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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, a

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Speaker 1: podcast that comes out every week, and he usually has

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Speaker 1: the story split into two halves, which is my way

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Speaker 1: of saying that if you're listening to this, you should

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Speaker 1: go back and listen to the first half if you

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Speaker 1: haven't already, because it would just be weird to listen

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Speaker 1: to in the second half. Because this is the second half.

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Speaker 1: This one is the second half of a two part

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Speaker 1: episode because we already did the first half. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Margaret Kiljoy. My guests this week are the esteemable Cam

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Speaker 1: Collins and Steve Shell, who produced the amazing It's a

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Speaker 1: documentary podcast called Old Gods of Appalachia that tells all

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Speaker 1: the true stories about all the non fictional stuff that

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Speaker 1: happens in these Appalachian mountains. How are you all doing? Oh, dandy, dandy,

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Speaker 1: dandy upright breathing and with us on the call to

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Speaker 1: Sophie Lichterman, who's playing the part of the voice of God.

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Speaker 1: Are you there, Sophie, it's me Margaret, and that'll be

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Speaker 1: a to hill Mary's one. Are fought? Oh sorry, we're

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Speaker 1: not doing that right now. Okay, have you been saving

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Speaker 1: that or is that a regular break out. No. I

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Speaker 1: wrote this joke in a script like last week, and

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Speaker 1: then I didn't get to use it. It It didn't work out,

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Speaker 1: and I was really sad because I was really proud

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Speaker 1: of this joke and so I was saving it and

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Speaker 1: I wrote it into the script again today. Anyway, Cam Steve,

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Speaker 1: Let's assume that all the listeners have already listened to

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Speaker 1: your podcast, because they should. What's something that someone might

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Speaker 1: not know about you? All as people putting you on

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Speaker 1: the spot without telling you. I'm gonna give it m

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Speaker 1: m mm hmm do I actually don't know if I'm

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Speaker 1: allowed to wait a minute, do do do do deep

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Speaker 1: deep boop boop boop. So sometimes people don't know about us.

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Speaker 1: That isn't like on our bios everywhere. Um, you don't

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Speaker 1: put on the spot, Okay, godd sorry, I am. I am.

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Speaker 1: I am allergic to turkey. No other birds, no chicken,

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Speaker 1: no duck, don't anything like that. But turkey does and

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Speaker 1: does not do anything till it needs to leave my

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Speaker 1: system and then it puts me into the hospital. Turkey

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Speaker 1: death bird as I call it death bird Kiwi, which

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Speaker 1: is awesome because Kiwi is in I mean as almost nothing.

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Speaker 1: Occasionally if you get a fruit tray. It's in there.

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Speaker 1: But like, yeah, so Kiwiller, all right, so what are

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Speaker 1: you allergic to? Oh, we don't have time for this.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I just I just picked one. Turkey is

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Speaker 1: one of the things, but like it's probably it's it's

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Speaker 1: one of the ones I would avoid because previous experience

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Speaker 1: says the body doesn't need it. Subway clubs are not

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Speaker 1: that important. Mm hmm, I agree, and fun Thanksgiving. I'm

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Speaker 1: not allergic to any Actually, I have no idea because

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Speaker 1: I'm all the things I don't like are allergic to.

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Speaker 1: I stopped eating when I went vegan. Uh, but you

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Speaker 1: know who else isn't eating anymore? The mayor of mate

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Speaker 1: One said, way of the year, thank you, thank you.

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Speaker 1: So the mayor is dead. When we last left our heroes,

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Speaker 1: the mayor is dead. The chief of police is confusing

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Speaker 1: anarchist podcasters A hundred years later by being cool, and

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Speaker 1: the town of mait Wan is the center of a

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Speaker 1: brewing labor struggle big enough that it gets called a war,

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Speaker 1: and the blood bath was averted by the quick thinking

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Speaker 1: train conductors. So the state police roll into town and

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Speaker 1: they order said to dismiss the armed miners, which he

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Speaker 1: which he does so then said he uh, he turns

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Speaker 1: around starts talking up with the mayor's wife just immediately,

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Speaker 1: just as soon as the mayor's dead, he's kid. Yeah

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Speaker 1: and yeah. So and this led to rumors that he

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Speaker 1: actually killed Mayor Sustamen and the Felts and that it

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Speaker 1: was all applot to steal away the widow. And I mean,

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Speaker 1: who fucking knows, but his defense about this in court,

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Speaker 1: because it came up in court and his his murder trial,

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Speaker 1: that he had done it all to steal away the

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Speaker 1: young widow or whatever her, his defense sounds pretty solid.

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Speaker 1: Who the funk walks out into the middle of the

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Speaker 1: street to confront thirteen armed men alone with some master

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Speaker 1: plan to kill the guy next to you and all

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Speaker 1: thirteen people. There's got to be a better way to

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Speaker 1: elope with a married woman, is basically his argument. And

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Speaker 1: I believe him. That's hard mode. That's very much hard Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's like you're definitely playing elopement on like what's

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Speaker 1: it called where you did hard mode? Yeah, hardcore mode?

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Speaker 1: Yes you are, Yeah, because if you die in real life,

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Speaker 1: you're dead. Yeah. So this is what the anti union

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Speaker 1: media runs with and eleven days after the Battle of

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Speaker 1: May One, Sid Hatfield and Jesse Testerman, they were arrested

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Speaker 1: in a hotel for quote improper relations, because you could

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Speaker 1: get arrested for having sex before marriage, apparently because the

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Speaker 1: world is fucking weird. And Jesse, for her part, said

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Speaker 1: that her husband and Sid had always been really good

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Speaker 1: friends and the mayor had said to her, if anything

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Speaker 1: happens to me, Mary, Sid, he'll take care of you

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Speaker 1: and the kid, because they had a kid together. And

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Speaker 1: I don't know, since the mayor and said we're thick

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Speaker 1: as thieves and everyone new trouble was coming, I believe it.

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Speaker 1: Also maybe all three of them were dating. Who fucking knows,

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Speaker 1: you know, you never know? I mean, communal living, communal loving,

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Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's the thing. So they beat the improper

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Speaker 1: relations charged by getting married less than two weeks after

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Speaker 1: the Mayor Chesterfield's death, and after Mate one miners come

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Speaker 1: and drove to join the union. Everyone is fucking stoked

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Speaker 1: about what has just happened again, minus the people who

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Speaker 1: hate them and want them to die, and the shanty

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Speaker 1: towns grow. In July one, they strike and they shut

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Speaker 1: down the mines and gun battles break out all across

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Speaker 1: the county between operators and scabs on one side and

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Speaker 1: striking miners on the other. It was not always pretty.

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Speaker 1: National guardsmen and the state police come back to town,

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Speaker 1: and that doesn't quell the guerrilla struggle. Should starts geting

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Speaker 1: blown up. People start getting shot. Sid and twenty two

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Speaker 1: others are indicted for the murder of the Baldwin felts men,

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Speaker 1: and they become instant celebrities. The community comes together and

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Speaker 1: pays their bond immediately, and then, uh, speaking of the

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Speaker 1: organized crime relationship to the union, the people who are

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Speaker 1: going to testify against Sid and all the other defendants

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Speaker 1: just start getting the funk out of town because they

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Speaker 1: all get letters saying get the funk out of town.

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Speaker 1: We're going to kill you. One of them, the hotel owner,

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Speaker 1: didn't get out of town. He got killed. More federal

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Speaker 1: troops pour in to try and keep the peace. Military

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Speaker 1: battles break out with hundreds on each side in the mountains.

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Speaker 1: When I first heard about the Battle of Blair Mountain,

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Speaker 1: I'm not even at the Battle of Blair Mountain. This

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Speaker 1: is all a warm up stuff. I was always like,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's like probably some people gone to a

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Speaker 1: gun battle. Imagine that over labor rights or whatever, you know,

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Speaker 1: Like there might have been like thirteen people on each side.

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Speaker 1: We're like, no, this is like in the build up,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about hundreds on each side in these military

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Speaker 1: formations in the mountains. But between federal troops and a

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Speaker 1: really well placed Baldwin Felt spy, Like the guy who

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Speaker 1: rented out the Union headquarters above his restaurant was a

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Speaker 1: snitch who had been in the Union for ten years

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Speaker 1: and had like one was high up in the Union

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Speaker 1: and all of these different things, and and he was

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Speaker 1: just entirely working for the Baldwin Felts the entire time.

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Speaker 1: Good on the Baldwin felt I gotta admit, tactically that

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Speaker 1: was a sound move. Between this very well placed snitch

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Speaker 1: and the federal troops, things quiet down for a little while,

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Speaker 1: so the troops leave. So as soon as the troops leave,

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Speaker 1: things stopped quieting down. The battles resumed. Like so much

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Speaker 1: of the history, if you read about this, stuff is

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Speaker 1: just like and then they fought for weeks, and then

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Speaker 1: they stopped for dinner, and then they fought for weeks,

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Speaker 1: and then they did this other thing and then they're

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Speaker 1: back to fighting. And I don't run a like military

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Speaker 1: history podcast, so I'm not gonna get into all of

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Speaker 1: them back and forth. But the union miners start winning,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of the non union miners who had

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Speaker 1: come in transported on train to to break the strike,

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Speaker 1: they start leaving again on the same trains. So federal

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Speaker 1: troops come in and they declare martial law, and miners

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Speaker 1: start filling up the jails, not by choice, they're getting arrested,

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Speaker 1: And in one of the cooler turns of the whole thing,

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Speaker 1: sex workers start robbing the federal troops, which rules nice.

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Speaker 1: But then the Feds decide that they want to crack

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Speaker 1: down on sex work in Moonshiner, which doesn't rule. That's

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Speaker 1: like the opposite of the rule thing. And so they

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Speaker 1: tried to bring a real law and order vibe to

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Speaker 1: this town that was way more excited about a shoot

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Speaker 1: scabs drink whiskey and have a safe work environment vibe,

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Speaker 1: And so there's just kind of clashing vibes. You could

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Speaker 1: really argue that the whole thing, it's just a matter

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Speaker 1: of clashing vibes. Winner comes during this deadlock, striking miners

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Speaker 1: are living intense in the mountain cold. And then once again,

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Speaker 1: in one of these fucking moments that you read in

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Speaker 1: history books and you're like, okay, maybe sure, and I'm

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Speaker 1: the fiction writer, they had the bizarre touching Christmas where

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Speaker 1: everyone from all sides together they got a big old

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Speaker 1: Christmas tree out in the public and they all sang songs,

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Speaker 1: the soldiers and the union miners and the non union

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Speaker 1: miners and it was like fucking Hohoville or whatever. Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, you all think it happened.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the history books say this happened. It's weird

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Speaker 1: there there. Appalachian history gets so weird around this stuff

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Speaker 1: because it is. It can be a case of history

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Speaker 1: is written by the winners, but not always. But there

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Speaker 1: is always there is a for all the mother Jones

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Speaker 1: motherfucking out there. There is this desire in Appalachia to

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Speaker 1: be wholesome and for there to be like some implemented

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Speaker 1: the fact that the woman flushing back to the last

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Speaker 1: episode we talked about my mother Jones, that she doesn't

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Speaker 1: care for Christian language, the idea that Christianity and Christmas

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Speaker 1: could bring peace at least for one night. That's that's

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Speaker 1: straight up Jesus Ganda kind of like, but who knows.

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Speaker 1: Because Appalachian people we do have a tendency to be

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Speaker 1: genetically wholesome. Sometimes like we can't. It's like you motherfucker,

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Speaker 1: I hate you. I'm gonna we have to throw down.

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Speaker 1: But first, would you like some pie? You know? I can,

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Speaker 1: I can, I lend you my weed whacker, and then

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Speaker 1: I have another reason to batch you, you know like that.

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Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, it's possible. That's actually scarcely

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Speaker 1: because one of the reasons, like people are like people

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Speaker 1: ask me all the time. They're like, oh, one, They're like,

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Speaker 1: why then did you move here? Because no one moves

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Speaker 1: to West Virginia people leave West Virginia. Was yeah, but

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Speaker 1: I really like it here, and people are like, why

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Speaker 1: do you like it here? I'm like, well, everyone's really

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Speaker 1: nice and it doesn't feel like fake nice like further

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Speaker 1: in the South, where people are like we like you

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Speaker 1: as they're like staring daggers at your eyes heels. Feels

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Speaker 1: really wholesome and real here. But maybe it's just like

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Speaker 1: one extra layer of like they will absolutely let me

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Speaker 1: borrow the weed whacker while they're like planning to kill me.

