THE LARGEST WORKING CLASS UPRISING IN US HISTORY (AND YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT)

[David Morris]

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_largest_working_class_uprising_in_us_history

>From Alan Grayson’s email:

This weekend marks the anniversary of the most brutal confrontation in
the history of the American labor movement, the Battle of Blair
Mountain. For one week during 1921, armed, striking coal miners
battled scabs, a private militia, police officers and the US Army. 100
people died, 1,000 were arrested, and one million shots were fired. It
was the largest armed rebellion in America since the Civil War.

This is how it happened. In the Twenties, West Virginia coal miners
lived in “company towns.” The mining companies owned all the property.
They literally ran union organizers out of town - or killed them.

In 1912, in a strike at Paint Creek, the mining company forced the
striking miners and their families out of their homes, to live in
tents. Then they sent armed goons into that tent city, and opened fire
on men, women and children there with a machine gun.

By 1920, the United Mine Workers had organized the northern mines in
West Virginia, but they were barred from the southern mines. When
southern miners tried to join the union, they were fired and evicted.
To show who was boss, one mining company tried to place machine guns
on the roofs of buildings in town.

In Matewan, when the coal company goons came to town to take it upon
themselves to enforce eviction notices, the mayor and the sheriff
asked them to leave. The goons refused. Incredibly, the goons tried to
arrest the sheriff, Sheriff Hatfield. Shots were fired, and the mayor
and nine others were killed. But the company goons had to flee.

The government sided with the coal companies, and put Sheriff Hatfield
on trial for murder. The jury acquitted him. Then they put the sheriff
on trial for supposedly dynamiting a non-union mine. As the sheriff
walked up the courthouse steps to stand trial again, unarmed, company
goons shot him in cold blood. In front of his wife.

This led to open confrontations between miners on one hand, and police
and company goons on the other. 13,000 armed miners assembled, and
marched on the southern mines in Logan and Mingo Counties. They
confronted a private militia of 2,000, hired by the coal companies.

President Harding was informed. He threatened to send in troops and
even bombers to break the union. Many miners turned back, but then
company goons started killing unarmed union men, and some armed miners
pushed on. The militia attacked armed miners, and the coal companies
hired airplanes to drop bombs on them. The US Army Air Force, as it
was known then, observed the miners’ positions from overhead, and
passed that information on to the coal companies.

The miners actually broke through the militia’s defensive perimeter,
but after five days, the US Army intervened, and the miners stood
down. By that time, 100 people were dead. Almost a thousand miners
then were indicted for murder and treason. No one on the side of the
coal companies was ever held accountable.

The Battle of Blair Mountain showed that the miners could not defeat
the coal companies and the government in battle. But then something
interesting happened: the miners defeated the coal companies and the
government at the ballot box. In 1925, convicted miners were paroled.
In 1932, Democrats won both the State House and the White House. In
1935, President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act.
Eleven years after the Battle of Blair Mountain, the United Mine
Workers organized the southern coal fields in West Virginia.

The Battle of Blair Mountain did not have a happy ending for Sheriff
Hatfield, or his wife, or the 100 men, women and children who died, or
the hundreds who were injured, or the thousands who lost their jobs.
But it did have a happy ending for the right to organize, and the
middle class, and America.

Now let me ask you one thing: had you ever heard of this landmark
event in American history, the Battle of Blair Mountain, before you
read this? And if not, then why not? Think about that.

Courage,

Alan Grayson