By Mike Templeton
A great many urban Appalachians still have strong and living ties to their homeplaces in Appalachia that go back many generations. For some the events of Appalachian history are not just the subject of books but of intricately woven family histories. The Urban Appalachian Community Coalition is acutely aware of this and continuously engages in things like our Kith and Kin project which seeks to preserve living family histories. New ways of keeping Appalachian history alive and in the public imagination is a priority. A new book offers a genuinely new way of telling the complex and harrowing history of the West Virginia Mine Wars, a subject no doubt familiar to many urban Appalachians. Black Coal and Red Bandanas: An Illustrated History of the West Virginia Mine Wars, published by PM Press, renders the history of the mine wars in the form of a graphic novel.
The West Virginia Mine Wars are a series of complex and ultimately bloody events in the early part of the 20th Century that has come to be known as one of the most important chapters in the history of Appalachian life and in the history of American labor. The battles between striking coal miners and the ruthless and wealthy mine owners, with the backing of governments both local and federal, are some of the most important events in Appalachian and American labor history. It was during this period that ordinary people engaged in the most harrowing conflicts in American history after the American Civil War. There are numerous books and studies on these events and a movie called Matewan, which was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry last year. Matewan is not available for streaming, but a DVD can be checked out from the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library.
Several important books exist that can give us a thorough account of the West Virginia Mine Wars, but a new book brings these events out in a unique way. Black Coal and Red Bandanas: An Illustrated History of the West Virginia Mine Wars provides a new look at these crucial historical events in the form of a graphic nonfiction novel. Written by Raymond Tyler and illustrated by Summer McClinton, the book is a graphic history in the form of the now familiar graphic novel, that brings these events to life for a new readership.
What we now refer to as the West Virginia Mine Wars is a set of events that unfolded between 1912 and 1921. These events were triggered with the first of a series of strikes by coal miner against mine owners for better wages and working conditions and culminated with what is now known as the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921 in which anywhere between 5000 and 20,000 miners engaged in a full battle against local sheriffs and sheriff’s deputies. President Warren G. Harding threatened to invoke martial law to put a stop to the uprising. Thunder in the Mountains by Lon Savage is one of many books that details the Battle of Blair Mountain and its context. It too is available at CHPL.
Black Coal and Red Bandanas recreates these events in graphic novel form and provides vivid insights into the historical events in ways only an illustrated history is able to accomplish. What we gain from a graphic historical novel that dramatizes the events of the mine wars is a way of reading about an historically grounded insight into the minds of and lives of those who were directly involved. Graphic novels offer a mode of storytelling that is altogether unique. While there are historical studies and books that provide an account of these events, the need for another book and another way of telling the story is provided in the book itself.
The Foreword by Gordon Simmons, retired labor organizer and President of the West Virginia Labor History Association, tells us that the events of the West Virginia Mine Wars were suppressed even within West Virginia itself. Simmons tells us: “For decades, thousands of students required by law to study the state’s history in its public schools heard not a whisper about the West Virginia Mine Wars that stretched from 1912 to 1921.” This part of the history of West Virginia has been suppressed even though the mine war made national and international news while they were happening, and historians consider these events to be the most important events of American labor history. What is at stake in the telling and re-telling is captured within the graphic novel itself.
For anyone who may be new to the graphic novel, it has been around for decades, and while the form and format of the graphic novel has obvious affinities with comic books, the similarities end pretty quickly and obviously. Graphic novels are often not at all for children. The stories and content are quite serious, complex, and challenging. Scholars of both literacy and history have emphasized the ways graphic novels use text and images to elevate understanding into more than one dimension. The graphic novel can operate in multiple dimensions which deepen our understanding of the topic. For this reason, many literacy professionals encourage the use of graphic novels. Other scholars have shown that historical events become more vivid and have more of an impact when rendered in the form of the graphic novel. Black Coal and Red Bandanas provides a way of reading about and gaining insight into the historical events of the mine wars in ways that enhance what we gain from the conventional historical novel or historical study.
Just looking through a few pages almost at random one can see how the narrative alternates between the comic book dialogue bubble and a more formal text which can run along the side of or the bottom of the page. Images also alternate between detailed renderings of miners, their families, mine owners, military and paramilitary officials, and a sweeping view of action sequences that dramatize the violence of the battles and fights. There is no way to minimize the horrors of these events other than to suppress them entirely, and this is why a book such as Black Coal and Red Bandanas is so important. Even as powerful people have sought to bury these events, ordinary people have relentlessly campaigned to make certain they can never be hidden. The people who fought and died in these wars are never forgotten by their loved ones and those who knew them, and the descendants of these people remain deeply impacted by what happened. We should draw attention to the fact that these kinds of horrifying events played an important part in the pressures that led Appalachians to leave the region for urban areas and create what we now call urban Appalachians.
The Introduction by Shaun Slifer of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan tells us that the threat of powerful mining interests still hangs over anyone in West Virginia who could present a threat to the interests of the mining industry. Slifer explains that the interests of mining companies operates on the order of a religion, and “anything that complicates the narratives put forth by industry and its front groups and public relations operatives stands a good chance of coming under sustained attack.” Books like Black Coal and Red Bandanas is just such a complication of the dominant narratives, and it provides a complication the world genuinely needs. This graphic novel gives voice and brings to life the faces and the very real humans who stood up to and fought some of the most powerful people in the world to provide a safe and decent life for working people. These are stories that still need to be told, and the more ways we have of telling these stories the better.
The Urban Appalachian Community Coalition has long advocated on behalf of those who stand up to powerful interests. From environmental issues that victimize urban Appalachians to unfair housing and employment practices, UACC and its predecessor, the Urban Appalachian Council, have always fought for justice on these kinds of issues. What is more, telling the story has remained just as important. From our own Kith and Kin to the work of our Research Committee, the story and histories of the Appalachian people are of utmost importance. A book such Black Coal and Red Bandanas: An Illustrated History of the West Virginia Mine Wars provides a crucial new way of telling the stories of the Appalachian people who fought for the rights of working people. This is a story that is essential to our understanding of Appalachian history and American labor history.
Black Coal and Red Bandanas: An Illustrated History of the West Virginia Mine Wars is published by PM Press and can be purchased by following this link: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1661.
My source for the brief discussion of the value of graphic novels is drawn for this essay: Boerman-Cornell, William. “Using Historical Graphic Novels in High School History Classes: Potential for Contextualization, Sourcing, and Corroborating.” The History Teacher, vol. 48, no. 2, 2015, pp. 209–24.
Michael Templeton is a writer, and independent scholar. He is the author of The Chief of Birds: A Memoir published with Erratum Press and Impossible to Believe, forthcoming from Iff Books. He is also the author of Collected Apoems, forthcoming from LJMcD Communications and the awaiting of awaiting: a novella, with Nut Hole Publishing. Check out his profile in UACC’s Cultural Directory. He has published numerous articles and essays on contemporary culture and works of creative non-fiction as well as experimental works and poetry. He lives in West Milton, Ohio with his wife who is an artist.