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Speaker 1: For being whatever anyway, who knows, but who doesn't like

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Speaker 1: killing their neighbors. This isn't a that transition. The jurors

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Speaker 1: at Sid's trial because Sid and two co defendants have

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Speaker 1: the biggest trial in West Virginia history, and it it

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Speaker 1: takes forever to find jurors. They go through like a

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Speaker 1: thousand potential jurors and they can't find anyone who's not

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Speaker 1: related to one of the defendants and like within like

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Speaker 1: a hundred mile radius, and like, yeah, a lot of

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Speaker 1: people are named hat Field in this story, and I

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Speaker 1: kind of cut out most of the hat Fields. So

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Speaker 1: they have this really long trial and eventually they're found

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Speaker 1: not guilty. It was it was self defense, and you know,

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Speaker 1: basically they're like, well, it was actually wrong for a

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Speaker 1: private detective agency to act like it was the law

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Speaker 1: of the land, and probably they shot first. So Sid

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Speaker 1: and Jesse, Jesse's dead mayor husband's jewelry store they converted

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Speaker 1: into a gun store, which is something I hadn't heard

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Speaker 1: in any of the versions of the history when I

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Speaker 1: first heard it. So they they take the store and

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Speaker 1: they turned into a gun store so they can arm

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Speaker 1: all the workers, and Sid tries to live his life

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Speaker 1: as best as he can, but he declares that he's

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Speaker 1: a marked man and they're going to get him sooner

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Speaker 1: or later, and so he just spends the rest of

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Speaker 1: the time being the weirdest chief of police ever born

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Speaker 1: and selling guns to workers in the middle of this

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Speaker 1: pitched battle, which is actually, I mean, I guess if

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Speaker 1: you're trying to get money, it's not a bad time. Really,

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Speaker 1: that's a that's I don't know, is that is that

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Speaker 1: noble and awesome or is that capitalistic opportunity? Like I

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Speaker 1: got guns? Hear y'all like killing people? Yeah? Show? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: two guns? Sid Yeah, who knows. I mean, we'll find

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Speaker 1: out if he's a sponsor at the show or not.

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Speaker 1: Um So, by May, the war between the Strikers and

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Speaker 1: the Scabs reached this fevered pitch, and there's this thing

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Speaker 1: where for three days, miners hole up in the mountains

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Speaker 1: and there's just everyone just shooting at each other with

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Speaker 1: machine guns and shipped for three whole fucking days. They've

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Speaker 1: been doing it like a little bit here and there

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Speaker 1: with flare ups. It completely recks regular daily life. The

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Speaker 1: schools are closed, the town is deserted. Passenger trains when

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Speaker 1: they come through just like roar through and don't stop,

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Speaker 1: and all the passengers hide on the fucking floor, and

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Speaker 1: non union miners are giving up and leaving, and you know,

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Speaker 1: at the sort of terrible cost of the unions are

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Speaker 1: starting to win. Sid Hatfield he hospitalizes the superintendent of

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Speaker 1: a coal company by pistol whipping him, and finally a

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Speaker 1: truce is called martial law comes back. Now it's enforced

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Speaker 1: partly by an armed middle class that only enforces law

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Speaker 1: against union miners. And I guess, to be fair, the

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Speaker 1: previous chief of police only enforced the law against the

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Speaker 1: non union miners and the other people. But they go around.

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Speaker 1: They start confiscating people's legal firearms. They throw tons of

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Speaker 1: people in jail without bond or hearings. They send a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch off to distant counties. That's the jails fill.

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Speaker 1: And the miners start hiding all the guns in the

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Speaker 1: hills and straw bales. Like one story as they take

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Speaker 1: that I think it's the Sears robot catalog and they

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Speaker 1: cut out a gun shaped spot in it, you know,

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Speaker 1: hide the gun in there. They're hiding guns everywhere they can.

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Speaker 1: Miners are dynamiting and burning coal company offices, they're looting

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Speaker 1: company stores, Kentucky Militia, West Virginia State police. They're getting

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Speaker 1: into gun fights in the woods with union miners. Miners

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Speaker 1: are taking pot shots at all the soldiers enforcing the

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Speaker 1: martial law, and dozens of people arrested. At least one case,

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Speaker 1: they use submachine guns and machine gun into the tents

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Speaker 1: where all the workers and their families are fucking living

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Speaker 1: and sleeping the union office. I'm just like going through

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Speaker 1: it all because again, not even at the climax of

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Speaker 1: any of this stuff, the umw A offices get shut

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Speaker 1: down and everyone in them is arrested because operating a

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Speaker 1: union violates martial law. And the coal companies they want

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Speaker 1: fucking Sid Hatfield gone, so they come up with a

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Speaker 1: way to indict him in another county because there's no

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Speaker 1: way he's going to get convicted in his own county.

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Speaker 1: They indict him for a raid on a non union

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Speaker 1: minor camp and it's a trap and everyone knows it,

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Speaker 1: but Sid, his wife Jesse, his best friend, Ed Ed's

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Speaker 1: wife Sally, and some deputies and friends come for protection.

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Speaker 1: They all board the train. They head off to a

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Speaker 1: town called Welch for a trial. HM they walk up

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Speaker 1: the steps of the courthouse. Sit is unarmed because he's

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Speaker 1: about to go stand trial. Six Baldwin felt thugs. One

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Speaker 1: of them is the snitch who I was talking about

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Speaker 1: earlier at the who like ran the restaurant or whatever.

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Speaker 1: They're all waiting. As soon as he reaches the top

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Speaker 1: of the steps, broad daylight, in front of the courthouse.

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Speaker 1: We're supposed to stand trial, they just kill him. They

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Speaker 1: just gun him down. They kill him. They kill his

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Speaker 1: front ed front of their families, friends, supporters. All of

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Speaker 1: that only ed and said die I believe. And later

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Speaker 1: the their assassins are acquitted. Yeah, two thousand people march

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Speaker 1: in the rain for their funeral procession. Newspapers across the

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Speaker 1: country decry the murder. This is like it's finally starting

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Speaker 1: to kind of reach outside of West Virginia. But the

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Speaker 1: Union knew what the murder meant, and it meant fucking

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Speaker 1: war is what it fucking meant. So we're gonna leave

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Speaker 1: Mingo County for a bit, but we're not leaving in

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Speaker 1: a state of peace. All the ship continues. State troopers

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Speaker 1: are fighting miners in the hills. The jails are were flowing,

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Speaker 1: But we're going to take the story over to Logan County,

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Speaker 1: which is sandwich between Mango County, where the miners are

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Speaker 1: at war, and Kanawa County, where the miners are unionized

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Speaker 1: and pissed. So now we're entering our our third county

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Speaker 1: of our story of three Counties, which is not a

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Speaker 1: very good name for the episode and won't be the

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Speaker 1: name for the episode, despite Sophie trying to convince me

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Speaker 1: to name it the Tale of three Counties. It's really

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Speaker 1: fun to blame someone for something that they didn't do.

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Speaker 1: I'm used to it, Okay, yeah, Sophie. The Sophie's idea.

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Speaker 1: In Logan County, people are living in the fucking personal

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Speaker 1: fiefdom of Sheriff Don Chaffin, and he's paid by the

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Speaker 1: coal companies ten cents for every ton of coal that

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Speaker 1: comes out of the minds, and they pay the salary

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Speaker 1: of forty of his deputies. So the coal company owns

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Speaker 1: the law in this county. And I feel like that's

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Speaker 1: like a context worth understanding someone like SITD Hatfield, who

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Speaker 1: is the law and ardently pro union and pro minor

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Speaker 1: and anti coal company. Is that doesn't come from nowhere.

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Speaker 1: It's coming from well one people getting machine gunned in

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Speaker 1: their tents and to the next county over. The law

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Speaker 1: is literally the opposite. So one of Don Chaffin's friends

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Speaker 1: is a co operator named George Swain, and fifty years

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Speaker 1: later in this oral history, he brags about how corrupt

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Speaker 1: the whole thing is, and he's just completely unashamed. He

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Speaker 1: talks about how the minds in that area were started

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Speaker 1: by a prospector who didn't have the money to start it,

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Speaker 1: so he stole his school teacher sisters life savings of

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Speaker 1: six thousand dollars by forging a check as if he

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Speaker 1: was her. And then they talked about how the coal

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Speaker 1: companies bypassed all the federal pricing regulations through various bullshit,

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Speaker 1: like they sell to each other and do all this

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Speaker 1: economic should I do not understand. And the same guy

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Speaker 1: brags about how his buddy Don Chaffin intimidates organizers, kidnaps organizers,

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Speaker 1: mock executes organizers, just completely bald about it. To hear

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Speaker 1: some of the tricks straight from the horse's mouth. In

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Speaker 1: case people think it's just my bias, which I absolutely

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Speaker 1: have a bias, here's George Swain. I'd listened around on

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Speaker 1: my mind and see if any my boys were talking

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Speaker 1: about strike youing or anything like that. We'd recorded if

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Speaker 1: they did, and the mine owner would fire them right quick.

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Speaker 1: We never said that was the reason though. We always

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Speaker 1: said it was that they had missed a day or

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Speaker 1: that their work wasn't a very good quality or something

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Speaker 1: like that. And that's happening today, right Like I try

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Speaker 1: not to go heavy handed on the comparisons today, but

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Speaker 1: that is absolutely what all of the modern strikebreakers are doing,

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Speaker 1: is that they fire all of the workers for union organizing.

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Speaker 1: But it's illegal in the United States to fire someone

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Speaker 1: for union organizing, so they just come up with these excuses.

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Speaker 1: I guess I've never been fired for union organizing. One time,

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure my boss heard me talk about union

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Speaker 1: organizing and stopped putting me on the schedule and that

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Speaker 1: was really annoying because I needed that money to Okay,

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Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of like getting fired for union

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Speaker 1: that's the thing that happened, and that probably happened in

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Speaker 1: the city we used to share. Yeah, yeah, no, it

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Speaker 1: definitely happened in the city we used to share. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: By the way, that's the name of our collaboration album. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the City's just it'll be it'll be like doomy electronica

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Speaker 1: with some Midwest Emo mixed in. That'll be and and

363
00:19:06,359 --> 00:19:09,600
Speaker 1: it's gonna sell a lot. Yeah, this is actually all

364
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Speaker 1: a long form ad for our graduate collaboration. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: not only did Don chaff and decide who was allowed

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Speaker 1: to come into Logan County, Like as soon as union

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Speaker 1: organizers or anyone he didn't like would show up, he'd

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Speaker 1: his his thugs would turn them away and put them

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Speaker 1: right back on the train and send them out. He

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Speaker 1: also decided who could leave his thugs guarded the rail stations.

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Speaker 1: And I've read multiple accounts of families who had to

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Speaker 1: flee on foot over the mountains because they were denied

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Speaker 1: free travel by him. And they would leave because right

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Speaker 1: over the mountains was union territory. And this is why

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Speaker 1: Don didn't want any of his fucking workers to leave.

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Speaker 1: It's because if they crossed into union territory, they would

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Speaker 1: suddenly get something approximating the living wage where they wouldn't

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Speaker 1: get murdered constantly. So a literal living wage, yeah, wage

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Speaker 1: for which you don't get murder, Yeah, totally. And and

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Speaker 1: so people are disappearing in Logan County and no one

381
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Speaker 1: really doubting where they're going because they're getting killed. And

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Speaker 1: Chaffin's guys would would they would line up with machine

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Speaker 1: guns outside pro Union households and just like hang out

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Speaker 1: with machine guns and be like, hey, what's up, which

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Speaker 1: is not a very polite way of interacting with people,

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Speaker 1: And they would like pistol whip miners, not even for

387
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Speaker 1: talking Union, just literally and show of force. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't a good time. And the whole thing kind

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Speaker 1: of has this like medieval vibe. When Mother Jones shows up,

390
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Speaker 1: I actually almost feel bad like talking. I actually kind

391
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Speaker 1: of like the medieval period in the way there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of workers freedom in various parts of medieval Europe

393
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Speaker 1: you would not find here. But people are like, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is like bad even by nineteenth century standards, like

395
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Speaker 1: this is some dark Ages ship again not the Dark

396
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Speaker 1: Ages are actually better than okay whatever. So that's the

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Speaker 1: context that brings us to the climactic event of this

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Speaker 1: whole story, the Battle of Blair Mountain. Some unions have

399
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Speaker 1: won at great cost or enormous effort. Some places, no

400
00:20:57,520 --> 00:21:00,720
Speaker 1: one dares to whisper the word union upon pain of death,

401
00:21:01,280 --> 00:21:04,440
Speaker 1: and sid Hadfield has just been extra judicially murdered. The

402
00:21:04,560 --> 00:21:07,200
Speaker 1: law isn't on people's sides, and it looks like it's

403
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:12,439
Speaker 1: never going to be. Then in Union Kanawa County, the

404
00:21:12,520 --> 00:21:15,560
Speaker 1: contract is up for renewal and the co operators of

405
00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:18,280
Speaker 1: the union minds are like, look, we're losing money because

406
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Speaker 1: non union minds of the south are undercutting us so badly.

407
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Speaker 1: We can't give you a good contract unless those places

408
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Speaker 1: go union too. So the miners they think to themselves, well,

409
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Speaker 1: we've got three reasons to march down to Mingo County

410
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Speaker 1: to try and and this martial law first is raw solidarity.

411
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Speaker 1: There's folks in a shooting war with the coal operators

412
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Speaker 1: and they're under martial law and they're filling up the jails.

413
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Speaker 1: They need our help, right. And the second it's everyone

414
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Speaker 1: has to be in in a union or this whole

415
00:21:44,800 --> 00:21:49,119
Speaker 1: thing falls apart, we lose everything. And finally they're just

416
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Speaker 1: off to avenge Sid Hatfield and a guy named Alex

417
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Speaker 1: Breedlove because on June four one, a black miner named

418
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Speaker 1: Alex Breed Love had been killed in a raid on

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Speaker 1: a tent camp, and after he had been killed, the

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00:22:03,119 --> 00:22:05,280
Speaker 1: thugs tied his body to the back of their car

421
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Speaker 1: and dragged it off. At his funeral, the line of

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00:22:08,040 --> 00:22:11,200
Speaker 1: mourners was three quarters of a mile long, and breed

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Speaker 1: Love's name was on people's lips alongside hat Fields when

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Speaker 1: they were like, we're gonna fucking stop this. So they

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Speaker 1: they're like, fuck it, we're off to war, and I

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Speaker 1: hear me out. I want to get y'all's opinion about this.

