Jon Gensler: Blair Mountain II: The New Battle over Coal Mining in West Virginia

Jon Gensler is a native of Huntington, W.Va, and is a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a fellow with the Truman National Security Project and plans on returning to West Virginia in the near future to help build a clean energy economy.

...Ninety years ago in the late summer of 1921, in the midst of great oppression, terrible working conditions, and a lack of national support, 10,000 striking coal miners marched 50 miles from Marmet, W.Va, down to Logan County in support of their working class brethren. They were met at Blair Mountain by state police, coal company “thugs,” and mercenaries – all organized by the coal companies to put the strike down.

The governor declared marshal law as the army arrayed against the working men positioned machine guns along the ridge lines. A federalized national guard was called in and in rented planes, even dropped bombs and poison gas on the battered miners. More than a million rounds were fired, with hundreds killed or wounded, but it wasn’t until the US Army was called in on the ground that the miners gave up....

Today, Blair Mountain is under threat again, this time from mountaintop removal coal mining, and the historic battlefield and crucible of the American labor movement is on the brink of eradication. Today’s coal barons would like nothing more than to bury this history forever and to wipe clear the bloody story of their industry in our state. Much as they rape our land today, blasting the tops of more than 500 mountains and burying the headwaters of the eastern US in rubble and toxic waste, they would put to rest our sacred past....