this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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Today I Learned

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The Battle of Blair Mountain saw 10,000 West Virginia coal miners march in protest of perilous work conditions, squalid housing and low wages, among other grievances. They set out from the small hamlet of Marmet, with the goal of advancing upon Mingo County, a few days’ travels away to meet the coal companies on their own turf and demand redress. They would not reach their goal; the marchers instead faced opposition from deputized townspeople and businesspeople who opposed their union organizing, and more importantly, from local and federal law enforcement that brutally shut down the burgeoning movement. The opposing sides clashed near Blair Mountain, a 2,000-foot peak in southwestern Logan County, giving the battle its name.


Miners then often lived in company towns, paying rent for company-owned shacks and buying groceries from the company-owned store with “scrip.” Scrip wasn’t accepted as U.S. currency, yet that’s how the miners were paid. For years, miners had organized through unions including the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), leading protests and strikes. Nine years prior to Blair Mountain, miners striking for greater union recognition clashed with armed Baldwin-Felts agents, hired mercenaries employed by coal companies to put down rebellions and unionizing efforts. The agents drove families from their homes at gunpoint and dumped their belongings. An armored train raced through a tent colony of the evicted miners and sprayed their tents with machine gun fire, killing at least one. In 1914, those same agents burned women and children alive in a mining camp cellar at Ludlow, Colorado.

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[–] darkpanda@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 day ago

A similar thing happened in my neck of the woods in 1925. Sounds familiar: unionized miners go on strike, company cuts off all credit to the company stores that they controlled, things become heated, company police shoot into crowds of miners killing one and wounding others, tensions increase, the military is brought in, and the dispute finally ends after a provincial election and recognition of the legitimacy of the union. Flash forward to today and the mines are all but shut down and many are museums, but the incident is still recognized every year as a local holiday.

Songs have been written, stories told.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs3ehG0xL58

[–] But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago (8 children)

What kind of traitorous soldiers fight against their own people?

[–] Zink@programming.dev 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's a pretty roundabout way to describe regular old cops.

It's almost like there was a plan behind the right's propaganda machine that has spent decades convincing ordinary people that if other ordinary people ask for things like rights or fairness or safety then that means they are an evil enemy.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

It’s almost like there was a plan

There's definitely an ideology. And there are certainly a number of plots and schemes executed at a high level.

But so much of the modern condition of American policing is just state sponsored stocastic terrorism. It's less a coherent plan as an unchecked filibuster. Thousands of idiots and assholes told "do as thou wilt" so long as they do it to the underclass.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Othering is a pretty powerful tool built right into the human condition.

[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I would be curious how true that would be in a post-scarcity egalitarian society. How much does our impulse to create out-groups depend on resource insecurity?

Obviously in capitalism having an out-group makes it easier to exploit everyone by creating division. Since exploitation is the key to profits, capitalists are incentivized to create out-groups. But if you take away these conditions, is it really human nature to create an enemy out of whole groups of people?

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think anthropologists and sociologists would likely be the best to answer that, but our animal cousins do the same thing fwiw

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[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 4 points 1 day ago

The kind who are there to get paid.

[–] Juice@midwest.social 6 points 2 days ago

The arrival of the military deescalated the conflict. The miners were rightly hostile toward gun thugs, capitalists, and cops, but had a favorable view of the military. The miners did not view the soldiers as their enemy, and as far as I know, peacefully surrendered.

I'm sure there were exceptions, but that was my understanding from the great history, Thunder on the Mountain: West Virginia Mine Wars of 20, 21

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Armies have historicly been used just as much to keep the local population in line as to wage war.

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[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Iirc Howard Zinn referred to this as the "second US Civil War" in A People's History of the United States

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It was the biggest domestic military engagement since the US Civil War, at least.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I guess that depends on how you read KKK activity after Hayes ended Reconstruction.

But you could also attribute it to the same beast. Jim Crow was as much about crushing black labor power as it was state sponsored white nationalist terrorism.

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

I'd read it as on-duty vs off-duty labor repression.

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 39 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Behind the Bastards covered this. The mining company established a 'rape room' system, where wives and daughters of injured miners paid off medical debts with their bodies.

