Fight for Freedom?

There was a perfect storm brewing for the Matewan Massacre and later the Battle for Blair Mountain. From 1870 through 1888, coal mining towns began to crop up in the Appalachian Mountains. Coal operators then set up a "town system". They built and owned the town, all of the utilities, the town store, the post office, housing, entertainment, roads, and bridges. This system usually falls under Paternalism. This meant all of the workers were watched during their time off to ensure that they obeyed the company and town rules of behavior. A miner could be fired for drinking too much during the hours off from the mines.

While this idea looks great on paper, however, it is terribly oppressive. For the independent-thinking Appalachians, it was very hard to swallow that they could not live the way that they wished.

YouTube Video
   • Matewan The Complete True Story  
Website
kytnliving.com/the-matewan-massacre-part-two/


All photos are in the public domain unless otherwise noted. This includes photos dated before 1923. All other photos are used with permission or under the education fair use statute of the US copyright law.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivatives 4.0 International License.
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/?fbclid=…

How to contact us

For more about us, you can visit our Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/kytnliving
Our Twitter page:
www.twitter.com/KYTNLiving
Or our website:
www.kytnliving.com/


When we forget our past and who we are as a people, then we become who "they" say we are. ~~ David Sergent