After Blair Mountain, small victories and bigger losses would change the landscape of union organizing. Labor leaders, including Keeney’s ancestor Frank Keeney, were cleared of charges related to the insurrection. Other miners were freed from jail as well, because as Savage wrote, coal attorneys were discouraged and dismissed indictments; juries in West Virginia counties often sided with miners instead of coal companies. But membership in the United Mine Workers of America plummeted; continued strikes cost the UMWA millions and made little headway toward their goals of changing coal company policies. UMWA membership peaked around 1920, with 50,000 members, but fell to just 600 in 1929. Later, it would rise and fall again, following a roller coaster of peaks and declines throughout the 20th century.
Despite the ultimate surrender, one of the many bits of Blair Mountain history that continues to stick out is the diversity of the miner’s army. In 1921, coal company towns were segregated, and Brown v. Board of Education was decades away. However, Wilma Steele, a board member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, says Matewan was one of the only towns in the United States where Black and white children, most commonly Polish, Hungarian and Italian immigrants, went to school together. Other miners were white Appalachian hill folk. Most all were kept apart in order to prevent organization and unionization. It didn’t work. Keeney recalls one incident during the Mine Wars, Black and white miners held cafeteria workers at gunpoint until they were all served food in the same room, and refused to be separated for meals.
“We don’t want to exaggerate it and act like they were holding hands around the campfire, but at the same time they all understood that if they did not work together they couldn’t be effective,” Keeney says. “The only way to shut down the mines was to make sure everybody participated.”
This year, the Mine Wars Museum marks that unity in the first Blair Centennial celebration. Kenzie New, the museum’s director, says planning has been somewhat fluid because of ongoing COVID-19 concerns, but will start with a kickoff concert in Charleston, West Virginia, on Friday, September 3. The UMWA will retrace the miners’ 50-mile march over the weekend, and end with a rally on Labor Day.