427
00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:27,280
Speaker 1: I I combed through history and I came up with

428
00:22:27,320 --> 00:22:30,560
Speaker 1: the closest historic parallel, which is the Ride of the

429
00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:33,520
Speaker 1: Roherum when Rohan goes off to help Gondor against the

430
00:22:33,520 --> 00:22:36,320
Speaker 1: assembled forces of more Door from that documentary series Lord

431
00:22:36,359 --> 00:22:42,560
Speaker 1: of the Rings. Um aw, yeah, I did a minor

432
00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:47,280
Speaker 1: in the community college in Appalachis Yeah. Yeah, cool, okay, yeah,

433
00:22:47,520 --> 00:22:50,000
Speaker 1: as part of Appalachian history. It is the right the

434
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:53,080
Speaker 1: mountain folk there are horses, and we have some horses here.

435
00:22:53,359 --> 00:22:58,760
Speaker 1: I thoroughly appreciate that reference so very much. Good. I

436
00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:01,120
Speaker 1: was yesterday, I was I was talking with my friends

437
00:23:01,119 --> 00:23:02,680
Speaker 1: who I played dand with, and they were all talking

438
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:05,879
Speaker 1: about like the original names of all the Hobbits because

439
00:23:06,440 --> 00:23:10,920
Speaker 1: because he didn't Gandalf, No, Gandalf didn't write the story. Um, Tolkien,

440
00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:14,639
Speaker 1: he like whatever anyway, Like Bilbo isn't actually Bilbo's name.

441
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:17,440
Speaker 1: It's like a translation from the the other. But you're

442
00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 1: just supposed to be reading it. You're supposed to be

443
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:22,680
Speaker 1: reading it like from the viewpoint of a contemporary scholar

444
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:25,920
Speaker 1: who is telling you the history of this. Yeah, you know,

445
00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:28,159
Speaker 1: like Sam's name is like Paam or something like that,

446
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:30,800
Speaker 1: are like tam or something like. Yeah. They gets it's

447
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:33,800
Speaker 1: slight variations. And then there's yeah, yeah, And so I'm

448
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:36,520
Speaker 1: calling my friends nerds were caring about this, And then

449
00:23:36,560 --> 00:23:38,800
Speaker 1: I go back to writing my script where I'm comparing

450
00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:41,680
Speaker 1: the Battle of Blair Mountain to the Right of the Reherum,

451
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:45,159
Speaker 1: one of my favorite events in history. But except in

452
00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:47,240
Speaker 1: this case, in order to reach Mingo, they got to

453
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:49,120
Speaker 1: go through Logan, which is to say, if they want

454
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 1: to reach Gondora, they have to go through more door.

455
00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:56,919
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Nerd. I know my friends are nerds. I

456
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:01,240
Speaker 1: hate it. They're just terrible like me. I'm which is

457
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 1: somehow the opposite of nerd. No, I can't even pre

458
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:06,320
Speaker 1: sound like cool nerd. That wouldn't make any The words

459
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:08,920
Speaker 1: at the words the people I play D and D

460
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 1: with apply to your life. Then you it's there. You

461
00:24:13,040 --> 00:24:16,080
Speaker 1: are a nerd of one. And this this from a

462
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:19,399
Speaker 1: person who's you know. Our our podcast production company is

463
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:22,520
Speaker 1: Deep Nerd Media. A deep nerd. If you dress up

464
00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: for a midnight premiere, If you're like me and are

465
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:27,639
Speaker 1: willing to reenact the Middle Ages. The wall of pictures

466
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: you can see behind me in the zoom those that's

467
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:32,119
Speaker 1: me and my friends in costumes at a big ceremony weekend.

468
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: For me, the the nine million years I put in

469
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:36,880
Speaker 1: a medieval re enactment, then you are a deep nerd.

470
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 1: You are one word, deep nerd, and and that's where

471
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:43,560
Speaker 1: you if you own garb or costplay of any sort,

472
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:47,280
Speaker 1: deep nerd, deep nerd. I only own two chain mail

473
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:52,239
Speaker 1: shirts that I made, only two, only two, nerd, but

474
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 1: that you made? Yeah yeah, well I had to make

475
00:24:55,359 --> 00:24:58,640
Speaker 1: the second one because I put on some weight. How

476
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 1: many do you own that you didn't make? I actually

477
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:03,600
Speaker 1: only owned two total, because I'm obsessively d. I y

478
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: it bothers me that I owned medieval weapons that I

479
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:09,919
Speaker 1: did not hand forge. Anyway, I'm totally cool and not

480
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:15,200
Speaker 1: a nerd, and so back to the cool history. Okay,

481
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:20,240
Speaker 1: So but first, it's that time again. Uh, time to

482
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:25,120
Speaker 1: advertise things. Mm hmm. We asked guests off of this,

483
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:28,080
Speaker 1: is there a good thing you would like to sponsor

484
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:32,240
Speaker 1: a podcast, such as the concept of potatoes or or

485
00:25:32,359 --> 00:25:35,640
Speaker 1: tap water? Yeah, you have any ideas anything we should

486
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:39,920
Speaker 1: get sponsored by. I think you should be sponsored by

487
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 1: the Riders of Rohan. I think I think horses should sponsor.

488
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:49,240
Speaker 1: It would be the coolest sponsor ever. So I mean

489
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:51,440
Speaker 1: I think you should. I think you should get sponsored

490
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 1: by George the Cat. George's legit. George is very pro labor,

491
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:58,159
Speaker 1: very pro labor. Okay, well that's I think that's a

492
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: very appropriate sponsor. So that's who we're sponsored by. And

493
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 1: anything else that slips in is not officially. I literally

494
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: don't know what the rules are around what I can

495
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:16,399
Speaker 1: and can't say about our ads. Here's the ads, and

496
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:20,040
Speaker 1: we are back, and both sides are gearing up with

497
00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:24,000
Speaker 1: their chain mail and their swords, blowing on their war horns.

498
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: By that, I mean overalls and rifles, and I don't

499
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:30,720
Speaker 1: know they might have war horns. I wouldn't put a

500
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:36,160
Speaker 1: power hunting horns. Okay. So, so Union miners in Canalam,

501
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 1: they vote in their locals pretty unanimously to go join

502
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 1: the march and to not sugarcoat it. They also browbeat

503
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: everyone who doesn't want to come into coming and like

504
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 1: one group of twenty miners they call themselves the Coal

505
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 1: River Hellcats, they announced that anyone who doesn't show up

506
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: better not be there when the miners come home. Somewhere

507
00:26:55,400 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: between peer pressure and conscription basically is what the Miners

508
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: March kind of comes up with. And a few people

509
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: who oppose the march out right end up dead. It's

510
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:08,639
Speaker 1: hard to know exactly because their deaths tend not to

511
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: be investigated. And then history, like the first book that

512
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 1: was written about the Battle of Blair Mountain was written

513
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:16,440
Speaker 1: a couple of years later by someone who is very

514
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: very actively anti union, and even a lot of like

515
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 1: the one of the neutral history books that I read,

516
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 1: the one that talked about this conscription was written by

517
00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:28,120
Speaker 1: someone whose father had fought on the anti union side

518
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: during this fight. And that does not necessarily mean that

519
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,639
Speaker 1: this person is not a neutral party, right, But it

520
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:37,199
Speaker 1: becomes very hard to to know who to trust. But

521
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: most historians say that it was about ten thousand men

522
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: as well as uncounted women and children who were there

523
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:45,240
Speaker 1: to support them. They gather at a place called Len's

524
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: Creek at the start of the march. No one's really

525
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: counting some historians. I think. I think historians settled on Tenta.

526
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:53,119
Speaker 1: I'm very critical of his storians throughout all of us.

527
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: It's just it's hard to know who to trust. You

528
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:57,360
Speaker 1: can trust me. I only speak the truth, okay. Well,

529
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,119
Speaker 1: so just just to be clear that Appalachi is the

530
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: is a region of the people that history has spoken

531
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 1: four for generations because we're just malbilities who you know,

532
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 1: don't matter, you don't they can't read the history. But

533
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:11,200
Speaker 1: no way, you go ahead and run whatever you want,

534
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 1: you know, like and so I think you're absolutely right

535
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:19,320
Speaker 1: to be distrustful of historians writing about stuff like we

536
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 1: were like a mysterious subcontinent to the to the bulk

537
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: of the country for generations. So like any actual like

538
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 1: like even reading dark and bloody ground. The oral history

539
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: is just you're dealing with people who are telling it,

540
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:35,680
Speaker 1: you know, holy ship there was, you know, and that's

541
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: gonna be as subjective, you know as you know as

542
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:40,840
Speaker 1: it's gonna be. So you absolutely right to be skeptical.

543
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: And I want to encourage that skepticism, nurturing it, feed it,

544
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 1: sendt it a birthday card, Yeah, and bring it strange

545
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: things that I find in the woods. Mm hmm. Somewhere

546
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 1: between five thousand and thirteen thousand miners. That's the range

547
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 1: that most historians are presenting, and I'm gonna stick with

548
00:28:57,160 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: the ten thousand because it's a nice round number. Of way,

549
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: at least two thousand of them are black, and supporters

550
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: start coming in from as far away as Ohio and Illinois.

551
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 1: Folks actually came up from Mingo County as well, but

552
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 1: most of them weren't able to get through safely from

553
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: Logan and this part it's important to you all might

554
00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:16,920
Speaker 1: have opinions about their the Redneck Army. Literally that's what

555
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: they call themselves, and that's what their enemies call them.

556
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:21,479
Speaker 1: The term redneck is is older than that, and as

557
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, it comes from the nineteenth

558
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 1: century and does come from where most people say it

559
00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: comes from, about the white folks in the South working

560
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:29,200
Speaker 1: outside getting some burned in the back of their neck.

561
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 1: But it's at the Cold Wars that it finds us

562
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 1: new meaning, and I think where it might become popularized.

563
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:38,120
Speaker 1: And I'm curious if you all have, not to accuse

564
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: you of having opinions about the word redneck, but it's

565
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: it's just one of those things. It hidn't I'll be

566
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: trade honest with you. Growing up like as kind of

567
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 1: a punk kid or even a weirdo kid before I

568
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:51,720
Speaker 1: was a punk kid. In Appalachia, redneck was always an insult,

569
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 1: and it always implied yahoo country pickup truck drive and

570
00:29:56,520 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 1: country music listening, gun toting, probably racist, like you know,

571
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: like that that word was definitely fucking red Knicks. Like yeah,

572
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: it's just like it was just one of those It

573
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: wasn't a class thing because like rich kids were read

574
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 1: next too, but it's just a matter of it was

575
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 1: just it was something that was embraced by aggressively country

576
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:19,560
Speaker 1: conservative pickup truck driving, you know, beat you up for

577
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 1: for being queer, you know, like that's what That's what

578
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: red Knicks meant to us growing up. Like it wasn't

579
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: until much later that I learned about you know, the originally,

580
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: much like a lot of Appalachia originally was once very

581
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: progressive and championship changing causes and now in some places

582
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: have just inverted itself into something else entirely. I mean yeah,

583
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:40,719
Speaker 1: basically the same thing it was. It was never, you know,

584
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: never what you wanted to be when we're growing up,

585
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, it makes sense, and it depresses me

586
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 1: how often these things kind of come to mean their opposites,

587
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: right Like because in southern West Virginia it means that

588
00:30:56,040 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 1: you are a Union miner, either white or black, and

589
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: you're not afraid to fight. And they all wore red

590
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:05,240
Speaker 1: bandanas around their necks as their uniform and the Redneck

591
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 1: army And I'm not trying to like specifically be like,

592
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: everyone go run out and reclaim this word, right Like,

593
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: words are real complicated, but but it's it's just annoyance,

594
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 1: like this asshole should be able to have it, you know. Anyway,

595
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: So they show up with whatever clothes they have. Some

596
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: of them have World War One uniforms and helmets because

597
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 1: their vets. Some of them, most of them wore those

598
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:27,400
Speaker 1: red bandanas, and a lot of them wore blue overalls,

599
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 1: and the blue overalls eventually became even also part of

600
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:32,440
Speaker 1: the uniform. And they had revolvers and they had rifles,

601
00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: and they had shotguns, and then they started having machine

602
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: guns once they started robbing stores to steal all the

603
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:38,920
Speaker 1: machine guns. Just a decent way to get machine guns

604
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 1: if you suddenly need a lot of machine guns. I

605
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 1: actually it's it's so, I don't think there's a store

606
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 1: around here. I could. I could robbed get machine guns,

607
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Times change, I guess, and so,

608
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 1: and they show up every fucking which way, and they're

609
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 1: pouring out of the hollers. Some of them are riding

610
00:31:56,280 --> 00:31:58,080
Speaker 1: in cars, some of them are riding passenger trains. Some

611
00:31:58,120 --> 00:32:01,080
Speaker 1: are clinging to the roof of passenger trains. Walk Three

612
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: miners have train tickets, and there's no room for them

613
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 1: on the passenger train, so they go in commander a

614
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 1: freight train at gunpoint, and then they politely give their

615
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:12,800
Speaker 1: tickets to the yard master. Some of them carjacked wagons.

616
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: No one is in charge. They're all in these individual groups,

617
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: and they're driven by the task at hand and their

618
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: anger at being beaten, fired, machine gunned, and generally mistreated.

619
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:26,240
Speaker 1: A sheriff shows up and orders them to disband. You

620
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:27,719
Speaker 1: will be shocked to know that this is not an

621
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 1: effective tactic, and they choose not to listen to that man.