Part One: The Second American Civil War You Never Learned About

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 7 points 1 day ago

Well. That goes on the list of things I really didn't need to know. What the fuck, humanity.

[–] stinky@redlemmy.com 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The term "redneck" in the early 20th century was occasionally used in reference to American coal miner union members who wore red bandanas for solidarity. The sense of "a union man" dates at least to the 1910s and was especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s in the coal-producing regions of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. ^Patrick Huber, "Red Necks and Red Bandanas: Appalachian Coal Miners and the Coloring of Union Identity, 1912–1936", Western Folklore, Winter 2006.^

[–] stinky@redlemmy.com 11 points 2 days ago

I'm citing this because the term redneck has been mostly reclaimed by conservative Americans, but it's important that the term was used by union members who fought the cops when they were sent to break up a strike. The origin of the word was used in a far more left-leaning sense than it is today.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

Those same miners now mostly voted for trump because he promised clean coal...

Things have changed

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 166 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Sharing this because public schools generally teach only about peaceful protest movements, so many aren't aware that the rights we enjoy as workers today were literally fought, killed, and died for, and often the US military was on the wrong side of the fight.

Also the story of Blair Mountain teaches us just how insidious US corporations will be if we let them.

[–] einkorn@feddit.org 67 points 3 days ago

But remember kids, if we get rid of one more regulation, the people owning those corporations will make us all rich!

SpoilerThey won't.

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[–] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 98 points 3 days ago (7 children)

What a lot of people fail to realize is that mining and other blue collar industries were traditionally very left-leaning because capitalists would take away all their rights, pay them in scrip, etc. The companies only cared about the Almighty dollar (and still do), but were way less regulated than they are now. Those regulations are the result of unions, worker uprising etc.

It's supremely. Ironic to see workers in these industries now do an about face, because Joe Rogan told them to. An over simplification, sure, but the point remains.

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[–] Jolly_Platypus@lemmy.world 99 points 3 days ago (12 children)

Never forget. That's what happens when billionaires fear no repercussion. No war but class war.

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[–] puppycat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 109 points 3 days ago (2 children)
[–] Envy@fedia.io 88 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Incorrect, first airplane attack on US soil was the firebombing of Black Wall Street during the Tulsa Race Massacre, 4 months prior

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 50 points 3 days ago

The first two airplane attacks were on blacks, and then the working class.

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[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 52 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Only a hundred years ago. We can't even go 100 years without evil infesting our government.

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The US government has always been evil. What are you talking about? Maybe learn about how evil a foreign policy the US has.

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[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 53 points 2 days ago (10 children)

You know what sucks about this story the most for me?

I grew up with these people’s descendants. You know what they’re doing right now?

The entire area voted more than 80% for Trump.

It bums me out so much, but then, I get it. We have NOTHING. The only means of making a living around here for regular folks is mining coal. The democrats want to end the use of fossil fuels. Of course they do, but it has turned everyone into republicans around here. Nobody is offering alternatives that truly benefit anyone but the people who are already wealthy.

The people who already had money are turning all of the land into ATV trails, and every halfwit with a camera comes to town and gawks at the poor folks for YouTube money.

My god, it all pisses me off.

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You forgot to mention that most of them also have black lung.

Don't tell them or they'll start lynching their own internal organs.

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[–] Juice@midwest.social 4 points 2 days ago

I used to be evil. I still am, but I used to be too

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[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 34 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What did you think the National Guard was for?

[–] KittenBiscuits@lemmy.today 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They didn't get their start shooting college students!

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

First they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up..

[–] SippyCup@feddit.nl 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Fun fact, if you mix dirty engine oil and sand in a water balloon, you could completely blind any vehicles that might be nearby.

Motor oil and sand just does not come off when it's all over motor vehicle windows.

Completely impossible to see through.

Just gonna leave that there

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Where do I get dirty engine oil? I ride a bicycle

[–] innermachine@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

U ride a bike on the street no? I'm sure u ride by plenty of cars, don't need to own it to remove its drain bolt 🤭

[–] ileftreddit@piefed.social 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

See also: Ludlow Massacre, Matewan

And they don’t teach it in schools because then we’d know our power

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[–] ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 32 points 3 days ago (3 children)
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