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themanonline.bsky.social
themanonline.bsky.social
@themanonline.bsky.social
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solomonmissouri.bsky.social
The bridge between the real world and the dream world

Is the pee world
December 18, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by themanonline.bsky.social
hollyanderson.bsky.social
You don't know this, but December 6 is National Miners Day. It was established in 2009 to acknowledge the Monongah mining disaster, the worst single loss-of-life event in a coal mine in American history. On December 6, 1907, at least 362 WVa coal miners were killed in a catastrophic explosion. My father's father died in a mine explosion in the 1930s. My mother's father was dying of black lung when his tiny U.S. Steel-owned house burned down with him in it. By that time, my parents' siblings and their families had scattered to California, Colorado, New York, and D.C. to find employment other than mining. My father (pictured here in U.S. Steel Gary #9 mine, 1958) also had black lung, but thanks to improved mine safety and ventilation laws, not a fatal case. A hundred years ago, Matewan sheriff Sid Hatfield, who had shown allegiance to the unionized miners of southwestern WVa rather than the coal companies, was gunned down alongside a friend as their wives watched in horror. This happened in my home county on the McDowell County courthouse steps in Welch, WVa. Those murders catalyzed a movement, the largest labor uprising in history. The history of violence against miners and their families, combined with low wages, dangerous jobs, and what amounted to indentured servitude with a lifetime of debt, were all contributors to the Blair Mountain uprising. The Battle of Blair Mountain saw 10,000 WVa coal miners march in protest of perilous work conditions, squalid housing, low wages, and many other grievances. Local and federal law enforcement brutally shut down the burgeoning movement. Miners striking for greater union recognition clashed with armed Baldwin-Felts agents, hired mercenaries employed by coal companies to put down unionizing efforts. They drove families from their homes at gunpoint, drove an armored train through a tent colony of the evicted miners and sprayed their tents with machine gun fire, and burned women and children alive in a mining camp cellar.
December 6, 2025 at 12:09 AM