622
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 1: They are not in orderly crowd. They robbed farms for

623
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: vegetables and chickens. They robbed a deputy for his money.

624
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: They robbed company stores for arms and ammunition. Oh god,

625
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: that's why they have fucking machine guns at the stores.

626
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: I didn't even put that together. They had fucking machine

627
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 1: guns at the stores because that's where the fucking thugs

628
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 1: would go buy their cut town machine guns. One time

629
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: I wasn't this is completely outscript. One time I was

630
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 1: in West Virginia, are hanging out with people who are

631
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:56,240
Speaker 1: working to stop Mountop removal, and I went to go

632
00:32:56,320 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 1: see this graveyard of workers who had died in the

633
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 1: coal wars, and you actually had to trespass on the

634
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:05,280
Speaker 1: company land to see it, and which of course I

635
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:08,480
Speaker 1: didn't did, but somehow I ended up there without trespassing.

636
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:12,720
Speaker 1: And there was a bunker, a stone bunker, on top

637
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:16,360
Speaker 1: of this hill in the graveyard, and it's there for

638
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: them to machine gun miners with, like these fucking bunkers

639
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 1: existed to like watch over the miners and shoot them

640
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: if they got out of line. That kind of hit

641
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:30,000
Speaker 1: me when that happened. Yeah, So a lot of these

642
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: miners they buy their guns. The ones that they buy,

643
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 1: they buy from a union friendly merchant and some folks

644
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: later say that the union coal operators actually loaned them

645
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 1: the money to go buy like give them advances on

646
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 1: their paychecks and all this stuff to go buy machine guns,

647
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:46,760
Speaker 1: which actually makes sense because the coal companies are almost

648
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 1: as much trouble from the non union miners as the

649
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: miners themselves were. And to get also to the progressive

650
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 1: history of this, they knew where they stood in history,

651
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: and they tied the struggle into the other great thing

652
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: that happens in West Virginia, John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry.

653
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:01,200
Speaker 1: They sing version of the song that was on the

654
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: lips of the Union army when it invaded and freed

655
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 1: the South two generations prior. John Brown's Body was a

656
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:11,680
Speaker 1: song that I will not sing for you all on air.

657
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:16,280
Speaker 1: I'm terribly sorry. And John Brown's Body is with the Union,

658
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 1: the original Union, when they invaded the Confederacy. To to

659
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: stop the Confederacy, they sang the song, and the Union

660
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 1: coal miners sang will hang don chaff into a sour

661
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: apple tree to the same song. As they went on

662
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:33,320
Speaker 1: their march, some Mother Jones shows up and she tells

663
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:35,160
Speaker 1: them to disband. And this is not my favorite thing

664
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:37,360
Speaker 1: that Mother Jones has ever done. She shows up and

665
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 1: she says, I have a telegram from the President of

666
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:41,799
Speaker 1: the United States of America that says, if you go

667
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:45,320
Speaker 1: home now, he will address all your grievances. The crowd

668
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: asks to see the telegram. She refuses because she was

669
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 1: lying about it. The crowd figures out that she's lying

670
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:54,759
Speaker 1: about it, so some of the Union heads they head

671
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 1: back to Charleston to confirm that the President never sent

672
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:00,840
Speaker 1: a telegram like that. She's found out to be a liar,

673
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:03,480
Speaker 1: and the crowd stops listening to Mother Jones after that,

674
00:35:04,239 --> 00:35:07,280
Speaker 1: and it's kind of starts this whole thing that happens

675
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: where basically like the leaders start being like, oh, we

676
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: don't have control over what's happening, Like, no one has

677
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 1: control over what's happening. This is the Battle of Blair

678
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:19,720
Speaker 1: Mountain becomes a force of its own in Logan County.

679
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 1: The forces of Saron I mean, sorry, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Nope,

680
00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 1: the Sheriff of Logan County. M the forces are. They're

681
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: getting ready to first and foremost Don chaff And has

682
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: conscripted everybody that he can. I know it compared what

683
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: happened to the union miners as conscription. But Don Chaffin

684
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:39,319
Speaker 1: actually did conscription, and it was systematic and it wasn't

685
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:41,759
Speaker 1: through like peer pressure or whatever. It was fight for him,

686
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: or you lose your job. At best, miners were threatened

687
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 1: at gunpoint. Pro union miners or anyone who just wanted

688
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 1: to say the funk out of it all had to

689
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 1: go into hiding. Some people, and I would say, these

690
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:55,360
Speaker 1: are the cleverest of them all took the free guns

691
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: that he was offering and then went into hiding, which

692
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:00,279
Speaker 1: seems like the better plan. That seems like the better

693
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: plan there. Yeah, And because he controlled who came and

694
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 1: who went, he actually stopped people from leaving. And so

695
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: one family actually had to pull guns on guards in

696
00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 1: order to fight their way onto a train to leave,

697
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 1: rather than be conscripted to go fight against the Union army.

698
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 1: And the governor of Kentucky sent them all machine guns.

699
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: Because there's so many machine guns in this story. There's

700
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 1: such a low body count for the number of machine

701
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: guns in this story. It's kind of spoiler alert. Not

702
00:36:28,880 --> 00:36:30,600
Speaker 1: that many people die. I mean, if I'm one of

703
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: the people who died, I'd be like, I wouldn't care

704
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:35,120
Speaker 1: that it's a low number because a number that includes

705
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: me is a significant number for me. That goes to

706
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 1: another thing about going back to the reliability of Appalachian history. Sometimes,

707
00:36:42,719 --> 00:36:45,840
Speaker 1: how many bodies do we not know about? How many?

708
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: How many? How many ambushed people trying to leave were

709
00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 1: just chucked into a creek bahalla and left to you

710
00:36:52,320 --> 00:36:54,920
Speaker 1: lift lift for the animals to eat and decay, you

711
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:57,000
Speaker 1: know whatever. How many maskers were that they don't have

712
00:36:57,040 --> 00:36:59,800
Speaker 1: a state roadside marker? Yeah, you know, I think that

713
00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:01,919
Speaker 1: the I think the Cold War has had a lot

714
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,920
Speaker 1: higher body count because I think the messaging overall has

715
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 1: been controlled by the industry and by the government. I

716
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of family lines that ended

717
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:14,839
Speaker 1: uh in the nineteen twenties and nineteen and the early

718
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds through the nineteen twenties leading up to like

719
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:20,200
Speaker 1: Bloody Harland, for example. UM thought, yeah, I just I

720
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 1: just if the future generation before I leave this planet

721
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:29,040
Speaker 1: starts finding mass graves in Appalachia around coal mining sites,

722
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 1: I will not be I will not be shocked. No,

723
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 1: that makes sense. I mean I remember when I was

724
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: the first time I was driving through the coal fields

725
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I'm gonna go to all

726
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:39,759
Speaker 1: these ghost towns, because it's like all these ghost towns

727
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 1: around and you go and there, they're not there. Because

728
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:44,799
Speaker 1: what happens is as as minors this is later, but

729
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:48,360
Speaker 1: as as the industry is automated, mountaintop removal and and

730
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: strip mining, all these things like layoff all the workers

731
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,279
Speaker 1: and people are replaced with dynamite basically, and the coal

732
00:37:54,320 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 1: companies just go through and buy up the towns and

733
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:59,840
Speaker 1: demolish everything and leave no record, no history. These places

734
00:37:59,880 --> 00:38:03,239
Speaker 1: are just gone. And the idea that coal companies is

735
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: kind of a tangent or soapbox or something. But the

736
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:08,000
Speaker 1: idea that coal companies represent the legacy of Appalachia as

737
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 1: a complete and utter live these are the companies that

738
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:14,279
Speaker 1: are absolutely actively working to erase the history and the

739
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:18,280
Speaker 1: people who made them rich in the first place. Sorry,

740
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:20,800
Speaker 1: I just said where I grew up in southwestern Virginia,

741
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 1: WA cam and I grew up uh specifically my mom's family,

742
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,359
Speaker 1: UH living upon a place called Factors Branch up off

743
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:31,560
Speaker 1: of off of Norton, Virginia, near places like Dorchester and

744
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:34,959
Speaker 1: in Bowden and Blackwoods where if you even went back

745
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,959
Speaker 1: to like the sixties, like there's a Facebook group called

746
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:41,759
Speaker 1: Coal Camps of Wise County. Dorchester, in my mind is

747
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 1: a trailer park and a couple of wide spots in

748
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,319
Speaker 1: the road. If you go back on that Facebook group

749
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:50,439
Speaker 1: and look for pictures of Dorchester, it looks bigger than

750
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:54,239
Speaker 1: downtown Wise, Virginia. It looks bigger than downtown Norton. There

751
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 1: are three and four story brick and mortar buildings. There's

752
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:00,200
Speaker 1: a movie theater, there is a playhouse. There is is

753
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 1: this entire place bigger, that looks bigger than the town

754
00:39:04,120 --> 00:39:07,479
Speaker 1: we grew up in downtown and it in a matter

755
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:10,440
Speaker 1: of twenty or twenty five years, is just gone. And

756
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: it is one of many. There are places my mom

757
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: talks about, like in boding Osaka Stone Aga, Derby, places

758
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: that she could have gone as a young teenage girl

759
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: or you know, and my mom is not. My mom's

760
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:25,239
Speaker 1: only nineteen years older than me. Uh, you know, the

761
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:27,400
Speaker 1: places that were places they could go to do things

762
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: or see things, and within by the time the eighties

763
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 1: roll around, they're just gone. Yeah, it's just it blows.

764
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:36,799
Speaker 1: That's one of the things we not to talk about

765
00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:38,759
Speaker 1: our show, but we I'm actually writing a thing right

766
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: now about a fictitious West Virginia town. That's an analog

767
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:43,359
Speaker 1: for another town that I won't name because that we've

768
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:47,399
Speaker 1: named it Turniquet, West Virginia and um. And it's about

769
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 1: a place where the coal went bad. The company pulled

770
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:52,239
Speaker 1: out and seated the land back to the county, and

771
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:54,239
Speaker 1: then twenty years later the county decided to show up

772
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 1: and tear it down. And that's that happens usually a

773
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:01,799
Speaker 1: lot quicker, but they're play says that during coal booms

774
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: were bustling places like St. Paul, Virginia is like a

775
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:09,360
Speaker 1: town so small that they're high school couldn't feel that

776
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:11,880
Speaker 1: their high school had to consolidate with Coburn High School

777
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: to be able to field a marching band. Okay, but

778
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 1: at the height of the coal boom in the sixties

779
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:20,080
Speaker 1: and seventies, there was gonna be a Minneapolis, Virginia built

780
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: on the other side of the river of St. Paul,

781
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 1: and they were expecting to be thriving metropolitan areas by

782
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:29,880
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, you know. And they're both like tiny,

783
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:32,840
Speaker 1: tiny towns with minimal tourism dollars now and maybe like

784
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:35,960
Speaker 1: a brewery and a winery and and burned up coal

785
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:39,440
Speaker 1: mines like, you're absolutely margus uptually right. It's it's a

786
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:46,080
Speaker 1: fucking tragedy that the companies that exploit and just have

787
00:40:46,200 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: destroyed the bloodlines of where we're from. It gets throughout

788
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 1: the history and literally gets to white people off the

789
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 1: map where they just don't fucking exist. Fuck, that just

790
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:57,840
Speaker 1: made me way irrationally angry, or than I realized it

791
00:40:57,880 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 1: was when I started talking. I'm so sorry. No no,

792
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, no, that fuck it makes sense. Okay,

793
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:07,239
Speaker 1: So I feel badges like cutting right back into it.

794
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:10,799
Speaker 1: But they know the redneck army is coming, so they

795
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:13,240
Speaker 1: march up on a bladder mountain and they start digging trenches.

796
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 1: And plenty of people on both sides or World War

797
00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 1: One vets, so they know a thing or two about

798
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 1: digging a trench and then getting caught in some awful

799
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:23,440
Speaker 1: fucking conflict that accomplishes nothing. Don't Heaven controls all the

800
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 1: press and his fiefdom, of course, so all of this

801
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:28,719
Speaker 1: is done in secrecy. Yeah, I mean, you're right, Like,

802
00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:30,359
Speaker 1: it's like, I wonder how much we would even know

803
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,399
Speaker 1: if like this thing hadn't happened, if it hadn't hit

804
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 1: this level of intensity that made people actually go look

805
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: behind these fucking sheriffs who are the kings of their

806
00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: kingdom or whatever. So the redneck army they have the numbers,

807
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:49,280
Speaker 1: and the coal warlord's army have the advantage of defense,

808
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 1: and they have planes and they have like all this.

809
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: You know, they have the money, right and the planes

810
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 1: at first are just used for reconnaissance. And during all this,

811
00:41:59,080 --> 00:42:01,640
Speaker 1: the federal government is like hanging back to observe, and

812
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:05,400
Speaker 1: the West Virginia government is like, hey, fucking federal government,

813
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:07,439
Speaker 1: could you stop this. There's about to be a war.

814
00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:11,879
Speaker 1: And the federal Government's like, I mean, maybe let's figure

815
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 1: out what's going on. Right when the march starts, the

816
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: U m w A loses its nerve. They call a

817
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:20,799
Speaker 1: big meeting at a ballpark and they say, hey, guys,

818
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: we should probably go home before the U. S. Army

819
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 1: shows up and makes us go home and they call

820
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:29,439
Speaker 1: the march off. So the Union is like, we can't

821
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:31,239
Speaker 1: fucking do this. This is too much. We can't go

822
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 1: to war, and some of the rank and file they

823
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:35,759
Speaker 1: want to keep going anyway. She gets really messy here.

