Mountaintop Removal Protest Echoes Historic Labor Battle – June 2, 2011

March Next Week Hopes to Save West Virginia’s Blair Mountain

The marchers who will take to the roads of West Virginia next week to try to stop the demolition of yet another mountain for the coal underneath will be following the same route that more than 10,000 well-armed miners took 90 years ago.

In 1921, miners marched to free the southwestern part of the state from the coal industry. Then they were stopped by a small army of heavily armed coal mine guards at Blair Mountain. During the next five days, the miners and company guards fought across the mountainside. Thirty men died. The Battle of Blair Mountain is known as the largest civil insurrection since the Civil War.

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by: Bill Kovarik

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