African Americans in Appalachian Coal Mines
My research question for the Intro to Appalachian Studies final project is: What did the lives of African American coal miners in Appalachia look like? This area in specific in regards to Appalachia, African American coal miners, interested me because of the lack of African American coverage in local color and in the limited time spent in class covering the different races found in Appalachia and in particular within the coal mines. This research question for the final project was answered and annotated using a variety of sources: articles from credible websites, articles published on databases, and interviews conducted via public radio stations.
In researching this question of “What did the lives of African American coal miners in Appalachia look like?”, I was able to learn about the role African Americans played in the coal mines, the timeline of African Americans in coal mines in Appalachia, and the influence of race and class in Appalachian coal mines.
In my research I was able to discover and learn about the role, or job that African Americans played in the coal mines in Appalachia. This role was the job of coal loader which involved “the laborious tasks of cutting, drilling, blasting, and loading coal” (“African American”). This was a popular job among African Americans because it was almost unsupervised, allowing the blacks to escape the supervision of Jim Crow Laws, and the job was paid by the amount of coal mined, so African Americans were able to receive equal pay for equal work. African Americans in Appalachia fulfilled the essential part of coal mining, coal loading, as miners.
Along with reveal the role African Americans played in the Appalachian coal mines, research also revealed the timeline of African American involvement in the mines. African Americans began working in the mines in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in Appalachia, after either migrating or upon finishing laying railroads in Appalachia. African Americans made up around one quarter of the mine workers “from the turn of the century through the early 1930s”, but by the time of the Great Depression African Americans were hit the hardest and were racially discriminated (“African-American Coal”). Later, African Americans faced technological advances in the mines as “loading machines rapidly displaced miners in the 1940s and 50s” (African-American Coal). African American involvement in the coal mines started strong, but was eventually affected by the rest of the world.
The influence of race and class in Appalachian coal mines and in Appalachia was revealed through sources. In describing class in Appalachia, the term proletarianization was defined as “‘the process by which southern rural blacks became new industrial workers and crystallized into a new class’” (DeChenne). Also, working class unity occurred in Appalachia for a period of time at the beginning of mining in which racism wasn’t involved and the working class was seen as equal. Appalachia was once a time, different than the rest of the country, in which African American miners were viewed of as equal as whites and different from the rest of blacks.
Through my research of African Americans in Appalachian coal mines, I was able to learn about and understand the role African Americans played in the coal mines, the timeline of African Americans in the Appalachian coal mines, and the influence of race and class in Appalachian coal mines. This topic thoroughly interested me and I’m grateful for the knowledge I gained of both the experience of research and of African American coal miners in Appalachia.
Bibliography:
“‘Everybody was black down there’; race and industrial change in the Alabama coalfields.” Reference & Research Book News, May 2007. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A162865228/AONE?u=viva_vpi&sid=AONE&xid=2aa8cc9
“African American Coal Miners: Helen, WV.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2017, www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/african-american-coal-miners-helen-wv.htm.
Trotter , Joe William. “Share African-American Coal Miners.” West-Virginia-Encyclopedia-Text, 23 Feb. 2013, www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/25.
Robinson-English, Tracey. “Two gems from the coal mines: husband-and-wife team carves out a life that has produced five college graduates, including two NFL stars.” Ebony, July 2006, p. 138+. Biography In Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A147390159/BIC?u=viva_vpi&sid=BIC&xid=4ca0a5ca.
Trotter, Joe W. “The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878–1921.” Journal of Social History, vol. 32, no. 4, 1999, p. 1005+. Biography In Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A55084042/BIC?u=viva_vpi&sid=BIC&xid=c571d3d2
DeChenne, David L. “Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–1932.” Labor Studies Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, 1993, p. 71+. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A14123747/AONE?u=viva_vpi&sid=AONE&xid=5973e9ea