824
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 1: There's a lot of back and forth about dowe March.

825
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: Do we not march like, some people start marching, but

826
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 1: they don't really get anywhere. And but by and large,

827
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:45,279
Speaker 1: folks don't want to fight the U. S. Army. And

828
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:47,840
Speaker 1: because these are fairly patriotic folks at the end of it,

829
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:49,760
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are vets, and they also

830
00:42:49,800 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: just kind of weren't suicidal, the march is probably over

831
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:58,399
Speaker 1: until John Chaffin just fucking couldn't help himself. He meets

832
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:01,640
Speaker 1: up with some state troopers and they want revenge, not

833
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 1: because they've been shot, but because one time they got

834
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:08,440
Speaker 1: embarrassed because they got surrounded by a bunch of union

835
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 1: miners who forcibly disarmed them. So they're mad and they

836
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: want blood. So they now go and they start marching

837
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:19,319
Speaker 1: on the scattered union folks and they arrest people as

838
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: they go. They end up arresting about ten people before

839
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 1: they come upon some armed miners who just aren't fucking

840
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:28,400
Speaker 1: having it. The troopers ask, hey, why are you armed,

841
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 1: and they answer, by God, that's our business, which I

842
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:37,719
Speaker 1: feel like is a reasonable answer to that question. Yeah.

843
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:40,359
Speaker 1: As always, no one knows who shot first. I think

844
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:44,040
Speaker 1: goes Han Solo. This time it went badly for the miners.

845
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:47,239
Speaker 1: Three miners died, including a man named William Greer who

846
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:49,400
Speaker 1: had been evicted with his family in mate Wan and

847
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:51,439
Speaker 1: part of the wave that had started the whole chain

848
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 1: of events which led to where they are now. So

849
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: he didn't really have a good time with this whole thing.

850
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:57,759
Speaker 1: First gets a victim, then he joins the Union Army,

851
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 1: and then he gets killed. The trooper is run off

852
00:44:00,719 --> 00:44:03,240
Speaker 1: as the miners shot. But you know who won't run away?

853
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:10,240
Speaker 1: Are these screaming deals on our goods? And I'm an advertiser,

854
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 1: I'm so good at being enthusiastic about these deals. Here's

855
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: some and we are back man those satans. So rumors

856
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:33,440
Speaker 1: run like wildfire and there is no more fucking truce.

857
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 1: The marches back on. I'm gonna call it the Miners

858
00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:38,799
Speaker 1: March two. This time it's personal, which is probably what

859
00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:42,719
Speaker 1: they called it, and they also also probably referred to

860
00:44:42,719 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 1: it as this. They got really grand theft auto on

861
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 1: the whole thing at this point, because now they're all

862
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:48,839
Speaker 1: scattered right there, not in the same place, so they

863
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:51,560
Speaker 1: commandeer every car, truck and trained they can just to

864
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 1: get back to Blair Mountain. I was wondering where you

865
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 1: were going with that. Yeah, No, they're just sucking is

866
00:44:57,000 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 1: this page is after pages of like and then six

867
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: people went to the following guy and said give me

868
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:05,000
Speaker 1: your truck. And then the doctor only didn't get his

869
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:07,920
Speaker 1: car command deer because he said I'm a doctor and

870
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: they let him go. And one of my favorite side

871
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:13,439
Speaker 1: notes out of it is that like, while this march

872
00:45:13,520 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 1: is happening now, the black miners push their way into

873
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:18,719
Speaker 1: whites only restaurants and they're like, you're gonna fucking serve us,

874
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, I guess we're gonna serve you.

875
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:24,719
Speaker 1: So one way to force integration is to be all

876
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:30,360
Speaker 1: in the same union and have guns. So and the

877
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:32,920
Speaker 1: umw AS tries to stop the march again, and the

878
00:45:32,960 --> 00:45:36,240
Speaker 1: miners are like, no, we're we're fucking doing this. We

879
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:38,520
Speaker 1: we actually don't care about like the official union line.

880
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:42,960
Speaker 1: We are off to free Mingo County and they they're

881
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:45,160
Speaker 1: all like off to Mingo and they're all chanting off

882
00:45:45,200 --> 00:45:47,120
Speaker 1: to Mingo. I don't know if that's actually what they chanted.

883
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:48,480
Speaker 1: It says with that's what they chanted, but I have

884
00:45:48,520 --> 00:45:51,279
Speaker 1: a feeling they had a lot more clever chance. You know,

885
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:53,200
Speaker 1: at one point I was wondering as I was like,

886
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 1: looking through all this, I was like, I wonder whether

887
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 1: these people are ideologically motivated, you know what degree, or

888
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 1: they like communists or socialists or an anarchists like a

889
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:02,799
Speaker 1: lot of the Union people fighting around during this time.

890
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: And with my own personal bias, I'm always kind of

891
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 1: like looking for the anarchists and history because we get

892
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: written out of history a lot, also because we, much

893
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: like Appalachians, don't tend to win. And but I realized

894
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 1: when I was reading this, and as I was thinking

895
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:19,799
Speaker 1: this was like, I'm going about this entirely wrong. Like, yes,

896
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 1: many of the miners were ideologically motivated, and i've you know,

897
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 1: find notes about them talking on capitalism itself. But the

898
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 1: march was not about an ideology. They were a self organized, leaderless,

899
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: multi racial force that went off to end martial law

900
00:46:33,160 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: and free folks that they had never met from a jail.

901
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:39,720
Speaker 1: So I don't care what they called themselves. They fucking ruled.

902
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 1: They're fucking ruled awesome, And it's just and and and

903
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: so much of it comes back two to the me

904
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:50,799
Speaker 1: into a traditional Appalachian value of I had the right

905
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: to provide for my family, and it's not necessarily like

906
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: capitalistic gain. I have a right to a mass wealth

907
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 1: and do whatever. But I have a right to fucking

908
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 1: feed my face, Emily. And if the game in town

909
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:04,480
Speaker 1: is fucking mining, then that's what we're gonna do, and

910
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:05,920
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it in a way where we can

911
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: survive doing it. And if not, fuck you and your

912
00:47:08,520 --> 00:47:11,719
Speaker 1: machine guns. You know, it's just like um because there's

913
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:14,640
Speaker 1: a lot of union stuff nowadays. It comes down to

914
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:17,479
Speaker 1: the allegiances to their paycheck. As long as my kids

915
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:20,600
Speaker 1: get paid for when I'm gone and the money is there,

916
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:23,879
Speaker 1: you know, fuck you, fuck your politics, fuck your socialism,

917
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:27,400
Speaker 1: Fuck you know, go to all kinds of unfortunate incidents

918
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:31,200
Speaker 1: involving racism and union and stuff in West ViRGE sadly

919
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:34,799
Speaker 1: West Virginia right now. But but but that allegiance is too.

920
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:38,160
Speaker 1: I have a right to provide for my family, and

921
00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:40,680
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's something that is rooted in

922
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:43,839
Speaker 1: the survival instincts of the people that ended up here

923
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:45,960
Speaker 1: after we still Lappalatia in the first place. But the

924
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:47,840
Speaker 1: people who ended up here in this land that was

925
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,680
Speaker 1: so hostile to try to fucking tame that was there,

926
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:54,200
Speaker 1: that was what they had, Like I've come this far.

927
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: I have a right to fucking feed my kids, you know, totally, no, absolutely,

928
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,879
Speaker 1: And so they they take five prisoners of war right off,

929
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: because there's five deputies from Logan who are like wandering

930
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:08,960
Speaker 1: around lost, and by all accounts, they actually treat these

931
00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 1: prisoners really well. And I'm just going to come up

932
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:14,600
Speaker 1: a couple of times. And basically at this point, everyone's wondering, like,

933
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:16,839
Speaker 1: are we about to have a second civil war? Kind

934
00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:20,320
Speaker 1: of a class war this time, because the anti union

935
00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 1: forces get a wave of new recruits from the upper classes.

936
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,839
Speaker 1: Lawyers and bankers and business owners and like from all

937
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:27,800
Speaker 1: over the state are arming up and heading off to

938
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:31,239
Speaker 1: the trenches to fight these damn rednecks. And in the

939
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:36,440
Speaker 1: end there's about defenders to ten thousand attackers. The first

940
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:39,239
Speaker 1: person to die in the defending army was a cop

941
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:42,280
Speaker 1: who got shot by his own side from a negligent discharge.

942
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: They go up the mountain, both sides and they start

943
00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:47,600
Speaker 1: shooting at each other. By a lot of accounts, it

944
00:48:47,640 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: was more of a hide and snipe kind of fight

945
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 1: than a charge with bayonets fixed kind of fight. Somewhere

946
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:56,400
Speaker 1: near the start of it, a Union sympathizer woman who

947
00:48:56,440 --> 00:48:59,280
Speaker 1: lives on the mountain. She's like signaling to the Union

948
00:48:59,360 --> 00:49:01,959
Speaker 1: that non folks are coming by, like flickering her lights

949
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:03,879
Speaker 1: on and off, and so the anti union folks break

950
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:07,440
Speaker 1: in and murder her, just like fuck you. And a

951
00:49:07,520 --> 00:49:10,319
Speaker 1: pro union minister who has all these quotes about it's

952
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:11,880
Speaker 1: time to put down the Bible and pick up the

953
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:15,719
Speaker 1: rifle named John Wilburn. He's patrolling the mountain with his

954
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 1: son and a few others when he comes upon another

955
00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:21,920
Speaker 1: patrol led by John Gore, who is an anti union deputy.

956
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,920
Speaker 1: They both give their sides passwords at the time. The

957
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: Union side their password is I come Creeping and the

958
00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:32,719
Speaker 1: anti Union side is amen. I actually think these are

959
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:36,000
Speaker 1: both sick passwords. But I come Creeping and I Came

960
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 1: Creeping is like awesome, yeah, yeah, And so they both

961
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: realized that there facing the enemy, and both sides open fire.

962
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 1: John Gore and his two buds they go down and die,

963
00:49:48,719 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: but first they shoot the first casualty of the Union side,

964
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:55,680
Speaker 1: who's a black man named Eli Kemp, and the war

965
00:49:55,800 --> 00:50:00,400
Speaker 1: keeps going. The anti union side is losing, so start

966
00:50:00,719 --> 00:50:04,200
Speaker 1: fucking bombing the miners with planes. They fill up planes

967
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 1: with bombs, full of T and T and chemical weapons,

968
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:09,680
Speaker 1: and I believe it's the first time chemical weapons were

969
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:13,399
Speaker 1: well used on people in US. I don't know. I mean,

970
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:15,279
Speaker 1: there's everyone always says this is the first time this

971
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 1: happened in history, and then you always find other times

972
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:19,480
Speaker 1: that this should happen in history before it whatever, it

973
00:50:19,560 --> 00:50:22,240
Speaker 1: was not a fucking normalist thing to start dropping chemical

974
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 1: weapons from fucking biplanes on goddamn your employees an American citizens,

975
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:30,320
Speaker 1: Yeah as well, Yeah totally. And what's funny about it

976
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: is they don't actually manage to kill anyone this way,

977
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:35,720
Speaker 1: and only one person is injured seriously by a chemical

978
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 1: weapon bomb during all of this, who is an anti

979
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:43,279
Speaker 1: union miner who accidentally sets off a bomb like not

980
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 1: even on the mountain and he's hospitalized with burns. So

981
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:48,720
Speaker 1: I kind of like, how comedy of errors these fucking

982
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:52,920
Speaker 1: people are. The actual Union army is still segregated at

983
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:54,920
Speaker 1: this time, right, and it's going to be segregated for

984
00:50:54,960 --> 00:50:58,279
Speaker 1: decades to come. The Redneck Army might be the first

985
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:01,160
Speaker 1: army the US ever produced that wasn't aggregated. Again, I'm

986
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 1: doing the like the first time ever or whatever, right, Like,

987
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 1: I don't fucking know, but it's the first one I've

988
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 1: run across. And black men led white troops. A man

989
00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 1: named Red Thompson led seventy soldiers in an attack. Yet

990
00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:16,279
Speaker 1: in all this fighting, and actually, to your point, I'm

991
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: not actually certain about this line that I wrote. From

992
00:51:18,640 --> 00:51:21,880
Speaker 1: what I've read, casualties were fairly rare. A lot of

993
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 1: folks weren't even fucking aiming, and they shot an awful lot,

994
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:28,160
Speaker 1: but kind of usually just sort of like uphill in general,

995
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 1: and especially on the anti union side, because a lot

996
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 1: of the anti unions I did not want to be there.

997
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 1: A lot of the non union miners went up the

998
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:39,200
Speaker 1: mountain because they were conscripted and told to and then

999
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:40,839
Speaker 1: they just found a really good place to hide out.

1000
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:42,520
Speaker 1: And that they just hung out for nine days and

1001
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:45,479
Speaker 1: just like fucking laid down and waited for the whole

1002
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 1: thing to be over. The Redneck Army had no general,

1003
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:50,560
Speaker 1: They just had a lot of leaders, several of them

1004
00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:54,520
Speaker 1: were black. A doctor named W. F. Harless, who made

1005
00:51:54,600 --> 00:51:57,120
Speaker 1: daily trips up to the mountain, passed machine gun fire

1006
00:51:57,160 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 1: to treat wounded miners. He talked about leadership and what

1007
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: he said was now a lot of people will tell

1008
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:05,320
Speaker 1: you Bill Blizzard was the leader of it all. Now,

1009
00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:07,359
Speaker 1: Bill is one of the finest people that's ever lived,

1010
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:09,120
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong. And even though Bill and I

1011
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:11,640
Speaker 1: have had disagreed on a lot of things, I'd vote

1012
00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:13,680
Speaker 1: for him again if he was still living, and I

1013
00:52:13,719 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 1: was in the hospital the day he died. But he

1014
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:18,400
Speaker 1: wasn't the leader anymore than the rest of us was.

