Download or read book Black Coal Miners in America written by Ronald L. Lewis and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the early day of mining in colonial Virginia and Maryland up to the time of World War II, blacks were an important part of the labor force in the coal industry. Yet in this, as in other enterprises, their role has heretofore been largely ignored. Now Roland L. Lewis redresses the balance in this comprehensive history of black coal miners in America. The experience of blacks in the industry has varied widely over time and by region, and the approach of this study is therefore more comparative than chronological. Its aim is to define the patterns of race relations that prevailed among the miners. Using this approach, Lewis finds five distractive systems of race relations. There was in the South before and after the Civil War a system of slavery and convict labor -- an enforced servitude without legal compensation. This was succeeded by an exploitative system whereby the southern coal operators, using race as an excuse, paid lower wages to blacks and thus succeeded in depressing the entire wage scale. By contrast, in northern and midwestern mines, the pattern was to exclude blacks from the industry so that whites could control their jobs and their communities. In the central Appalachians, although blacks enjoyed greater social equality, the mine operators manipulated racial tensions to keep the work force divided and therefore weak. Finally, with the advent of mechanization, black laborers were displaced from the mines to such an extent that their presence in the coal fields in now nearly a thing of the past. By analyzing the ways race, class, and community shaped social relations in the coal fields, Black Coal Miners in America makes a major contribution to the understanding of regional, labor, social, and African-American history.
Download or read book Killing for Coal written by Thomas G. Andrews and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a spring morning in 1914, in the stark foothills of southern Colorado, members of the United Mine Workers of America clashed with guards employed by the Rockefeller family, and a state militia beholden to Colorado’s industrial barons. When the dust settled, nineteen men, women, and children among the miners’ families lay dead. The strikers had killed at least thirty men, destroyed six mines, and laid waste to two company towns. Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the “Great Coalfield War.” In a sweeping story of transformation that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization, and workers’ resistance. Brilliantly conceived and written, this book takes the organic world as its starting point. The resulting elucidation of the coalfield wars goes far beyond traditional labor history. Considering issues of social and environmental justice in the context of an economy dependent on fossil fuel, Andrews makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationships that unite and divide workers, consumers, capitalists, and the natural world.
Download or read book Where the Sun Never Shines written by Priscilla Long and published by Paragon House Publishers. This book was released on 1989 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Devil Is Here in These Hills written by James Green and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The most comprehensive and comprehendible history of the West Virginia Coal War I’ve ever read.” —John Sayles, writer and director of Matewan On September 1, 1912, the largest, most protracted, and deadliest working-class uprising in American history was waged in West Virginia. On one side were powerful corporations whose millions bought armed guards and political influence. On the other side were fifty thousand mine workers, the nation’s largest labor union, and the legendary “miners’ angel,” Mother Jones. The fight for unionization and civil rights sparked a political crisis that verged on civil war, stretching from the creeks and hollows of the Appalachians to the US Senate. Attempts to unionize were met with stiff resistance. Fundamental rights were bent—then broken. The violence evolved from bloody skirmishes to open armed conflict, as an army of more than fifty thousand miners finally marched to an explosive showdown. Extensively researched and vividly told, this definitive book about an often-overlooked chapter of American history, “gives this backwoods struggle between capital and labor the due it deserves. [Green] tells a dark, often despairing story from a century ago that rings true today” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
Download or read book Black Days Black Dust written by Robert Armstead and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armistead retired from the coal mines in 1987, and died in 1998. Here he recounts his experiences and those of his father, who was also a coal miner, so that this engaging memoir also stands as a rich historical document portraying the evolution of the industry. Armistead told his story to S.L. Gardner, a former teacher and librarian who has written about coal camps for the Times West Virginian. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Soul Full of Coal Dust written by Chris Hamby and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a devastating and urgent work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hamby uncovers the tragic resurgence of black lung disease in Appalachia, its Big Coal cover-up, and the resilient mining communities who refuse to back down. Decades ago, a grassroots uprising forced Congress to enact long-overdue legislation designed to virtually eradicate black lung disease and provide fair compensation to coal miners stricken with the illness. Today, however, both promises remain unfulfilled. Levels of disease have surged, the old scourge has taken an aggressive new form, and ailing miners and widows have been left behind by a dizzying legal system, denied even modest payments and medical care. In this devastating and urgent work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hamby traces the unforgettable story of how these trends converge in the lives of two men: Gary Fox, a black lung-stricken West Virginia coal miner determined to raise his family from poverty, and John Cline, an idealistic carpenter and rural medical clinic worker who becomes a lawyer in his fifties. Opposing them are the lawyers at the coal industry’s go-to law firm; well-credentialed doctors who often weigh in for the defense, including a group of radiologists at Johns Hopkins; and Gary’s former employer, Massey Energy, the region’s largest coal company, run by a cantankerous CEO often portrayed in the media as a dark lord of the coalfields. On the line in Gary and John’s longshot legal battle are fundamental principles of fairness and justice, with consequences for miners and their loved ones throughout the nation. Taking readers inside courtrooms, hospitals, homes tucked in Appalachian hollows, and dusty mine tunnels, Hamby exposes how coal companies have not only continually flouted a law meant to protect miners from deadly amounts of dust but also enlisted well-credentialed doctors and lawyers to help systematically deny much-needed benefits to miners. The result is a legal and medical thriller that brilliantly illuminates how a band of laborers — aided by a small group of lawyers, doctors and lay advocates, often working out of their homes or in rural clinics and tiny offices – challenged one of the world's most powerful forces, Big Coal, and won. A deeply troubling yet ultimately triumphant work, Soul Full of Coal Dust is a necessary and timely book about injustice and resistance.
