Fire in the Hole

The coalfields of West Virginia in 1920-1921 were a place of extraordinary labor violence between striking miners facing off against armed mercenaries employed by mining corporations. In the remote mountain valleys of Appalachia, a region made infamous by the Hatfield-McCoy feud, coal miners and their families lived at the margins. Coal mining was a poorly paid brutal and dangerous occupation. Mining companies controlled corrupt local government, exerting a form of institutionalized oppress...