Coal Firms to Strip-Mine Historic Battlefield?

[n2doc]

Preservationists fight uphill battle for West Virginia mountain, site of labor-rights clash.

A strip-mined peak (foreground) may be a sign of things to come for Blair Mountain, a portion of which is visible at center.
Photograph by Kenneth King

Heather Pringle
for National Geographic magazine
Published June 2, 2010

On a sultry August morning in 1921, some 15,000 coal miners converged at the foot of the steep, brambly slopes of West Virginia's Blair Mountain. On a high ridge above, coal industry forces, private detectives, and state police officers peered out from fortified positions, training Thompson submachine guns and high-powered rifles on the men below.

After years of violent confrontations with mine operators in West Virginia coalfields, the miners were marching to Mingo County, West Virginia, to free miners imprisoned by state authorities and unionize workers who lived in dire poverty in company towns. But the 1,952-foot-tall (595-meter-tall) Blair Mountain stood in the marchers' path. So the miners—armed with machine guns and other weapons, and wearing red bandannas around their necks—started up the slopes.

The ensuing battle, the second largest civil insurrection in U.S. history, lasted about five days and claimed dozens of lives. And while the miners eventually decided to lay down their arms when federal troops arrived, the battle of Blair Mountain focused national attention on the oppressive company towns of West Virginia and dangerous mines, resulting in part from lagging state safety regulations.

Twelve years later the federal government passed an act giving workers the right to form unions and bargain collectively, and the United Mine Workers of America dispatched its organizers across the United States. Blair Mountain, said Barbara Rasmussen, a historic preservation consultant in Morgantown, West Virginia, "was the flash point. This was where it all boiled over."

more

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100520-science-environment-blair-mountain-coal-massey-energy-nation/

[Brickbat]

1. If people find it hard to stand up to corrupt owners running mines that are criminally unsafe, why

should we expect them to stand up for a historic site where people did actually fight against such things?

[blindpig]

2. They would love to destroy the evidence

Nationalize the Energy Sector