This exhibit focuses on how the Mine Wars and the Battle of Blair Mountain affected the lives of women in the coal camps and the miners’ families as a whole. Arguably every aspect of the family unit was transformed by this event; families were evicted from their homes by the barons and forced to live in tent colonies, facing starvation and exposure. The wives of striking coal miners were also targeted by local law enforcement, threatened or even assaulted to intimidate their husbands. These women supported their husbands by supplying food for them in the barracks and boycotting the coal camp grocery stores – all while carrying out daily chores in the tent colonies such as transporting clean water, childcare, and preparing meals (Reichart, 2001).
However, many women chose to be directly involved in the strikes, and they fought back hard. There are instances of women barricading themselves in front of the mines so that scabs (reinforcement miners) were blocked from entry, which often resulted in physical altercations. In fact, it was not uncommon for the women to fight local officials and scabs. Their participation was unexpected by the opposition, and so some women were recruited to serve as spies or to covertly transport weapons.
The Battle of Blair Mountain and the Mine Wars in general speak to unique gender dynamics in the coal camps, underscoring that the success of the movment was dependent upon the universal sense of duty and community – regardless of gender. Please enjoy the following artifacts in this exhibit, and see for yourself how women made a very real and lasting impact on the largest labor movement in history (Hood, 2020). This project was researched and created by Claire Bowers, Allison Groves, and Lily Wright as part of a collaboration between Dr. Erin Brock Carlson’s Multimedia Writing (ENGL 303) course in Spring 2021.