May 1921: Guerrilla Warfare Waged in WV
There were many reasons the mine wars began including the working conditions of the miners, the lack of safety, and the way the mining companies manipulated and owned not only the miners and their families but all of the resources in the town that were available to them.
In the year leading up to the Battle of Blair Mountain, tensions between miners wanting to unionize and anti-union mining companies were rising. There was very little coverage of these minor conflicts in national news outlets, but local papers were filling their pages with information of strikes, key players, and conflicts that arose.
Only major conflicts, like the one discussed in the Bisbee Daily Review article below, made it into news coverage outside the Appalachian coal fields.