1015
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 1: From the way I see it, we was all just

1016
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:23,880
Speaker 1: leaders in a manner of speaking. I love that because

1017
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 1: it was still really organized. Everyone was fed, everyone was

1018
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 1: taken care of. Ammunition showed up on time. Like a

1019
00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 1: million rounds got fired in this fucking nine day battle.

1020
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: And for secrecy's sake, for there's reporters around, and what

1021
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:42,800
Speaker 1: they're doing is hell illegal. You're not actually supposed to

1022
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:46,719
Speaker 1: have wars in general, if you're not a government. There

1023
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:49,440
Speaker 1: governments are allowed to have wars, then it's encouraged. So

1024
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:52,359
Speaker 1: they avoided using names. They use numbers instead, and they

1025
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: mostly just called everyone buddy, which I think also rules. Also,

1026
00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:58,080
Speaker 1: can we can we take a moment to appreciate Bill

1027
00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:00,600
Speaker 1: Blizzard I was a name or a person, because either way,

1028
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:05,439
Speaker 1: as a name just don't have a true rule. Yeah,

1029
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 1: But like You've got Sam, You've got Sid McCoy and

1030
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:11,359
Speaker 1: Bill Blizzard. Yeah. I mean that's that's that's a that's

1031
00:53:11,400 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 1: a new first person shooter game, right there. I mean

1032
00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:18,240
Speaker 1: that's just like me. And also dope figures in history. Yeah,

1033
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 1: like yeah, but two guns, Sid and Bill Blizzard. Yeah yeah, no, Yeah,

1034
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:27,480
Speaker 1: there's there's so many things I keep It happens to

1035
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: be over and over again as I work in this podcast,

1036
00:53:29,200 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 1: where I'm like, if I wrote this in a fiction,

1037
00:53:30,560 --> 00:53:32,799
Speaker 1: people would make fun of me because it's too on

1038
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:36,640
Speaker 1: the nose. But Bill Blizzard rules, um, and he gets

1039
00:53:36,719 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 1: called the general a lot and a lot of these stories,

1040
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:40,319
Speaker 1: and he ends up I think he ends up in

1041
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: the u m w A leadership and he was involved

1042
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 1: in some of the earlier strikes in thirteen. But yeah,

1043
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 1: he was like one of the leaders. What's up? Was

1044
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:52,839
Speaker 1: he killed? What did he die? I don't remember. I

1045
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:54,920
Speaker 1: think he lived. I think he survives all of this.

1046
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:58,160
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I mean look that up quickly. Okay, great,

1047
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:03,080
Speaker 1: So not on this leaderless fucking battle against the rich

1048
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:06,359
Speaker 1: people is winning. I mean, okay, they have four times

1049
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:09,640
Speaker 1: as many people, but they break through the enemy lines

1050
00:54:09,680 --> 00:54:13,480
Speaker 1: in some spots. Waves of reinforcements are coming from all over. Basically,

1051
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:15,120
Speaker 1: the the armies of the rich are never going to

1052
00:54:15,200 --> 00:54:16,640
Speaker 1: have as many people as the armies of the poor

1053
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:19,759
Speaker 1: if whenever the poor figure out that they shouldn't be

1054
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:23,920
Speaker 1: divided along race lines. And we don't know how many

1055
00:54:23,920 --> 00:54:26,440
Speaker 1: Wobblies showed up. Wobblies are members of the i w W,

1056
00:54:26,600 --> 00:54:28,400
Speaker 1: which is a more radical union that's trying to end

1057
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:30,960
Speaker 1: capitalism itself. But we do know about one Wobbly who

1058
00:54:31,040 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: showed up. This guy named Comiskey, and he's a bricklayer

1059
00:54:34,800 --> 00:54:36,840
Speaker 1: and he shows up in Logan County during all of this,

1060
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: he's immediately arrested, taking to jail, and within thirty six

1061
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:43,200
Speaker 1: hours of his arrival, the jailer's adult son walks into

1062
00:54:43,239 --> 00:54:46,239
Speaker 1: the jail and shoots him to death. So that's the

1063
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 1: you know, that's the justice on the law and order side.

1064
00:54:49,280 --> 00:54:51,080
Speaker 1: The other thing I keep running across throughout histories that

1065
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:53,000
Speaker 1: no one actually cares about law and order, Like neither

1066
00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:55,360
Speaker 1: side of this is like what we care about is

1067
00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 1: the law. They only use the law in order to

1068
00:54:57,640 --> 00:54:59,759
Speaker 1: get what they want. And one side is doing something

1069
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:01,839
Speaker 1: want something that I want, So I agree with and

1070
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:04,560
Speaker 1: the other side, Yeah, is pretending to use the law,

1071
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 1: but doesn't. They're just fucking killing people um in their

1072
00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 1: own jails. In comparison, and again weirder than fiction, the

1073
00:55:13,480 --> 00:55:18,160
Speaker 1: the jailer of Logan County, his brother bad Lewis White

1074
00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:21,440
Speaker 1: is the jailer on the other side, on the Union side,

1075
00:55:21,440 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: Badis was bad Lewis White White. Okay, So to fulfill

1076
00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 1: our bill Blizzard content so he Yeah, he was totally Blizzard.

1077
00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:34,200
Speaker 1: After the Bella Blair Mountain, Blizzard continued to fight for

1078
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 1: minors rights. In ninety three, in the way of the

1079
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:39,920
Speaker 1: New Deal, the umw A was reorganized, reinvented. John Lewis

1080
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:42,320
Speaker 1: gave Blizzard his job back, and in turn Blizzard was

1081
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:45,000
Speaker 1: back preaching across the state as a umw A member. Again.

1082
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 1: Col Mona in West Virginia admired and looked up to him.

1083
00:55:48,360 --> 00:55:51,120
Speaker 1: He became a strong opponent of the West Virginia Minors Union,

1084
00:55:51,160 --> 00:55:55,120
Speaker 1: which was a county in the un w A, and

1085
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:57,839
Speaker 1: he got in a fist fight with John Lewis's who

1086
00:55:57,880 --> 00:55:59,360
Speaker 1: was head of the um w A, got in a

1087
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:02,399
Speaker 1: fist fight with his younger brother and John Lewis ran

1088
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:04,760
Speaker 1: him out. Of the U m w A. But Lewis

1089
00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: retired to a farm and died three years later on July.

1090
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:12,480
Speaker 1: He was sixty five years old. So he even went

1091
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:19,560
Speaker 1: out fucking swing yeah against union corruption. Probably that we're

1092
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:21,839
Speaker 1: that's what we're saying. We're writing history right now. So yeah, yeah,

1093
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:24,120
Speaker 1: putting that down. Yeah, and his name is Bill Blizzard,

1094
00:56:24,600 --> 00:56:26,319
Speaker 1: so like you can argue with that Bill Blizzard with

1095
00:56:26,320 --> 00:56:29,959
Speaker 1: a god damn I know. So so bad Lewis Waite

1096
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: and our other hero who's the jailer, unlike his brother

1097
00:56:33,760 --> 00:56:35,840
Speaker 1: who's the jailer on the other side of this brother

1098
00:56:36,000 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 1: versus brother battle. Uh, the actual bad brother, the anti

1099
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:45,600
Speaker 1: union brother is feeding people beans with crushed up glass

1100
00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:52,200
Speaker 1: and murdering people in the jail um whereas bad yeah yeah,

1101
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:54,880
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound like a healthy and balanced diet. That

1102
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:58,719
Speaker 1: is not Sophia. If it's possible, we could in advance

1103
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: not allow the concept of beans filled with crushed up

1104
00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:05,759
Speaker 1: glass is not It should not be a sponsor of

1105
00:57:05,760 --> 00:57:09,360
Speaker 1: this show. Oh, good to know. Good to know for

1106
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: our show as well. Pleased. I will make note of

1107
00:57:12,120 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: it and make sure Kal knows what's up. Okay, thank you,

1108
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: So Bat Lewis White takes care of his prisoners because

1109
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:23,360
Speaker 1: five of them he does prevent the son of the Um,

1110
00:57:23,400 --> 00:57:25,680
Speaker 1: the son of Deputy Gore, the guy who got shot

1111
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 1: earlier in the fight. Um he doesn't let his son

1112
00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:31,840
Speaker 1: go to his father's funeral because he's busy being a

1113
00:57:31,920 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 1: prisoner of war. The fight goes on for nine days,

1114
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:37,520
Speaker 1: and in the end it's the U. S Army that

1115
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:39,920
Speaker 1: breaks it up, which is sort of predictable based on

1116
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:42,680
Speaker 1: howe everything is going. Neither side wants to go to

1117
00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:46,200
Speaker 1: war with the US itself, so thousands of troops come in.

1118
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 1: They split into two forces. They cut off both the

1119
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:50,920
Speaker 1: Union and the anti Union side and forced them to

1120
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:54,320
Speaker 1: stop fighting. Most miners kind of slink off home. Six

1121
00:57:54,560 --> 00:57:58,520
Speaker 1: hundred of them directly surrender. Out of a million rounds fired,

1122
00:57:58,760 --> 00:58:01,680
Speaker 1: maybe fifty to a hundred Union miners died, and about

1123
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:05,080
Speaker 1: ten to thirty of Chaffin's men. One thousand, two hundred

1124
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:08,600
Speaker 1: and seventeen indictments were handed down against the marchers, including

1125
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:13,280
Speaker 1: three murder charges and twenty four counts of treason. Bill Blizzard,

1126
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:15,880
Speaker 1: the I wrote down one of the leaders. But now

1127
00:58:15,960 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: the audience is fully aware, so Bill Blizzard has tried

1128
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:21,680
Speaker 1: for treason in the same West Virginia courthouse that John

1129
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:23,800
Speaker 1: Brown had been And if I ever get tried for treason,

1130
00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:26,000
Speaker 1: which I hope I don't, I'm kind of a you know,

1131
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:27,760
Speaker 1: I don't really like when bad things happen to me,

1132
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:30,280
Speaker 1: But if I do, I would love to be tried

1133
00:58:30,320 --> 00:58:31,840
Speaker 1: in the same would an honor to be tried for

1134
00:58:31,880 --> 00:58:33,600
Speaker 1: treason in the same court house that John Brown has

1135
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 1: tried for treason and Blizzard, in contrast to John Brown,

1136
00:58:37,600 --> 00:58:40,919
Speaker 1: was found innocent. He actually used an unexploded bomb as

1137
00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: evidence that they were like, these motherfucker's were dropping bombs

1138
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:45,480
Speaker 1: on us from biplanes. These people are clearly the bad

1139
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 1: guys and them, you know, basically, I mean like the

1140
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:51,840
Speaker 1: company's fucking brutal, and that helps a lot. In the trial,

1141
00:58:52,480 --> 00:58:55,560
Speaker 1: only one guy got convicted of treason, a man named

1142
00:58:55,560 --> 00:58:58,400
Speaker 1: Walter Allen, and he rules for the one fact that

1143
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 1: he jumped bail, fucked off good and has never heard

1144
00:59:00,600 --> 00:59:03,360
Speaker 1: from again, which is the other thing I would like.

1145
00:59:03,400 --> 00:59:05,560
Speaker 1: I would never do. I would Jesus Christ, I would

1146
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:09,320
Speaker 1: never say radius show that okay. So Don Chafin, however,

1147
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:12,680
Speaker 1: is one of the only characters in this story took. Yeah,

1148
00:59:12,920 --> 00:59:15,200
Speaker 1: he actually serves some time. He gets two years for

1149
00:59:15,360 --> 00:59:19,120
Speaker 1: violation of prohibition because he's like everyone else, crooked as fuck.

1150
00:59:19,800 --> 00:59:22,960
Speaker 1: But he retires rich and his life is fucking easy

1151
00:59:23,000 --> 00:59:27,240
Speaker 1: and because there is no God. The Mingo strike drags

1152
00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:30,240
Speaker 1: on for another year. It bankrupts the local branch of

1153
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:33,960
Speaker 1: the union, and eventually it fails. Even the union miners

1154
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:37,640
Speaker 1: in Kanahua lose their contract, and the umw A membership plummets.