Download or read book American Coal Miner written by and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 1014 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Welsh Americans written by Ronald L. Lewis and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title discusses Welsh miners, American coal, and the construction of ethnic identity. In 1890, more than 100,000 Welsh-born immigrants resided in the United States. The majority of them were skilled labourers from the coal mines of Wales who had been recruited by American mining companies.
Download or read book A Coal Miner s Bride written by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A diary account of thirteen-year-old Anetka's life in Poland in 1896, immigration to America, marriage to a coal miner, widowhood, and happiness in finally finding her true love.
Download or read book The American Coal Industry 1790 1902 Volume III written by Sean Patrick Adams and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of coal-based fuel economy over the course of the nineteenth century was one of the most significant contributions the America’s Industrial Revolution, but the transition from wood to mineral energy sources was a gradual one that transpired over a number of decades. The documents in these volumes recreate the institutional history of the American coal industry in the nineteenth century; in doing so they provide a first-hand perspective on the developments in regard to political economy, business structure and competition, the rise of formal trade unions, and the creation of a national coal trade. Although the collection strives to be wide-ranging in region and theme, the Pennsylvania anthracite coal trade forms the thematic backbone as it became the most important American mineral resource to see successful development throughout the nineteenth century and consequently saw unprecedented levels of intervention by the federal government. The texts for this collection were selected for their accessibility to modern readers as well as their relationship to a series of common themes across the nineteenth century American coal industry — with headnotes and annotations provided to explain their context and the reasons for their inclusion.The third volume in this set traces the three decades following the American Civil War, during which time the use of coal for manufacturing, locomotives and domestic heating helped build a dynamic industrial economy in the United States. Mineral fuel growth powered the growth of the nation and by 1885 coal became the single most important source of American energy. Coal mining spread to nearly every corner of the nation in the half-century following the civil war. By the time of the Great Anthracite Strike in 1902, the American coal industry was a truly national phenomenon. The rise of large and well-funded mining and railroad corporations, the national unions, and the inroads by state governments into mine safety
Download or read book Coal Miners Wives written by Carol A. B. Giesen and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Our only sin was not having what they thought was enough. And being forced to take what they called help." Pain and anger resonate deeply in the voice of New Covenant Bound's central narrator. Forced from her homeland on the Tennessee River in the 1930s, she recounts the memory of upheaval and destruction caused by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Western Kentucky area that now boasts beautiful, expansive bodies of water was once home to some 20,000 people, their houses, farms, townships and ancestral history. Residents were subjected to three waves of forced relocation to make way for Kentucky Lake in the 1930s, Lake Barkley in the 1950s, and Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area in the 1960s. Renowned poet T. Crunk intersperses narrative prose and vivid lyric verse to explore the devastation one family experienced in this often overlooked episode in Kentucky history. The voices of a grandmother and grandson speak to each other over time, evoking the relentless advance of irrevocable forces that changed the land, forever.
