Table Of Content

Praise for THE ROAD TO BLAIR MOUNTAIN “Chuck Keeney takes over where his great-grandfather left off a century ago—in a no-holds-barred fight against King Coal and its pursuit of profits over people. Keeney delivers a riveting and propulsive story about a nine-year battle to save sacred ground that was the site of the largest labor uprising in American history. You’ll find yourself rooting for Keeney from beginning to end. He unveils a powerful playbook on successful activism that will inspire countless others for generations to come.” —Eric Eyre, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic “Keeney brings a lifetime of scholarship, family relations, and activism to this twenty-first-century chapter of the epic and ongoing saga of Blair Mountain.” —Catherine Venable Moore, president, West Virginia Mine Wars Museum “This book connects to work on twentieth-century labor history, but it is more than that. It is an insider’s thoughts on regional identity and activism as well as a reassessment of how people see Appalachia in the popular mind. When Charles Keeney speaks directly to the reader and offers advice, it reso- nates in a powerful and present way.” —Steven E. Nash, East Tennessee State University “Fascinating. . . . Suspenseful to the very end.” —Daily Yonder CHARLES B. KEENEY West Virginia University Press Morgantown Copyright © 2021 by West Virginia University Press All rights reserved First edition published 2021 by West Virginia University Press Printed in the United States of America ISBN Cloth 978-1-949199-84-0 Paper 978-1-949199-85-7 Ebook 978-1-949199-86-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Keeney, Charles Belmont, author. Title: The road to Blair Mountain : saving a Mine Wars battlefield from king coal / Charles B. Keeney. Description: First edition. | Morgantown : West Virginia University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020022380 | ISBN 9781949199840 (cloth) | ISBN 9781949199857 (paperback) | ISBN 9781949199864 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Historic sites—Conservation and restoration—West Virginia. | Environmentalism—West Virginia. | Blair Mountain (W. Va.) Classification: LCC F247.L8 K44 2021 | DDC 975.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022380 Book and cover design by Than Saffel / WVU Press For all the Red Necks, past, present, and future. You know who you are. Contents PREFACE ix 1 FIGHTING FOR A BATTLEFIELD 1 2 MARCHING INTO BLAIR 34 3 CAMP BRANCH 74 4 THE NORTHWEST FLANK 125 5 IDENTITY RECLAMATION 162 6 THE LONG ROAD 205 EPILOGUE: APPALACHIAN ANTHROPOCENE 255 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 277 GLOSSARY 279 NOTES 285 INDEX 301 Preface Alump of coal rests atop a red bandana in my home. The lump of coal is from Blair Mountain. The red bandana is from a 2011 protest march organized to protect Blair Mountain from destruction by mountaintop removal mining. After the protest march, I drove back to Blair and found the piece of coal about halfway up the southern crest. Upon returning home, I placed it over the bandana I wore on the march and put the display atop a bookshelf where I could see it from anywhere in the room. Its shrine-like presence served two purposes. First, it reminded me of what I was fi ghting for and why I was fi ghting. Second, I took the piece of coal because, as I reasoned to myself with a grin, no matter what happened, the coal companies would not get all of it. From 2009 to 2018, a small group of activists fought a successful campaign against three multi-billion-dollar corpora- tions, a state government, and the military-industrial complex in order to preserve a battlefi eld. This book is about the sig- nifi cance of that fi ght and how we won it. On a more personal ix