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In the aftermath of the American economic downturn after the First World War in certain industries, the labor movement escalated into strikes across the country. This was also true in West Virginia where unions and coal mine owners had already clashed before the war. With the Matewan Massacre and the Battle for Blair Mountain this struggle reached a violent climax in which WW1 veterans were going against hired security - and even the federal army had to be called in.

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» SOURCES
Dubofsky, Melvyn & McCartin, Joseph A. Labor in America: A History, (Chichester : John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2017)

Corbin, David, Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals: a Documentary History of the West Virginia Mine Wars, (Oakland, CA : PM Press, 2011)

Fagge, Roger, Citizens of this Great Republic: Politics and the West Virginia Miners, 1900-1922, International Review of Social History, Vol. 40, No. 1 (1995)

Hutton, T.R.C. The Appalachian Gunmen of Capitalism in Hild, Matthew & Merrit, Keri Leigh (eds.), Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power, (Gainesville, FL : University Press of Florida, 2018)

Laurie, Clayton D, The United States Army and the Return to Normalcy in Labor Dispute Interventions: The Case of the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars, 1920-1921, West Virginia History, Volume 50, (1991) http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh50-1.html

Nida, Brandon, Demystifying the Hidden Hand: Capital and the State at Blair Mountain, Historical Archaeology, Vol. 47, No. 3 (2013)

Shogan, Robert, The Battle of Blair Mountain: the Story of Americas Largest Labor Uprising, (New York : Basic Books, 2006)


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Presented by: Jesse Alexander
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