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922
For 200 years, the coal industry has promised us prosperity. Written in Blood leaves little doubt that the prosperity never arrives. The promise itself is contingent on us agreeing to our own destruction. We must agree to stand idly by as they destroy our communities, water, air, health, and lives. We owe them nothing. They owe us everything.
-Maria Gunnoe, 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize Winner, 2012 Raoul Wallenberg Medalist for Human Rights
Labor historian Wess Harris targets lost history in a brand new book that provides jaw-dropping accounts of how women were treated by an industry already widely known for its ruthlessness and callousness.
-Mark Hand, Counterpunch
Written in Blood is essential reading for all who are concerned about what is happening in the Appalachian coalfields . It brings together interviews and articles from some of the foremost long-standing experts on coalfield life including iconic whistleblower Jack Spadaro, legendary lawyer Tony Oppegard, and acclaimed balladeers Mike and Carrie Kline.
-George Brosi, Appalachian Mountain Books

Written in Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction
Compiled and Edited by Wess Harris
This edition 2017 by Appalachian Community Services and PM Press
ISBN: 9781629634456
LCCN: 2017942905
Cover by John Yates/stealworks.com
Cover photo of the 1968 Farmington Mine disaster Bob Campione Interior by Jonathan Rowland
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
Appalachian Community Services
PO Box 23912
229 Birtrice Road
Oakland, CA 94623
Gay, West Virginia 25244
www.pmpress.org

Printed in the USA on recycled paper by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Esau in the Coalfields: Owing Our Souls to the Company Store
Michael and Carrie Kline with Joy and Chuck Lynn
Truth Buried
Goldenseal
Behind the Coal Curtain: Efforts to Publish the Esau Story in West Virginia
Michael Kline
Scratching the Surface
Wess Harris
The Rented Girl: A Closer Look at Women in the Coalfields
Michael Kline
The Memo
Larry Layne as told to Michael and Carrie Kline
Images Past and Present
West Virginia s Gilded History
Tom Rhule
Appalachian Scholar
Walter Lane
Battle of Blair Mountain Pamphlet
Logan District Mines Information Bureau
Victory on Blair Mountain!
Wess Harris
Baseball and Treason
Bill Kovarik
John L. Lewis: Forty Years of Upset Stomachs
William C. Blizzard
An Open Letter
Cecil Roberts to Randall Reid-Smith
Cecil Roberts Shares His Story
Michael Kline
Hidden Coffins Unearth Needed History
Fr. John S. Rausch
When Miners March-A Review
Theresa Burriss
Written in Blood: The Impact of Widows and Orphans on the Passage of Kentucky Coal Mine Safety Legislation
Attorney Tony Oppegard as told to Michael Kline
Jack and the Coal Giant
Jack Spadaro as told to Michael and Carrie Kline
Modern Battles
Nathan J. Fetty
Which Path, Appalachia?
Carrie Kline
Connecting the Dots
Wess Harris
Come All You Coal Miners
Sarah Ogan Gunning
Index
Acknowledgments
T HIS C USTOMARY AND O BLIGATORY P AGE O FFERS AN O PPORTU nity to thank those who have made a work possible while absolving them of any blame for errors of the editor. Consider it done. Special gratitude must be shown to two groups whose work does not physically appear herein.
In recent years countless miners and descendants of miners have offered stories and documents that supplement and confirm the tales in both When Miners March and this small volume. In addition to purely substantive contributions, their encouragement has been invaluable on those days when the task has seemed too great. Dwight Siemiaczko is a relentless researcher of all things Paint Creek. Kathryn Bowles offered her great-grandfather Bill Derenge s autobiography. Terri Whitlock, granddaughter of Clarence E. Red Jones, provided the smoking gun that confirmed Van Bittner s sellout of the Union contracts. Elwood Maples saved documents that would have been lost forever. J.W. Sheets II stepped up and shared his grandfather s treasure so that future generations can see as well as read their history. Joy and Chuck Lynn refused the bribes offered to sanitize our history and at great personal expense have insisted on letting the Whipple Company Store tell its stories.
Unlikely and somewhat unwelcome heroes can also be found at Radford University. Radford has agreed not only to house but also actively manage the William C. Blizzard/ When Miners March collection. Much of the primary source material for both When Miners March and this work can now be accessed at the Radford University Archives. Candidly, this is most unfortunate. These materials should ideally be kept within the state of West Virginia, but that is not possible. Not one of the three institutions in West Virginia that might reasonably be expected to have the physical capabilities to house and preserve this incredible collection has the academic integrity to be trusted to tell the miners tale and make it available to future generations. Sad but true. Researchers wishing to continue primary source research are directed to Radford.
Words cannot capture the gratitude I feel to those whose lives are celebrated in these pages. They are the true heroes. Thanks and bravo as well to the selfless scholars who contributed time and talent to making this book possible. Shame on those who made it necessary.
Introduction
T HE G REAT M INE W AR OF W EST V IRGINIA H AS N OW R AGED FOR over a century. Most of the battles recalled here occurred in the state and most contributors are West Virginians. Yet war seldom adheres to lines neatly drawn on a map, so events in neighboring states on occasion find their way to these pages. The coal miners of West Virginia are central to the tale, yet the tale is much larger indeed. Ranging far beyond a battlefield narrowly defined, it is the story of America and its people. Who are we? Who have we been? Who will we become? Who decides?
Much has been written about the mine wars of the early twentieth century but only recently have we come to realize that the discussion is not about mine wars-Cabin Creek, Paint Creek, Blair Mountain-but about a single war between the people of West Virginia and the interests of King Coal that stretches from those early battles to current struggles to save the Union so many fought and died for years ago. This small anthology focuses on more than a century of conflict. The struggles, defeats, and victories are ultimately part of a much larger war. The war is between those who would make their homes here and strive to see our land survive and prosper, and those representing the interests of large capital seeking to maximize profit. Notably, in Joe Manchin, we have a senator, former governor, and coal broker who does not hesitate to remind us that we are an extractive state. As the coal industry faces inevitable decline, the war continues pitting the local population against those who see new fortunes to be made by extracting our natural gas treasure while leaving only polluted land, air, and water in exchange for short-term employment opportunities. Incredibly, the most precious resource extracted from our state has been our people. Wave after wave of economic refugees have been forced to first move to the industries of the North