Environmental Justice: Mining

Assignment #2: An Environmental & Economic History of Coal Mining in Appalachia

  • Readings: Calvin Trillin, T.N. Bethell, David B. Brooks, and Harry M. Caudill, in David S. Walls & John B. Stephenson (eds.), Appalachia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening109-146 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1972); Kristin Layng Szakos, "People Power: Working for the Future in the East Kentucky Coalfields," in John Gaventa, Barbara Ellen Smith, & Alex Willingham (eds.), Communities in Economic Crisis: Appalachia and the South 29-37 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).
  • Recommended Course Texts: Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (Boston: Little, Brown and Company/Atlantic Monthly Press Book, 1963); Ronald D. Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982).
  • Recommended Novels: Denise Giardina, Storming Heaven(New York: Ivy Books/First Ballantine Books ed., 1988); Denise Giardina, The Unquiet Earth (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992).
  • Benign Betrayal: Capitalist Intervention in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, 1890-1910.
  • Films (To Be Shown in Class): (1) In Memory of the Land and People (1977)(50 min.) (16mm)(Robert Gates director)(AV Library/Colson Hall: F1762 AV LIB). (2) On Our Own Land (29 min.)(Appalshop, Whitesburg, Kentucky, 1988): From the Appalshop web-site: In the Appalachian coalfields, broadform deeds were used, beginning around 1900, to sever the ownership of mineral rights from the ownership of the surface land. Although surface mining was virtually unheard of at the time most of these deeds were signed, Kentucky courts ruled years later that the owners of such deeds could strip mine the land without the consent of the surface owners. On Our Own Land chronicles the citizens' fight to have the broadform deed declared unconstitutional in Kentucky. The story unfolds through the voices of local people as the viewer meets a family determined not to move their father's grave for strip miners, sees the rubble of a strip job "reclaimed" to the letter of the law, and watches as citizens protest strip mine abuses and push the state legislature for reform. On Our Own Landfocuses on effective citizens' movements and grassroots political organizing, the environmental and economic "tradeoffs" associated with surface coalmining and industrial development, and the gap between justice and the law.

West Virginia Coal Mining History

History of West Virginia Mineral Industries: Coal

Benign Betrayal: Capitalist Intervention in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, 1890-1910

West Virginia's Mine Wars

West Virginia's Mine Wars

Era of the Mine Wars

West Virginia Coal Mine Wars, 1920-1921

Three Days Battle of the Tug

  • Buffalo Creek

Buffalo Creek (Charleston Gazette)

Buffalo Creek (West Virginia State Archives)

  • Matewan

Matewan (West Virginia)

  • Coal Mining History in Other Appalachian States

David B. Robinson, Coal Mining in Chesterfield County, Virginia

Kentucky Coal Heritage

Kentucky Coal Mining Museum

Kentucky’s Coal Industry: Historical Trends and Future Opportunities

  • Mining History: General

Mining History Association

Mining History Network

International Archive of Economic Geology (University of Wyoming)

BC (British Columbia) Museum of Mining

Mining History (Links)

  • Mining History Bibliographies

Mining History Bibliographies (Mining History Network)

Recent Publications On The History Of Mining

Bibliography of North American Mining History

More WV Mining Resources

West Virginia Coal Association

Pocahontas Coal Association


Coal Mining in Kentucky

Kentucky Coal Facts Book

The Kentucky Coal Marketing and Kentucky Coal Association view of Kentucky's coal mining, including a section on their view of environmental matters.

US Geological Survey: Programs in Kentucky

Coal Education Web-site

Kentucky Mining Institute

Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals

Kentucky Coal Mining Museum

Coal (Kentucky Geological Survey)

Economy, Environment, Development