Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals

2011-11-02 Political Science

Author : David Alan Corbin
Release : 2011-11-02
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 462/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals by : David Alan Corbin

Download or read book Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals written by David Alan Corbin. This book was released on 2011-11-02. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strikes and union battles occurred throughout American industry during the early part of the twentieth century, but none of these stories compare to the West Virginia Mine Wars of 1912 and 1921. These two workers’ rebellions quickly drew national attention to an area known principally for its “black gold,” the coal that was vital for U.S. factories, power plants, and warships of that age. In 1912, miners struck against the harsh conditions in the work camps of Paint and Cabin Creeks and coal operators responded with force. The ensuing battles caused the West Virginia governor to declare martial law, prompting Samuel Gompers to dub the state “Russianized West Virginia [where] the people can be naught but serfs.” There was little improvement in working conditions by 1921, when another army—thousands of union miners—went up against similar numbers of state police, local deputies, and paid company guards. The weeklong Battle of Blair Mountain ended only after President Warren Harding sent 2,000 U.S. troops and a small unit of bombers to pacify the region Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals tells the story of these union battles as seen by the leaders, rank-and-file participants, and the journalists who came to West Virginia to cover them for papers including The Nation and the New York Times. Union leaders like Gompers, Frank Keeney, Fred Mooney, Bill Blizzard, and Mother Jones discuss the lives and struggles of the miners for their union. The book also contains articles, speeches, and personal testimony heard by two U.S. Senate committees sent to investigate West Virginia’s labor problems. In this testimony, miners and their family members describe life and work in the coal camps, telling why they participated in these violent episodes in West Virginia history. Special attention is given to the role of Huntington’s own radical newspaper, The Socialist and Labor Star, a forgotten monument in the history of American heresy and radicalism.

Blood in the Hills

2012-01-01 History

Author : Bruce Stewart
Release : 2012-01-01
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 277/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Blood in the Hills by : Bruce Stewart

Download or read book Blood in the Hills written by Bruce Stewart. This book was released on 2012-01-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To many antebellum Americans, Appalachia was a frightening wilderness of lawlessness, peril, robbers, and hidden dangers. The extensive media coverage of horse stealing and scalping raids profiled the regionÕs residents as intrinsically violent. After the Civil War, this characterization continued to permeate perceptions of the area and news of the conflict between the Hatfields and the McCoys, as well as the bloodshed associated with the coal labor strikes, cemented AppalachiaÕs violent reputation. Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia provides an in-depth historical analysis of hostility in the region from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Editor Bruce E. Stewart discusses aspects of the Appalachian violence culture, examining skirmishes with the native population, conflicts resulting from the regionÕs rapid modernization, and violence as a function of social control. The contributors also address geographical isolation and ethnicity, kinship, gender, class, and race with the purpose of shedding light on an often-stereotyped regional past. Blood in the Hills does not attempt to apologize for the region but uses detailed research and analysis to explain it, delving into the social and political factors that have defined Appalachia throughout its violent history.

The Devil Is Here in These Hills

2015-02-03 Political Science

Author : James Green
Release : 2015-02-03
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 092/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Devil Is Here in These Hills by : James Green

Download or read book The Devil Is Here in These Hills written by James Green. This book was released on 2015-02-03. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The most comprehensive and comprehendible history of the West Virginia Coal War I’ve ever read.” —John Sayles, writer and director of Matewan On September 1, 1912, the largest, most protracted, and deadliest working-class uprising in American history was waged in West Virginia. On one side were powerful corporations whose millions bought armed guards and political influence. On the other side were fifty thousand mine workers, the nation’s largest labor union, and the legendary “miners’ angel,” Mother Jones. The fight for unionization and civil rights sparked a political crisis that verged on civil war, stretching from the creeks and hollows of the Appalachians to the US Senate. Attempts to unionize were met with stiff resistance. Fundamental rights were bent—then broken. The violence evolved from bloody skirmishes to open armed conflict, as an army of more than fifty thousand miners finally marched to an explosive showdown. Extensively researched and vividly told, this definitive book about an often-overlooked chapter of American history, “gives this backwoods struggle between capital and labor the due it deserves. [Green] tells a dark, often despairing story from a century ago that rings true today” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

Republican Party Animal

2014-05-19 Biography & Autobiography

Author : David Cole
Release : 2014-05-19
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 922/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Republican Party Animal by : David Cole

Download or read book Republican Party Animal written by David Cole. This book was released on 2014-05-19. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "David Stein brought right-wing congressmen, celebrities, writers and entertainment industry figures together for shindigs, closed to outsiders. . . . There was just one problem. Stein was not who he claimed."—The Guardian In 2013, Republican "hero" David Stein made international headlines when he was unmasked as David Cole, the notorious Jewish Holocaust denier who made an entirely different set of headlines in the 1990s with his videos from within the gates of Auschwitz and his appearances on shows like 60 Minutes and Donahue. After a $25,000 bounty was put on his head by a violent extremist group, Cole left behind the bizarre world of Holocaust denial, a landscape populated by Hitler fetishists who Cole himself detested. Then, David Stein the Republican organizer was born. Stein soon became a major force in the closed-door world of Hollywood right-wingers—people who felt as alienated from the mainstream of their profession as Cole had felt as the lone Jewish Holocaust revisionist. Soon enough, Stein was working with major GOP power players and far-right Hollywood A-listers, creating huge private events for the West Coast GOP elite . . . until it all came crashing down when a vengeful former girlfriend outed him publicly. Condemned by those who had previously lauded him, Cole was left with nothing but his story. And here he tells it, warts and all, including the first-ever exposé of the secretive Hollywood far-right underground, "Friends of Abe."

Written in Blood

2017-10-01 Political Science

Author : Wess Harris
Release : 2017-10-01
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 530/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Written in Blood by : Wess Harris

Download or read book Written in Blood written by Wess Harris. This book was released on 2017-10-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in Blood features the work of Appalachia’s leading scholars and activists making available an accurate, ungilded, and uncensored understanding of our history. Combining new revelations from the past with sketches of a sane path forward, this is a deliberate collection looking at our past, present, and future. Sociologist Wess Harris (When Miners March) further documents the infamous Esau scrip system for women, suggesting an institutionalized practice of forced sexual servitude that was part of coal company policy. In a conversation with award-winning oral historian Michael Kline, federal mine inspector Larry Layne explains corporate complicity in the 1968 Farmington Mine disaster which killed seventy-eight men and became the catalyst for the passage of major changes in U.S. mine safety laws. Mine safety expert and whistleblower Jack Spadaro speaks candidly of years of attempts to silence his courageous voice and recalls government and university collaboration in covering up details of the 1972 Buffalo Creek flooding disaster, which killed over a hundred people and left four thousand homeless. Moving to the next generation of thinkers and activists, attorney Nathan Fetty examines current events in Appalachia and musician Carrie Kline suggests paths forward for people wishing to set their own course rather than depend on the kindness of corporations.

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Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals

Blood in the Hills

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Written in Blood

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