Coal Country Tours

14/12/2023

15/10/2023

The Odakyu Enoshima electric railway runs along the Pacific coast. It is known far and wide having appeared in numerous anime and popular films.

15/10/2023

Enoshima. Popular island south of Tokyo.

21/07/2023

Proud resistance is our secret birthright.

15/07/2023

on July 15, 1921, the office of the at Williamson was raided by the West Virginia State Police, a few weeks before the Battle of Blair Mountain. The UMWA Journal reports that 12 union men were arrested under the pretense of martial law, and in their arrests, “...Governor Morgan violated the Constitution of the state and his act was illegal.” Read more about the raid here👇

https://tinyurl.com/July151921

14/03/2023

The score was tied, and while one team had a band cheering them on, one didn’t. A group of musicians decided to level the playing field.

14/11/2022

25/10/2022

One of the US' newest national parks has put West Virginia in the spotlight, but there's a deeper history to discover in the remnants of its African American coal communities.

06/10/2022

Please join us in welcoming one of our newest West Virginia Mine Wars Museum board members, Kandi Workman! Kandi is a Boone County resident, writer, and beautiful poet. She also works as a program manager for the Tamarack Foundation for the Arts. We are so honored to have her on our team. ❤️

01/10/2022

Another damned C E Lively.

It was a tumultuous time of strikes and violence — and Louis Walsh chronicled it all, before disappearing into the haze of history. What happened to him?

27/09/2022

22/09/2022

The Union makes us strong.

20/09/2022

Adam Jones and Chris Henry were once N.F.L. poster athletes for misdeeds. Raising Henry’s children alongside his own, Jones is hoping to help them all avoid the same mistakes.

05/08/2022

in 1921, Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were laid to rest in Buskirk, Kentucky after their murders. Below is an excerpt from the funeral oration, given by Sam Montgomery:

“We have gathered here today to perform the last sad rites for these two boys who fell victims to one of the most contemptible systems that has ever been known to exist in the history of the so-called civilized world. Deliberately shot down, murdered in cold blood, while they were entering a place which should have been a temple of justice, and by whom? Men who are working under the direction of and taking their orders from coal operators who live in Cincinnati, Chicago, New York City, and Boston.

Sleek, dignified, church-going gentlemen who would rather pay fabulous sums to their hired gunmen to kill and slay men for joining a union than to pay like or lesser amounts to the men who delve into the subterranean depths of the earth and produce their wealth for them. At the same time these same men prate of their charities, their donations to philanthropic movements, act as vestrymen and pillars of the churches to which they belong.
Even the Heavens weep with the grief-stricken relatives and the bereaved friends of these two boys.” - Sam Montgomery

(Source: We Never Forget, The Labor Martyrs Project)

04/05/2022

In 1921 10,000 miners marched to Blair Mountain to protest unfair labor practices. Twenty miners were jailed for treason against the State of WV. In 1922 the treason trials were held in Jefferson County, as far from the miners' home base as possible.

Our Treason Trials 100 CONCERT is the final event in our centennial series. With musicians Tom Breiding, Mary Hott and The Carpenter Ants.

Pre-concert events include tours of the historic trial courtroom and a visit from the When Miners March Traveling Museum with Wess Harris.
Tom Breiding Wess Harris

03/05/2022

Next Event In Our Series!!
Friday, May 6th - Join historian Doug Estepp for a screening of PBS documentary "The Mine Wars" with post-movie Q&A. FREE!!
Douglas Estepp

17/02/2022

🚨 It’s Black History Month: Who is Eli Kemp?

“Eli Kemp died on August 31, 1921. That morning, before the fog had lifted, Eli embarked from his camp with an advance scouting guard. Kemp made his way with the others up White’s Trace Branch at the foot of Blair Mountain. As the scouts ascended, they encountered three Logan County Deputies, including John Gore, Don Chafin’s right hand man. Both groups asked for a password and, when both answered with the wrong one, gunshots rang out. Within seconds, two of the deputies were dead. John Gore was shot and on the ground, but managed to get a round off and hit Kemp.

James Wilburn, a preacher who had lived in Blair for many years and undoubtedly knew Gore, walked up to up as he lay on the forest floor. Then Wilburn, who only the day before had said it was time to “lay down my Bible and pick up my rifle,” shot Gore in the head. Wilburn then helped carry Eli over a mile through the woods back into Blair. They managed to carry Eli to the doctor’s office, but he died shortly after they laid him on a table.

Eli Kemp was a Black man and the first miner to die on Blair Mountain.” - Chuck Keeney, 100 Days in Appalachia

Below is a photo of a button and shell casings found at White Trace Branch where Eli Kemp took his last breath.
(WV & Regional History Center)