How Looking for a Job could Kill You
Imagine your family has fallen on hard times so you move to a place with more economic opportunity, only to find more oppression. This was the situation many African Americans were in during the early twentieth century. All walks of life flocked to coal mines during this time to find a job. From the outside, Appalachia seemed like a place without racism. How true is this statement, and more specifically how does the increased economic activity in Appalachia, from coal mining, effect the amount of lynchings during the early twentieth century?
After the civil war had ended race relations in the mountains were considerably better than the rest of the United States. This is due to the isolation of the mountains forcing people to work with each other. (Stuckert 1992) This caused many African Americans to flock to the region to escape the fear of living in the south. This migration intensified when the region had more jobs to offer from the coal companies. Coal company recruiters used to recruit young black men by train stations in the south to come work in the mines. Unfortunately, now that Appalachians are reliant on the coal companies instead of each other, race relations in the region begin to deteriorate. Whites and Blacks are now competing for jobs and now we see a rise in lynchings in the region.
From 1880 to 1950 over 4000 lynchings occurred in southern Appalachia. (Davis 2015) Most of those lynchings happened in towns instead of more rural areas. This is because towns had more economic activity happening within them, so there was more competition over jobs. The reason it intensified to that ridiculous number is because of coal’s dominance over the region for all those years. Appalachia had a reputation of decreased racial violence, and economic opportunities for black people, so black people kept pouring into the region. (Konhaus 2017) However, lynchings became more popular the more, black people were in the region.
Thankfully, today we have anti-lynching legislation. This legislation was hard fought for in Virginia though. It was finally made into a law after the deaths of Leonard Woods and Raymond Bird. It took too long to get this common-sense legislation through the governments bureaucracy. However, you still see remains of the regions shameful past. For example, Appalachia is largely credited for being a crucial part in Trump’s victory. Not that voting for Trump is a bad thing, but this is a candidate that has said racial slurs on his way to the white house.(Alexander 2011) (Sterling 2016)
