Photo taken looking south on Route 17, from a different perspective that the other distance photo. The three-day Battle of Blair Mountain was the climax of a war that had rocked West Virginia since the early years of the twentieth century when the United Mine Workers, led by Mother Jones, tried repeatedly to penetrate tightly controlled company coal towns. The video below was taken by Pam Brennan (1962-2015) from the top of the Blair Mountain Fire Tower. The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and one of the largest, organized, and well-armed uprisings since the American Civil War. [7] In order to accomplish this objective, agents of the coal operators used intimidation, harassment, espionage and even murder. The Battle of Blair Mountain covers a profoundly significant but long-neglected slice of American history - the largest armed uprising on American soil since the Civil War. But the Battle of Blair Mountain is not over. The Battle of Blair Mountain is the largest armed insurrection in the United States other than the Civil War and is a landmark event in United States history. He also claimed to be a member of the notorious Hatfield family of the Hatfield and McCoy feud. In early 1920, UMW president John L. Lewis targeted Mingo County for organizing. [9] They would repeat this type of tactic during the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado the next year, with even more disastrous results. An understanding of this incident, which is widely acknowledged to be âthe most brutal confrontation in the history of the American labor movement â, requires the study of the background of the coal mining industry in America. Coal operators paid private detectives as well as public law enforcement agents to ensure that union organizers were kept out of the region. “Machine guns cracked up there so you would think the whole place was coming down on you,” miner Ira Wilson later recalled. On May 19 of that year, members of the Baldwin-Felts detective agency arrived in the town of Matewan to evict union miners from houses owned by the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Collectors and researchers to this day are still finding weapons and ammunition embedded in old trees and in rock crevices. [30], Hatfield’s death enraged the miners, and they began to pour out of the mountains to take arms. Since the late 1800s, the coalfields of the states Mingo, Logan and McDowell Counties had operated under a repressive company town system. Miners from Battle of Blair Mountain giving up their guns. Within days, thousands of union supporters had flocked to the outskirts of Marmet, a small town located near the state capital of Charleston. The miners who saw it were furious, and sent word to town. [22], On January 26, 1921, the trial of Sid Hatfield for killing Albert Felts began. The Battle of Blair Mountain tells one story in the long history of American labor unions. September 4 marks the end of fighting at the Battle of Blair Mountain, which was the largest example of class war in U.S. history. In the spring of 1920, private goons hired by the coal companies were sent in to break a strike of coal miners in Matewan, a town in the southwestern part of West Virginia. After catching wind of the detectives’ activities, Matewan Mayor Cabell Testerman and a pro-union sheriff named Sid Hatfield raised a small posse and confronted them near the local train station. Up to 30 deaths were reported by Chafin’s side and 50–100 on the union miners' side, with hundreds more injured. It exposed the dark and murderous intentions of corporations. Battle of Blair Mountain. The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest organized armed uprising in United States labor history and led almost directly to the labor laws currently in effect today. WVPB News. Scores of union men streamed up the mountainside, but despite their superior numbers, they were repeatedly driven back by the defenders, who riddled them with machine gun fire from the high ground. The state of West Virginia charged Keeney, Mooney and some 20 other union men with treason, and hundreds of others were indicted for murder. The resulting fight, which history records as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was the nationâs single largest armed uprising since the Civil War and its most violent labor insurrection. Read more. The song is contained on The Miners debut EP also entitled Miners' Rebellion. Communities. [9], On May 19, 1920, 12 Baldwin-Felts agents arrived in Matewan, including Lee Felts, and promptly met up with Albert Felts who was already in the area. Volley, mortally wounded 30 ], on January 26, 1921 beginning 1870â1880. Straight to you killed, and their two wives symbolic significance was enormous for the rest of region! 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