MikeDunnAuthor
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social  ·  activity timestamp last week

Today in Labor History August 21, 1920: Ongoing violence by coal operators and their paid goons in the southern coalfields of West Virginia led to a three-hour gun battle between striking miners and guards that left six dead. 500 Federal troops were sent in not only to quell the fighting, but to ensure that scabs were able to get to and from the mines. A General Strike was threatened if the troops did not cease their strikebreaking activities. This was just 3 months after the Matewan Massacre, in which the miners drove out the seemingly invincible Baldwin-Felts private police force, with the help of their ally, Sheriff Sid Hatfield. 1 year later, Sheriff Hatfield was gunned down on the steps of the courthouse by surviving members of the Baldwin-Felts Agency. News spread and miners began arming themselves, leading to the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War and the largest labor uprising in U.S. history. Over 100 people were killed in the 5-day battle, including 3 army soldiers and up to 20 Baldwin-Felts detectives. Nearly 1,000 people were arrested. 1 million rounds were fired. And the government dropped bombs from aircraft on the miners, only the second time in history that the government bombed its own citizens (the first being the pogrom against African American residents of Tulsa, during the so-called Tulsa Riots).

The Battle of Blair Mountain is depicted in Storming Heaven (Denise Giardina, 1987), Blair Mountain (Jonathan Lynn, 2006), and Carla Rising (Topper Sherwood, 2015). And the Matewan Massacre is brilliantly portrayed in John Sayles’s film, “Matewan.”

Read my history of the Battle of Blair Mountain here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/14/the-battle-of-blair-mountain/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mining #strike #union #westvirginia #matewan#BattleOfBlairMountain #uprising #civilwar#GeneralStrike #tulsa #massacre #racism #books #fiction #film #writer #author #novel @bookstadon
MikeDunnAuthor
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social  ·  activity timestamp last week

Today in Labor History August 21, 1920: Ongoing violence by coal operators and their paid goons in the southern coalfields of West Virginia led to a three-hour gun battle between striking miners and guards that left six dead. 500 Federal troops were sent in not only to quell the fighting, but to ensure that scabs were able to get to and from the mines. A General Strike was threatened if the troops did not cease their strikebreaking activities. This was just 3 months after the Matewan Massacre, in which the miners drove out the seemingly invincible Baldwin-Felts private police force, with the help of their ally, Sheriff Sid Hatfield. 1 year later, Sheriff Hatfield was gunned down on the steps of the courthouse by surviving members of the Baldwin-Felts Agency. News spread and miners began arming themselves, leading to the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War and the largest labor uprising in U.S. history. Over 100 people were killed in the 5-day battle, including 3 army soldiers and up to 20 Baldwin-Felts detectives. Nearly 1,000 people were arrested. 1 million rounds were fired. And the government dropped bombs from aircraft on the miners, only the second time in history that the government bombed its own citizens (the first being the pogrom against African American residents of Tulsa, during the so-called Tulsa Riots).

The Battle of Blair Mountain is depicted in Storming Heaven (Denise Giardina, 1987), Blair Mountain (Jonathan Lynn, 2006), and Carla Rising (Topper Sherwood, 2015). And the Matewan Massacre is brilliantly portrayed in John Sayles’s film, “Matewan.”

Read my history of the Battle of Blair Mountain here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/14/the-battle-of-blair-mountain/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mining #strike #union #westvirginia #matewan#BattleOfBlairMountain #uprising #civilwar#GeneralStrike #tulsa #massacre #racism #books #fiction #film #writer #author #novel @bookstadon
Heidi Li Feldman
@heidilifeldman@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago

J.D. Vance, the heir apparent to dictatorship Trump is creating, had some nauseating things to say about U.S. citizenship today. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jd-

"Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence — that's a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time," Vance said. He explained that such a definition "would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree" with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, dubbing it "the logic of America as a purely Creole nation." By the opposite token, Vance said, conceiving of American citizenship "purely as an idea" would "reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War," he said, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that was founded to combat antisemitism and that, among other activities, tracks far-right groups. "I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong," he concluded.
"Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence — that's a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time," Vance said. He explained that such a definition "would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree" with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, dubbing it "the logic of America as a purely Creole nation." By the opposite token, Vance said, conceiving of American citizenship "purely as an idea" would "reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War," he said, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that was founded to combat antisemitism and that, among other activities, tracks far-right groups. "I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong," he concluded.
"Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence — that's a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time," Vance said. He explained that such a definition "would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree" with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, dubbing it "the logic of America as a purely Creole nation." By the opposite token, Vance said, conceiving of American citizenship "purely as an idea" would "reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War," he said, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that was founded to combat antisemitism and that, among other activities, tracks far-right groups. "I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong," he concluded.
Preston MacDougall
@ChemicalEyeGuy@mstdn.science replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@heidilifeldman How to make #JDVance stop talking about the #CivilWar. #Histodons