The Battle Over Blair Mountain: Site of Famous Labor Fight Remains Under Siege.

• Author: Soodalter, Ron

In late August 1921, some 10,000 armed miners marched toward Mingo County, West Virginia, following decades of blatant and officially sanctioned abuse. For years, miners had been fighting in vain for safety regulations, reasonable hours, better living conditions, a decent wage, and union representation, while the mine operators fought to maintain total control of their workforce.

Up against the operators' hired "gun thugs," the United Mine Workers of America responded in kind. Frank Keeney, the charismatic president of the unions District 17, told an assemblage of impassioned miners earlier that year, "The only way you can get your rights is with a high powered rifle!" And so the miners--local mountain folk, eastern European immigrants, and migrant southern blacks--grabbed what weapons they could and marched, united in common cause.

When he learned of the march, Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin assembled a 3,000-man army consisting of his deputies, West Virginia state police, hired gunmen, and a large local militia. They built barriers and dug trenches along a twelve-mile perimeter along the border between Logan and Boone Counties. These "defenders," as they were called, were armed with rifles, machine guns, and three biplanes donated by the governor of Kentucky--whose sympathies, like Charm's, were with the operators. The largest group was stationed between the two 1,800-foot peaks defining Blair Mountain.

The resulting fight, which history records as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was the nation's single largest armed uprising since the Civil War and its most violent labor insurrection. It lasted four days, led to dozens of deaths, and ended only after President Warren G. Harding sent troops to disarm the miners. While no members of Chafin's army were detained, more than 500 miners were arrested and charged with treason and murder. Although most were acquitted, the cost of their defense broke the union. It was not until the mid-1930s that Congress passed legislation ensuring the basic rights for which the miners had fought so long and hard.

But the Battle of Blair Mountain is not over. Today, the subject is not miners' rights but the survival of a mountain that has stood for nearly a century as a symbol of workers' resistance to overwhelming opposition. For years, Blair Mountain has been under assault by such corporations as Natural Resource Partners L.P. and Arch Coal, Inc.--large absentee conglomerates that own most of the battlefields nearly 1,700 acres.

These companies have in turn leased the land to Alpha Natural Resources and its subsidiary Aracoma Coal Company, who have obtained permits to extract coal from the area using the mountain-top removal system of mining. This is a form of surface mining in which coal companies clear-cut trees and blast away the mountain in layers from the top down, dumping rock and other waste byproducts into nearby valleys, until the site's coal has been completely removed.

Journalist John McQuaid, writing in Smithsonian magazine, called it "devastation on an astonishing scale." The damage to the mountain, as well as to the forests, streams, and delicate ecosystems existing on and around it, is irreparable.

The toll in human life is also significant. Mountaintop removal has been linked to elevated rates of mortality from lung cancer and chronic heart, lung, and kidney diseases in the local communities where it takes place.

And mountaintop removal is accomplished using large, sophisticated equipment. Only a small number of miners draw paychecks from it, relative to underground mining.

But the biggest threat may be to what Blair Mountain represents.

Nearly three decades ago, a soft-spoken, unassuming resident of Logan County began gathering artifacts from the Blair Mountain Battlefield. Kenny King is a contract laborer who tests and samples coal for large extraction companies in southern West Virginia. His grandfather had fought alongside his fellow miners in the 1921 battle, and King has always felt a strong connection to his family history.

Determined to literally unearth the story of the event, he walked...