Battle of Blair Mountain

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Part of West Virginia Mine Wars

Date	August 25-September 4, 1921
Location	West Virginia, Kanawha County and Logan County
Result	Crushing defeat of the Union mine workers.

Combatants

United Mine Workers of America

Baldwin-Felts Agency(hired by the Stone Mountain Mining company)
United States

Commanders

Bill Blizzard

Billy Mitchel, Ephraim Morgan

Strength

8,000-13,000

Unknown, less than 7,000

The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest organized armed uprising in American labor history and led almost directly to the labor laws currently in effect in the United States of America. For nearly a week in late August and early September 1921, in Logan County, West Virginia, between 10,000 to 15,000 coal miners confronted state and federal troops in an effort to unionize the south western West Virginia mine counties as had been done else where in the Railroad triggered demographic boom growth characterized by unprecedented immigrant hiring and exploitation in the region. It was the final act in a series of violent clashes that have also (confusedly) been termed the Red Neck War, from the colour of neckscarves worn by the miners, and the likely impetus of the common usage of the original Scottish term Red neck in the vernacular of the United States.

Though tensions had been simmering for years, the immediate catalyst for the uprising was the unpunished murder of Sid Hatfield, police chief of Matewan, on the steps of the McDowell County courthouse in July 1921 by alleged company goons. Hatfield had been a long-time supporter of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and their efforts to unionize the mines.

At a rally on August 7, Mother Jones called on the miners to march into Logan and Mingo counties and set up the union by force. Armed men began gathering at Lens Creek, near Marmet in Kanawha County on August 20, and by four days later up to 13,000 had gathered and began marching towards Logan County. Meanwhile, the reviled Sheriff of Logan County, Don Chafin, had begun to set up defences on Blair Mountain.

The first skirmishes occurred on the morning of August 25. The bulk of the miners were still 15 miles away. The following day, President Warren Harding threatened to send in federal troops, and the miners began to leave. However, mistaken reports came in that Sheriff Chafin's men were deliberately shooting women and children - families had been caught in crossfire during the skirmishes - and the miners turned back towards Blair Mountain, many travelling in on stolen and commandeered trains.

By August 29, battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners, though many of these failed to explode and none are believed to have caused any injuries. Sporadic gun battles continued for a week, with the miners at one time nearly breaking through to the town of Logan and their target destinations, the counties to the south, Logan and Mingo. Up to 30 deaths were reported on both sides, with many hundreds more injured. By September 2, however, federal troops had arrived, the fledgling US Army Air Forces had dropped a few bombs as a demonstration meant to overawe the labor organizers and in the event, the miners dispersed the following day.

Following the battle, 985 miners were indicted for "murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and treason against the State of West Virginia." Though some were acquitted by sympathetic juries, many were also imprisoned for a number of years, though they were paroled in 1925. Short term, the battle seemed to be an overwhelming victory for management, and UMWA membership plummeted from more than 50,000 miners to circa 10,000 the next several years.

[edit] Legacy in retrospect

In the long-term, the battle raised awareness of the appalling conditions faced by miners in the dangerous West Virginia coalfields, and led directly to a change in union tactics into political battles to get the law on labor's side vice confrontations with recalcitrant and abusive managements and thence to the much larger organized labor victory a few short years later during the New Deal in 1933. That in turn led to the UMWA helping organize many better-known unions such as the Steel workers and Teamster's during the mid-thirties.

In the final analysis, management's success was a Pyrrhic victory that led eventually to a much larger and stronger organized labor movement in many industries, not only mining, and labor union affiliations and umbrella organizations like the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and their successor the AFL-CIO. Hence, part of the legacy of this battle is the near universal eight-hour workday, workers compensation insurance, paid vacation and medical benefits now enjoyed by most full-time American workers.

[edit] In fiction

The Blair Mountain march, as well as the events leading up to it and those immediately following it, are depicted in the novels Storming Heaven (Denise Giardina, 1987) and Blair Mountain (Jonathan Lynn, 2006). John Sayles' 1986 film Matewan depicts the so-called Matewan Massacre, a small part of the Blair Mountain story.