MT. OLIVE - The Mt. Olive-based Friends of Mother Jones Museum and the Union Miner’s Cemetery, are participating in the Blair 100 activities in West Virginia. Loretta Williams, will portray the legendary Irish firebrand, Mother Jones, who organized mine workers doing the mine wars in West Virginia and attempted to stop the late August to September 2, 1921, march from Marmet through Blair Mountain. Dale Hawkins, will portray the highly successful Illinois mine worker organizer, “General” Alexander Bradley, both of which are buried in Union Miner’s Cemetery.
On behalf of both organizations, these actors will travel to Charleston and will be greeting visitors at the Charleston Coliseum Convention Center where they will also be working an information table on September 3, from 4-7PM. Bradley will accompany Mother Jones, who will speak in Matewan, as part of the walking tour scheduled for September 5 from 4:45 to 5:45PM.
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About the Centennial: Representatives from The Mine Wars Museum (www.wvminewars.com/) and community organizations in West Virginia and Appalachia, along with committed individual volunteers, are developing a series of interactive and interpretive activities to be held throughout 2021, culminating in a main event over Labor Day Weekend (September 4th – 7th) 2021. See the schedule of events and locations at www.blair100.com.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum a $30,000 challenge grant for The Blair Centennial Project, a plan to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain in 2021. The NEH grant committee called the Blair Centennial Project “a bold and collaborative effort to use the humanities to foster cultural tourism and give a challenged community hope for the future through respect for the past.”
The Battle of Blair Mountain is a landmark event in United States history. Coal mining families in southern West Virginia joined the United Mine Workers of America and rose up against a cruel system created and controlled by the mine owners. This system denied them civil rights enjoyed by citizens elsewhere in the country. This was a five-day battle that took place in late August 1921. Bombs were dropped on these miners and historians estimate that a million rounds may have been fired during this conflict. Learn more about the Battle of Blair Mountain at: www.blair100.com
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