Download or read book Mining Coal and Undermining Gender written by Jessica Smith Rolston and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though mining is an infamously masculine industry, women make up 20 percent of all production crews in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin—the largest coal-producing region in the United States. How do these women fit into a working culture supposedly hostile to females? This is what anthropologist Jessica Smith Rolston, herself a onetime mine worker and the daughter of a miner, set out to discover. Her answers, based on years of participant-observation in four mines and extensive interviews with miners, managers, engineers, and the families of mine employees, offer a rich and surprising view of the working “families” that miners construct. In this picture, gender roles are not nearly as straightforward—or as straitened—as stereotypes suggest. Gender is far from the primary concern of coworkers in crews. Far more important, Rolston finds, is protecting the safety of the entire crew and finding a way to treat each other well despite the stresses of their jobs. These miners share the burden of rotating shift work—continually switching between twelve-hour day and night shifts—which deprives them of the daily rhythms of a typical home, from morning breakfasts to bedtime stories. Rolston identifies the mine workers’ response to these shared challenges as a new sort of constructed kinship that both challenges and reproduces gender roles in their everyday working and family lives. Crews’ expectations for coworkers to treat one another like family and to adopt an “agricultural” work ethic tend to minimize gender differences. And yet, these differences remain tenacious in the equation of masculinity with technical expertise, and of femininity with household responsibilities. For Rolston, such lingering areas of inequality highlight the importance of structural constraints that flout a common impulse among men and women to neutralize the significance of gender, at home and in the workplace. At a time when the Appalachian region continues to dominate discussion of mining culture, this book provides a very different and unexpected view—of how miners live and work together, and of how their lives and work reconfigure ideas of gender and kinship.
Download or read book Hidden America written by Jeanne Marie Laskas and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Oprah.com “Must-Read Book” Award-winning journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas reveals “enlightening, entertaining, and often poignant”* profiles of America's working class—the forgotten men and women who make our country run. Take the men of Hopedale Mining company in Cadiz, Ohio. Laskas spent several weeks with them, both below and above ground, and by the end, you will know not only about their work, but about Pap and his dying mom, Smitty and the mail-order bride who stood him up at the airport, and Scotty and his thwarted dreams of becoming a boxing champion. That is only one hidden world. Others that she explores: an Alaskan oil rig, a migrant labor camp in Maine, the air traffic control center at LaGuardia Airport in New York, a beef ranch in Texas, a landfill in California, a long-haul trucker in Iowa, a gun shop in Arizona, and the Cincinnati Ben-Gals cheerleaders, mere footnotes in the moneymaking spectacle that is professional football. “Jeanne Marie Laskas is a reporting and writing powerhouse. She doesn’t just interview the people who dig our coal and extract our oil, she goes deep into the mines and tundra with them. With beauty, wit, curiosity, and grace, she finds the hidden soul of America. Hidden America is essential reading.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Download or read book Fire In The Hole written by Curtis Seltzer and published by . This book was released on 1985-01-10 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witness the product of 25 years work from 'Les Chemins du Baroque' with this film which serves as an accumulation of hard work from many classical musicians to revive a forgotten piece of musical history: Latin American Baroque. This celebratory concert aims to mark the completion of their work and at the very heart of the performance is the San Ignacio opera by Domenico Zipoli, played by a whole host of musicians from Paraguay and France at the Jesuit Missions in Paraguay.
Download or read book Mining for the Nation written by Jody Pavilack and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines the politics of coal miners in Chile during the 1930s and '40s, when they supported the Communist Party in a project of cross-class alliances aimed at defeating fascism, promoting national development, and deepening Chilean democracy"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Coal Wars written by David Bullock and published by Washington State University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sleepy little Roslyn has always been a coal town, ever since a railway company opened the first mine in 1886. Strikes are a way of life for central Washington miners and their families, but Tuesday, April 3, 1934, is different. This time, the labor shutdown divides families and pits neighbor against neighbor. Fearful children beg their fathers not to cross picket lines. ¿I¿d rather have you yellow than dead,¿ one sobs. Supporters of the Western Miners Union of America¿ordinary wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters¿pelt cars with rocks, rotten eggs, pine cones, and cow pies. They curse and shriek insults. As the morning wears on, their taunts and assaults escalate. They fight for their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons¿tough men performing dangerous jobs. The miners and their families want safer working conditions, fair wages, and a reasonable workday. They had expected their longtime national union, the United Mine Workers of America, to stand strong during contract negotiations. Instead, UMWA leaders chose dismissive actions, setting the stage for the rise of a new local organization, the Western Miners Union of America. With a country in the midst of a national economic depression, the fledgling group faces opposition from a mighty labor union, a powerful railroad empire, and even their own government. Communist activists and other radical labor groups offer support. But when conflicting alliances turn residents of Roslyn, Cle Elem, and Ronald against each other, a heated and violent battle follows, leaving deep, lasting scars.
Download or read book The Hard Working Miner written by Benjamin Koenig and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
