The memory we keep
August 25 – September 2, 1921. The largest labor uprising in American history.
Ten thousand West Virginia coal miners — union men, church deacons, war veterans, Republicans, Democrats, and plenty of neither — tied red bandanas around their necks and marched on Logan County to break the mine guards’ grip on their towns. They were met by machine guns, hired deputies, and eventually the U.S. Army. They lost the battle. The bandana became a badge: it is where “redneck” comes from.
Blair Mountain was never left versus right. It was people who work for a living against people who own their houses, their stores, their sheriffs, and their newspapers. That is the test this site applies to every story it runs.
Timeline of the Mine Wars
May 19, 1920
The Matewan Massacre
Police chief Sid Hatfield sides with evicted miners against Baldwin–Felts agents. A shootout in the streets of Matewan leaves ten dead and makes Hatfield a folk hero.
Aug 1, 1921
Sid Hatfield assassinated
Hatfield is shot dead, unarmed, on the McDowell County courthouse steps. No one is convicted. Miners begin gathering at Lens Creek within weeks.
Aug 24, 1921
The march begins
Up to 10,000 miners set out toward Mingo County to free jailed union men and end martial law — red bandanas at their necks so they know their own.
Aug 25 – Sep 2, 1921
The Battle of Blair Mountain
Sheriff Don Chafin’s deputized army meets the marchers with machine-gun nests and hired planes dropping bombs. Roughly one million rounds are fired along the ridge.
Sep 2–3, 1921
Federal troops arrive
The U.S. Army intervenes. Many miners, veterans themselves, refuse to fire on federal soldiers and stand down. Nearly a thousand are indicted; treason trials follow.
1935
The long vindication
The Wagner Act guarantees the right to organize. Within years, the coalfields that lost at Blair Mountain are union from end to end.
2018
The battlefield protected
After years of delisting fights with coal operators seeking to strip-mine the ridge, Blair Mountain returns to the National Register of Historic Places.
“Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”
Mother Jones · organizer, UMWA
The War They Tried to Erase · Mountain Roots
The Battle of Blair Mountain & West Virginia Mine Wars.
The Legacy of Blair Mountain · WCHS-TV
Keep the memory · get involved
→ West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
Matewan, WV — artifacts, oral histories, and the definitive Mine Wars exhibits.
→ Friends of Blair Mountain
Preservation group that fought to protect the battlefield from surface mining.
→ United Mine Workers of America
The union the marchers fought for. Still organizing, over a century on.
→ e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia
Scholarly entries on the battle, the Mine Wars, and the people in them.
Anniversary week: Aug 25 – Sep 2. The battlefield was relisted on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.