1155
00:59:37,640 --> 00:59:43,080
Speaker 1: Throughout the whole nineteen twenties, Basically, the union lost the war,

1156
00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:46,280
Speaker 1: even though both sides surrendered, because that meant going back

1157
00:59:46,280 --> 00:59:49,240
Speaker 1: to the status quo, and the status quo was the

1158
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:53,360
Speaker 1: companies are in charge. For about ten years, the company

1159
00:59:53,400 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 1: the union languishes in West Virginia until a federal New

1160
00:59:56,800 --> 00:59:59,520
Speaker 1: Deal law in nineteen thirty three guarantees workers the right

1161
00:59:59,520 --> 01:00:02,680
Speaker 1: to organize the National Industrial Recovery Act. And as soon

1162
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 1: as that happens, as soon as they're like, you know,

1163
01:00:05,200 --> 01:00:08,560
Speaker 1: basically like the yellow Dog, contracts no longer apply and stuff,

1164
01:00:08,920 --> 01:00:12,080
Speaker 1: everyone signs up. All the places that the union had

1165
01:00:12,120 --> 01:00:14,400
Speaker 1: been strong, all the places that the union had been weak,

1166
01:00:14,800 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 1: everywhere people poured in and unionized and collectively bargained their

1167
01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:19,720
Speaker 1: way to a better life. And one of the things

1168
01:00:19,760 --> 01:00:22,560
Speaker 1: that that tells me is that even the people who

1169
01:00:22,560 --> 01:00:25,200
Speaker 1: were like on the anti union side, who are conscripted,

1170
01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:27,960
Speaker 1: would have been happier, wanted to be in a union,

1171
01:00:28,160 --> 01:00:30,480
Speaker 1: by and large, not all of them. Obviously, no one

1172
01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: said no group as a monolith, but they just didn't

1173
01:00:34,120 --> 01:00:37,360
Speaker 1: feel like that was a possibility. And it it still

1174
01:00:37,360 --> 01:00:39,400
Speaker 1: didn't come easy. It wasn't like this law passed and

1175
01:00:39,440 --> 01:00:42,480
Speaker 1: then everything was like perfect because co operators don't want

1176
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:45,000
Speaker 1: to lose their profit margin, and so there's still violence

1177
01:00:45,520 --> 01:00:49,600
Speaker 1: on both sides. Pickets are guarded by armed miners and

1178
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:53,080
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess it's like the federal law

1179
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:55,560
Speaker 1: made this possible, but it was the fighting and the

1180
01:00:55,560 --> 01:00:58,840
Speaker 1: bravery that built up the camaraderie necessary to see it through.

1181
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:03,720
Speaker 1: And as as you've talked about throughout this, you know,

1182
01:01:03,920 --> 01:01:05,960
Speaker 1: the um w A ends up the largest union in

1183
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:09,000
Speaker 1: the country, and within several decades it starts to becoming

1184
01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:11,680
Speaker 1: increasingly corrupt. And actually, the the history book that you

1185
01:01:11,760 --> 01:01:13,720
Speaker 1: keep referencing on Dark and Bloody Ground is also where

1186
01:01:13,720 --> 01:01:15,400
Speaker 1: a lot of the direct quotes that I'm using are

1187
01:01:15,400 --> 01:01:18,280
Speaker 1: come from, and it was written in the seventies by

1188
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:20,880
Speaker 1: people trying to fight the corruption within the um w

1189
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:22,720
Speaker 1: A who are trying to basically go back and be like, hey,

1190
01:01:22,720 --> 01:01:25,280
Speaker 1: remember when we were cool, Like, remember when we wed

1191
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:28,439
Speaker 1: like good stuff? You know. At one point, at one point,

1192
01:01:28,480 --> 01:01:30,880
Speaker 1: there were two copies of Dark and Bloody Ground like

1193
01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:34,520
Speaker 1: left in the entire state of West Virginia's library system

1194
01:01:34,600 --> 01:01:37,840
Speaker 1: until this reissue that the Mind Wars Museum did, like

1195
01:01:37,920 --> 01:01:41,800
Speaker 1: it was almost extinct from like from print, and the

1196
01:01:41,840 --> 01:01:44,520
Speaker 1: Mind Wars Museum was instrumental in bringing it back. That's

1197
01:01:44,600 --> 01:01:46,480
Speaker 1: that's kind of that's kind of sick, yeh, which is

1198
01:01:46,560 --> 01:01:52,520
Speaker 1: why archivists are fucking cool. Um So, when Logan gets

1199
01:01:52,560 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: the county in nine three, miners no longer have to

1200
01:01:54,880 --> 01:01:57,840
Speaker 1: work thigh deep in water. Their hospital gets cleaned up,

1201
01:01:57,840 --> 01:02:00,160
Speaker 1: it's not full of roaches and bed bugs, work, are

1202
01:02:00,160 --> 01:02:03,000
Speaker 1: allowed to shop at other places other than the company's store.

1203
01:02:03,400 --> 01:02:07,200
Speaker 1: Wages quadruple in some jobs. And I feel like it's

1204
01:02:07,200 --> 01:02:09,680
Speaker 1: worth reiterating how simple and basic the ship that they

1205
01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:13,640
Speaker 1: were fighting for was. And there's there's one more story

1206
01:02:13,680 --> 01:02:16,120
Speaker 1: I want to tell about, just a story interaction I

1207
01:02:16,200 --> 01:02:18,960
Speaker 1: had with some miners. I live in West Virginia now,

1208
01:02:18,960 --> 01:02:20,440
Speaker 1: But a while back, I wasn't living here, and I

1209
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:23,440
Speaker 1: was visiting as a photojournalist taking pictures for Mountain Justice,

1210
01:02:23,440 --> 01:02:25,840
Speaker 1: which is a group fighting against mountaintop removal coal mining.

1211
01:02:26,240 --> 01:02:28,560
Speaker 1: And a lot of union miners were and are involved

1212
01:02:28,560 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 1: in that fight. And I don't remember who told me

1213
01:02:32,520 --> 01:02:34,160
Speaker 1: this story, and it bothers me and I asked my

1214
01:02:34,200 --> 01:02:36,280
Speaker 1: friend who was there, and and they don't remember either.

1215
01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 1: It was either Chuck Nelson, who's at UMW a member

1216
01:02:39,080 --> 01:02:42,320
Speaker 1: and a fourth generation coal miner, or it's Sid Moy,

1217
01:02:42,560 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 1: whose father and grandfather were miners, but he worked as

1218
01:02:45,080 --> 01:02:48,200
Speaker 1: a printer and he taught home studying instead, and both

1219
01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:51,000
Speaker 1: of them have since passed away. I met Sid at

1220
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:53,480
Speaker 1: a civil disobedience training where we were practicing how to

1221
01:02:53,560 --> 01:02:58,600
Speaker 1: navigate arrest and deal with police. Because there's there's stuff

1222
01:02:58,600 --> 01:03:00,240
Speaker 1: I don't have time to get into. I kind of

1223
01:03:00,280 --> 01:03:01,840
Speaker 1: wish I did, right, I wish I had the words

1224
01:03:01,880 --> 01:03:05,280
Speaker 1: to get into about how like being like, yeah, industry,

1225
01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:08,280
Speaker 1: I mean like coal mining, like like coal's fucked up, right,

1226
01:03:08,520 --> 01:03:09,880
Speaker 1: Like I'm not trying to I don't want anyone to

1227
01:03:09,960 --> 01:03:12,200
Speaker 1: leave here, and being like that's why we need more

1228
01:03:12,320 --> 01:03:15,160
Speaker 1: coal jobs in America or whatever, right, like no, like

1229
01:03:15,160 --> 01:03:18,240
Speaker 1: like fucking leave it in the ground, like use renewable ship.

1230
01:03:18,800 --> 01:03:21,919
Speaker 1: But like, that doesn't mean that the miners aren't right

1231
01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:26,840
Speaker 1: to fight for a decent living as they navigate this

1232
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:29,680
Speaker 1: hellscape of the world we live in. And a lot

1233
01:03:29,720 --> 01:03:32,919
Speaker 1: of these miners are at the forefront in the fight

1234
01:03:32,920 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 1: against mountain top removal because they care about the fucking mountains.

1235
01:03:37,960 --> 01:03:40,440
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people are seeing the environmental

1236
01:03:41,160 --> 01:03:44,560
Speaker 1: the can everything from the cancer rates to groundwater contamination,

1237
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:48,480
Speaker 1: to everything that's come from mountaintop removal. Like the growing

1238
01:03:48,560 --> 01:03:50,240
Speaker 1: up we were talking, we always talked about the strip

1239
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:53,320
Speaker 1: job dad works on. My dad didn't work in the minds.

1240
01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:56,200
Speaker 1: He worked on the strip jobs where they cut away

1241
01:03:56,240 --> 01:03:58,760
Speaker 1: a section of the mountain and he was maintenance crew.

1242
01:03:58,800 --> 01:04:00,400
Speaker 1: You know, he was on the thing that pairing the

1243
01:04:00,440 --> 01:04:03,560
Speaker 1: machines that were taking the tops off the mountains. That said,

1244
01:04:03,560 --> 01:04:04,960
Speaker 1: he didn't go into the mines, so he was well

1245
01:04:05,000 --> 01:04:06,960
Speaker 1: into his thirties to pick a piece of gear and

1246
01:04:07,000 --> 01:04:08,680
Speaker 1: that was the one and only time and he never

1247
01:04:08,720 --> 01:04:11,600
Speaker 1: ever wanted to go back because it was terrified. But

1248
01:04:11,600 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 1: but a lot of people in Central Appalachia and Southwest Virginia,

1249
01:04:15,520 --> 01:04:18,480
Speaker 1: Eastern Kentucky. They've seen what this process has done to

1250
01:04:18,520 --> 01:04:21,000
Speaker 1: the land, They've seen what it's done to our health,

1251
01:04:21,080 --> 01:04:24,720
Speaker 1: they've seen what what it's done. I mean, just there's

1252
01:04:24,760 --> 01:04:26,360
Speaker 1: just I can't we don't have time to get into it.

1253
01:04:26,400 --> 01:04:30,560
Speaker 1: But the cancer rates, especially among women in Wise County, Virginia,

1254
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:33,600
Speaker 1: are absolutely insane, especially when you trace it back to

1255
01:04:34,360 --> 01:04:37,640
Speaker 1: where water has drained off, where groundwater has been contaminated,

1256
01:04:37,880 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 1: and it's absolutely yeah, it's it's absolutely insane. So yes,

1257
01:04:42,280 --> 01:04:43,920
Speaker 1: a lot of minors and a lot of I want

1258
01:04:43,920 --> 01:04:45,440
Speaker 1: to just phone a valley, A lot of a lot

1259
01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:48,360
Speaker 1: of good applachic folk who probably wouldn't spit on me

1260
01:04:48,440 --> 01:04:51,920
Speaker 1: politically otherwise or any of us politically otherwise, will stand

1261
01:04:52,040 --> 01:04:55,520
Speaker 1: against that. And and a lot of them who at

1262
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:59,800
Speaker 1: one time probably wouldn't have. But in you know, in

1263
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:06,320
Speaker 1: recent years, they've they've finally come to it to see it. Unfortunately. Yeah, no,

1264
01:05:06,560 --> 01:05:08,400
Speaker 1: not not unfortunate, they came to see it, but you know,

1265
01:05:08,840 --> 01:05:11,720
Speaker 1: unfortunately they've had to see it, had to see all

1266
01:05:11,760 --> 01:05:14,480
Speaker 1: the stuff that's happening. You're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

1267
01:05:14,520 --> 01:05:17,360
Speaker 1: at a certain point you just can't ignore it anymore. Yeah,

1268
01:05:17,760 --> 01:05:19,600
Speaker 1: or you can you come to realize it because you're

1269
01:05:20,160 --> 01:05:22,680
Speaker 1: you know, your partner has has cancer because of this,

1270
01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:26,480
Speaker 1: or your parents have died twenty years beforehand because of

1271
01:05:26,520 --> 01:05:29,400
Speaker 1: exposure too. You know that maybe they never worked in

1272
01:05:29,400 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 1: the mind, but there's a mind sight on the other

1273
01:05:31,720 --> 01:05:34,400
Speaker 1: side of the mountain, and your groundwater is sucked up.

1274
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:37,080
Speaker 1: So the amount of it's yeah, it's it's it's so

1275
01:05:37,200 --> 01:05:40,040
Speaker 1: much bigger than black lung is awful and horrific. But

1276
01:05:40,240 --> 01:05:42,760
Speaker 1: the health stuff that radiates out from from mining and

1277
01:05:42,800 --> 01:05:45,600
Speaker 1: has over the years, especially from mountaintop removal stuff has

1278
01:05:45,640 --> 01:05:49,160
Speaker 1: just been it's it's off the charts. Yeah, I mean,

1279
01:05:49,160 --> 01:05:50,920
Speaker 1: I remember, you know when I when I was on

1280
01:05:50,960 --> 01:05:53,880
Speaker 1: my way to to go go to the coal fields

1281
01:05:53,920 --> 01:05:57,320
Speaker 1: for the first time and work. I'll try it. I

1282
01:05:57,360 --> 01:05:58,920
Speaker 1: didn't do a ton of I'm really not trying to

1283
01:05:58,920 --> 01:06:00,840
Speaker 1: like play at my own and into this whole thing.

1284
01:06:00,840 --> 01:06:02,600
Speaker 1: But I went and saw it right to take pictures

1285
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:05,600
Speaker 1: for people. And I went and someone from Wise County,

1286
01:06:06,000 --> 01:06:09,480
Speaker 1: you know, who had grown up there, and the street

1287
01:06:09,520 --> 01:06:11,920
Speaker 1: he lived on was like his last name, and it

1288
01:06:12,040 --> 01:06:15,960
Speaker 1: was all you know, different small houses with people who

1289
01:06:15,960 --> 01:06:17,720
Speaker 1: have his last name. And he he takes me up

1290
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:19,680
Speaker 1: and he shows me a mountain top removable site and

1291
01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:22,200
Speaker 1: it's just a I don't know, I don't have words

1292
01:06:22,240 --> 01:06:24,600
Speaker 1: for it. I used to avoid thinking about mountain top removal.

1293
01:06:24,640 --> 01:06:26,480
Speaker 1: I was a forest defender. I was like working in

1294
01:06:26,680 --> 01:06:29,520
Speaker 1: like tree sitting and shipped like that and working in

1295
01:06:29,600 --> 01:06:31,440
Speaker 1: as if it was an industry. You know. I was

1296
01:06:31,480 --> 01:06:33,680
Speaker 1: a volunteer activist and I go sit in trees. But

1297
01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:36,000
Speaker 1: I never went to West Virginia to go confront mountain

1298
01:06:36,000 --> 01:06:38,960
Speaker 1: top removal because it was too much problem. I couldn't

1299
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:41,080
Speaker 1: wrap my hand around it. You know. You get um,

1300
01:06:41,280 --> 01:06:43,960
Speaker 1: disaster fatigue is facing a lot of people right now,

1301
01:06:44,080 --> 01:06:46,720
Speaker 1: right and the concept that people are just blowing up

1302
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:49,720
Speaker 1: mountains things that make clear cutting look good in comparison,

1303
01:06:50,200 --> 01:06:52,720
Speaker 1: you know, it was it was too much for me.

1304
01:06:52,800 --> 01:06:54,200
Speaker 1: And I went up and I stood on this what

1305
01:06:54,320 --> 01:06:56,840
Speaker 1: should have been a mountaintop instead it was this flat,

1306
01:06:57,320 --> 01:07:05,640
Speaker 1: weird field, and it just I don't know, anyway, it's hard. Yeah,

1307
01:07:05,720 --> 01:07:07,800
Speaker 1: I mean as too, you know, as people who grew

1308
01:07:07,880 --> 01:07:11,040
Speaker 1: up there and like I could walk to the reservoir

1309
01:07:11,120 --> 01:07:14,200
Speaker 1: near my dad's house, cross the road behind the reservoir

1310
01:07:14,360 --> 01:07:16,400
Speaker 1: and my friends and I used to go when we

1311
01:07:16,400 --> 01:07:19,160
Speaker 1: were twelve thirteen, would go play Lord of the Rings.

1312
01:07:19,200 --> 01:07:20,720
Speaker 1: Wasn't that cool? We have we'd go have our own

1313
01:07:20,760 --> 01:07:24,560
Speaker 1: fantasy adventures because the fucking landscape looked like an alien

1314
01:07:24,640 --> 01:07:28,320
Speaker 1: planet because everything had been stripped. Nothing was native. It

1315
01:07:28,360 --> 01:07:30,760
Speaker 1: was all these pine trees and shrubs that were planning

1316
01:07:30,800 --> 01:07:35,040
Speaker 1: to reclaim the land, and it looked like like like

1317
01:07:35,520 --> 01:07:39,120
Speaker 1: some new god had reached down and carved up everything

1318
01:07:39,160 --> 01:07:43,080
Speaker 1: that was familiar into a different planet. Like it's it's

1319
01:07:43,160 --> 01:07:47,400
Speaker 1: unreal and it's awful, and it's no, it's yeah, I

1320
01:07:47,440 --> 01:07:54,560
Speaker 1: get you, I get you, just it's it's hard to even. Yeah. So,

1321
01:07:54,560 --> 01:07:56,920
Speaker 1: so one of the stories I heard from either Chuck

1322
01:07:57,000 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 1: now Center, said Moy was how in the sixties, him

1323
01:07:59,800 --> 01:08:02,200
Speaker 1: and friends were busy protesting against the draft in the

1324
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:05,680
Speaker 1: Vietnam War in West Virginia, which already kind of like

1325
01:08:05,720 --> 01:08:08,640
Speaker 1: because I came from outside and had these preconceptions about

1326
01:08:08,640 --> 01:08:10,960
Speaker 1: people who live in West Virginia, which I'm not proud of,

1327
01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:14,080
Speaker 1: and I was already like surprised, right, And he was like, well,

1328
01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:15,960
Speaker 1: me and my friends were in one street corner and

1329
01:08:15,960 --> 01:08:19,000
Speaker 1: protesting against the draft. We look across the other street corner,

1330
01:08:19,040 --> 01:08:21,400
Speaker 1: black folks are protesting for civil rights, and on a

1331
01:08:21,479 --> 01:08:24,560
Speaker 1: third corner, gay folks are protesting for their rights, and

1332
01:08:24,600 --> 01:08:26,320
Speaker 1: we all looked at each other and we realized we

1333
01:08:26,320 --> 01:08:29,040
Speaker 1: would be way better off protesting together. So all three

1334
01:08:29,040 --> 01:08:31,080
Speaker 1: groups got together and we were an awful lot stronger

1335
01:08:31,120 --> 01:08:34,360
Speaker 1: that way. I know, it's like oversimplified and probably not

1336
01:08:34,479 --> 01:08:36,439
Speaker 1: a literal direct thing, but might have been a literal

1337
01:08:36,479 --> 01:08:38,040
Speaker 1: direct thing that happened to this guy. And I just

1338
01:08:38,640 --> 01:08:40,360
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about it in the like ten fifteen

1339
01:08:40,439 --> 01:08:43,519
Speaker 1: years since then, like all the time, just that simple

1340
01:08:43,680 --> 01:08:46,400
Speaker 1: act of like, it's the same thing that is the

1341
01:08:46,400 --> 01:08:48,680
Speaker 1: concept of the unions. The concept of the unions is

1342
01:08:48,720 --> 01:08:52,720
Speaker 1: not all that matters is building this power structure of

1343
01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:56,480
Speaker 1: people who dig coal. It's all of these people realizing

1344
01:08:56,479 --> 01:08:58,719
Speaker 1: that their struggle is the same struggle and getting together

1345
01:08:58,760 --> 01:09:02,120
Speaker 1: and fight, um try not to go for it as

1346
01:09:02,160 --> 01:09:03,439
Speaker 1: hard of a moral at the end of it. I

1347
01:09:03,479 --> 01:09:06,559
Speaker 1: just like, really that story just really sticks with me.

1348
01:09:07,840 --> 01:09:10,960
Speaker 1: That's the story of the Battle of Blair Mountain. How

1349
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:14,400
Speaker 1: are you all feeling? It's a lot? It is it is.

1350
01:09:14,439 --> 01:09:17,840
Speaker 1: It's a lot. It's a lot. And that's you know,

1351
01:09:18,040 --> 01:09:21,880
Speaker 1: when when like ever since we launched the podcast, people

1352
01:09:21,960 --> 01:09:24,200
Speaker 1: have you know, have said to us, we want you

1353
01:09:24,240 --> 01:09:25,880
Speaker 1: to cover Mate one. You know, we want you to

1354
01:09:25,880 --> 01:09:27,160
Speaker 1: do a story about Mate one. We want you to

1355
01:09:27,160 --> 01:09:30,960
Speaker 1: do about Blair Mountain. And you know, we're like, you know,

1356
01:09:31,000 --> 01:09:33,519
Speaker 1: when we launched this season, we're like, we're gonna cover

1357
01:09:33,560 --> 01:09:36,080
Speaker 1: them un We're going to talk about mind wars. But

1358
01:09:36,960 --> 01:09:40,160
Speaker 1: we can't do that, Like these are these are real

1359
01:09:40,240 --> 01:09:43,640
Speaker 1: people's lives. We're not going to try to, you know,

1360
01:09:43,720 --> 01:09:46,479
Speaker 1: take those stories and just spoop them up. That's not

1361
01:09:47,479 --> 01:09:51,120
Speaker 1: you know, that's that would be disrespectful. A Blair Mountain

1362
01:09:51,160 --> 01:09:56,320
Speaker 1: happened because of the mountain is possessed or something. It's like, yeah,

1363
01:09:56,360 --> 01:10:00,400
Speaker 1: there's there's Yeah. Now you are already do better not

1364
01:10:00,439 --> 01:10:02,640
Speaker 1: trying to spoil anything for anyone who's listening to this

1365
01:10:02,680 --> 01:10:05,800
Speaker 1: who hasn't yet started listening to your show. You already

1366
01:10:05,840 --> 01:10:09,280
Speaker 1: do work with what it means to be digging into

1367
01:10:09,320 --> 01:10:11,360
Speaker 1: the earth, you know, and you're doing it at a

1368
01:10:11,400 --> 01:10:15,080
Speaker 1: better level than just being like which told the miners

1369
01:10:15,160 --> 01:10:18,200
Speaker 1: to shoot and that's why they started fighting against their

1370
01:10:18,240 --> 01:10:25,679
Speaker 1: bosses or whatever. Yeah, you can be a writer said

1371
01:10:26,320 --> 01:10:29,360
Speaker 1: you should you should shoot. We can we can talk

1372
01:10:29,360 --> 01:10:33,320
Speaker 1: about that, Margaret, We we you qualified. You qualified, you

1373
01:10:33,360 --> 01:10:38,000
Speaker 1: are Appalachic. We we actually we actually have we we

1374
01:10:38,080 --> 01:10:40,760
Speaker 1: kind of have policies. We we have written the show.

1375
01:10:40,760 --> 01:10:43,920
Speaker 1: We have one guest writer who is an outsider, but

1376
01:10:44,080 --> 01:10:47,360
Speaker 1: they are writing from the perspective of an outsider. But like,

1377
01:10:47,560 --> 01:10:51,080
Speaker 1: get caught up and I all right, yeah, get caught

1378
01:10:51,120 --> 01:10:54,280
Speaker 1: up on the show and I'll be more Absolutely would be.

1379
01:10:54,400 --> 01:10:58,599
Speaker 1: We can talk. We'll talk about it after the show. Yeah. Yeah,

1380
01:10:58,960 --> 01:11:05,800
Speaker 1: But it's gonna be about owegivor. It's not board, says Oregon.

1381
01:11:07,960 --> 01:11:13,440
Speaker 1: It's the ghost of Mother Jones. It's creeping, creeping libration

1382
01:11:13,520 --> 01:11:15,400
Speaker 1: idea either. I'm just going to throw that out. Oh yeah,

1383
01:11:15,400 --> 01:11:20,800
Speaker 1: we're definitely gonna do that. Yes, well we are going

1384
01:11:20,840 --> 01:11:22,200
Speaker 1: to do We are gonna do a season about the

1385
01:11:22,200 --> 01:11:29,439
Speaker 1: Satanic panic in Uh, it's gonna happen. Okay, that sounds

1386
01:11:29,439 --> 01:11:32,160
Speaker 1: a great And where can people hit you all up?

1387
01:11:32,200 --> 01:11:34,760
Speaker 1: If they want to know more about your show, they

1388
01:11:34,760 --> 01:11:38,320
Speaker 1: can go on over to Old Gods of Appalachia dot com. Uh,

1389
01:11:38,520 --> 01:11:41,760
Speaker 1: you can find us one. Actually, Old God's Appalagy dot

1390
01:11:41,760 --> 01:11:43,960
Speaker 1: com is the best all our social media, the discord server,

1391
01:11:44,080 --> 01:11:46,679
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff is there and we're available

1392
01:11:46,680 --> 01:11:52,439
Speaker 1: wherever your fine podcast Sundry Goods are found awesome, Margaret,

1393
01:11:52,479 --> 01:11:55,040
Speaker 1: Do you have anything you want to plug here? You mean,

1394
01:11:55,160 --> 01:11:57,720
Speaker 1: like my upcoming book of short stories, we Won't Be

1395
01:11:57,760 --> 01:12:00,800
Speaker 1: Here Tomorrow. I have an upcoming look of short stories

1396
01:12:00,840 --> 01:12:02,360
Speaker 1: called we Won't Be Here Tomorrow that comes out from

1397
01:12:02,360 --> 01:12:06,280
Speaker 1: a k presl in September two thousand twenty two. That's

1398
01:12:06,320 --> 01:12:09,320
Speaker 1: the right year, that's this year, and people can pre

1399
01:12:09,439 --> 01:12:11,479
Speaker 1: order it some time in June, which is probably around

1400
01:12:11,520 --> 01:12:13,400
Speaker 1: when you're listening. Actually, you can be listening to this

1401
01:12:13,439 --> 01:12:15,240
Speaker 1: fifteen years from now if they're still a world. That'd

1402
01:12:15,240 --> 01:12:18,920
Speaker 1: be pretty quick, don't know. Yeah, And uh, Sophie, where

1403
01:12:18,920 --> 01:12:23,760
Speaker 1: can people find you? Oh gosh, nowhere? But they can

1404
01:12:23,800 --> 01:12:30,720
Speaker 1: follow at cool Zone Media on Twitter, Instagram, cool And

1405
01:12:31,000 --> 01:12:33,040
Speaker 1: we just wanted to shout out our editor Ian Johnson,

1406
01:12:33,200 --> 01:12:36,439
Speaker 1: Yeah for all your hard work. It takes a bunch

1407
01:12:36,520 --> 01:12:39,960
Speaker 1: of people to do these things and that gets forgotten,

1408
01:12:40,160 --> 01:12:42,479
Speaker 1: but not by the people who do the things and

1409
01:12:42,560 --> 01:12:45,000
Speaker 1: not by you listeners, because now you know, Daddie and

1410
01:12:45,080 --> 01:12:48,120
Speaker 1: Johnson rules. He certainly does. And we'll be back next

1411
01:12:48,160 --> 01:12:56,160
Speaker 1: week with another ya by Cool People Who did. Cool

1412
01:12:56,160 --> 01:12:58,960
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of Cool Zone Media, but more

1413
01:12:59,000 --> 01:13:02,000
Speaker 1: podcasts and cools in media. Visit our website poulls own

1414
01:13:02,040 --> 01:13:04,400
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I

1415
01:13:04,520 --> 01:13:08,120
Speaker 1: Heard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1416
01:13:12,640 --> 01:13:12,680
Speaker 1: H