| The evidence of revisionism at the state's showcase historic museum is indisputable. What it reveals about the direction of West Virginia's socioeconomic future is alarming.
According to website of the National Historic Landmarks Program,
[F}rom 1912-1913, some of the most violent labor battles in American history took place in the Kanawha-New River coalfield of West Virginia. Yet both the cause and historical implications are anything but clarified by the museum.
One hundred years ago, three officers of the Western Federation of Miners were indicted for murder. President Theodore Roosevelt declared that they were "undesirable citizens." Working people and radicals all over the country responded with insignia stating, "I am an undesirable citizen." source:
Undesirable citizens, indeed.
Thus it was likely Teddy Roosevelt's attempt to prejudice the Pennsylvania court system against the leaders of the Great Mine Strike of 1907 that accidentally set the tone for the historic Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. Was it a coincidence that the murderous armored train that strafed the Holly Grove, WV camp was named the BullMoose Soecial?
The leaders of the Colorado Labor War had been unfairly portrayed as radical bomb throwers by the mine operators in the media of the day, and Roosevelt confirmed it by using his bully pulpit to quell more violence from spreading to laborers all across the country. Because at the time, America was a country comprised mostly of have-nots, thanks to a small, powerful cadre of "robber barons". Did coal operator Quin Morton and Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin purposely hijack Roosevelt's rhetoric by naming their bloody armored train after him? If not, then the coincidence would have been a fairly obvious signal to labor leaders that they couldn't trust the federal government to back WV miners' acts of rebellion against their desperate situation. The fact that the "General" of the famous "Redneck Army" was a Republican, a family man and a rock-solid coal loader instead of a bomb-throwing radical was not lost on the nation during reports of the coalpatch rebellion, despite the coal operators best efforts portray him as such. Yet somehow I missed seeing any of that detailed in the museum, although I've been there a number of times.
Also not explained is the fact that
[o]perators benefited from state legislation during the war. At [WV] Governor Cornwell's urging, his legislature passed a bill that gave the Governor the authority "to call deputy sheriffs into state service to suppress insurrection and to preserve the peace." An obvious reference to controlling labor disturbances. Another law outlawed idleness. This law required able bodied men between sixteen and sixty to work thirty-six hours or more per week. Those found guilty of violating the law were subject to a fine of $100 or more and a sentence of sixty days at hard labor. Operators used this legislation to their advantage during the war.
Hopes for a measure of coal field democracy raised by World War I proved elusive. The oppressive nature of coal field institutions and the tyrannical attitudes of the operators led to new conflicts between operators and miners. The stress in the Mingo and Logan coal fields was caused by the wartime legislation, the absence of the War Labor Board, declining wages, the denial of various miners' rights, and the use of the mine guards.
source: West Virginia Historical Society publication Thanks to that West Virginia Historical Society publication, (source link directly above) we know that West Virginia's use of the term "Clean Coal" went all the way back to when coal operators hijacked the UMW's patriotic rhetoric to push legislators into passing laws that literally allowed them to turn coal miners into their indentured servants.
Now I'm no expert, but even I know that respectable historians and social anthropologists at least attempt to piece together a narrative when presenting historical facts, if for no other reason than to help more people understand what happened. I challenge Dr. Sullivan, or any of the experts to explain how they've even attempted a narrative of the history of labor or the state's filthy political ties to WV's coal operators in that museum.
For example although the evening of Feb. 7, 1913 in Holly Grove, WV, is depicted to some small degree, even if you take the time to search, the museum doesn't note that those who had conspired to strafe miners from the bloody Bullmoose Special were never even arrested for slaughtering Cesco Estep at his home that night. It doesn't spell out that the same three, coal operator Quin Morton, paid mercenary Bonner Hill, and Logan county sheriff Don Chafin, also conspired to bring charges of treason against 1,217 miners, which, according to the revisionist essay at this link,, included 325 indicted for murder and 24 for "treason against the state".
Is it not notable that miners were actually rebelling against coal operators and land companies, and not "the state"? Because it surely doesn't spell it out in any WV state archives I've ever seen. And I've looked.
The museum does, however, have a very prominent display of some dead fleas.
"Emmiline and Alexander are our most famous artifacts," said Randall Reid-Smith, commissioner of the Department of Culture and History. "Generations of West Virginians have seen them and talked about them. When I came back here to work, the flea exhibit was one of the first things I asked about."
Personally, I think the museum would have far more veracity if, in place a the display which takes up valuable space to show off a couple of A. James Manchin's hand-me-down flea carcasses, the renovators would have presented a digitized display of the BullMoose Special rolling through Holly Grove as it machine-gunned Cesco Estep in the face while he was trying to protect his wife and child.
Instead, we get this cheesy P.T. Barnum style memorial to two parasites.
 source
The point is that we could have a real treasure-trove of information revealing how this state got to be in the mess it is today, so that we could better avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
But that would go against the overall strategy of coal operators to chase us all off their precious coal.
Note that the chunks of history that are missing actually telegraph the reason why revisionists are motivated to obscure them. These aren't minor details, but major facts which not only affected the entire labor movement, but substantially changed WV for the worse.
Notice which information was chosen and how it was selectively detailed and you'll begin to understand that it wasn't just negligence, but was done for the purpose of changing history altogether. For instance, although there is a small display of a coal operation "company store", the museum's description is that operators built and ran company stores in the coal camps for "convenience". The museum simply describes them as having offered a "wide variety of goods at moderate prices".
Yeesh.
Anyone who recalls hearing Tennessee Ernie Ford sing the chorus to Sixteen Tons knows how company stores were used basically enslave the miners.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;
I owe my soul to the company store.
According to Merle Travis, the line from the chorus "another day older and deeper in debt" was a phrase often used by his father, a coal miner himself. This and the line "I owe my soul to the company store" is a reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. Under this system workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with unexchangeable credit vouchers for goods at the company store, usually referred to as scrip. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay. In the United States the truck system and associated debt bondage persisted until the strikes of the newly-formed United Mine Workers and affiliated unions forced an end to such practices.
By the way, it was the coal industry in West Virginia which first forced laborers to sign yellow dog contracts on an extensive scale. One result of the WV Mine Wars was that yellow dog contracts were made illegal by the National Labor Relations Act. But our experts somehow thought that wasn't an important enough detail to include in their display. Even the extremely dismal living conditions in the early coal camps has been all but completely glossed over, along with the fact that land companies and mine operators colluded regularly with politicians to screw native West Virginians out of everything, including the fruits of their labor.
There's nothing whatsoever illustrating the bankruptcy of one of the nation's most productive deep mines for the sole purpose of screwing union miners out of their benefits. Nor is there any depiction of how in 1986 coal companies swallowed up 90% of Moore's "Super Tax Credits" which he and his cronies had legislated to promote new investments, justifying them by promising job growth. Instead, coal operators used them to purchase surface mine and longwall mining equipment which actually put even more West Virginians out of work.
I searched for any explanation why, according to the 1990 U.S. census, out of 2.7 million citizens who had been born in West Virginia and were still alive, 1.3 million no longer lived here. Isn't that an important part of our history? Yet the museum gives no account of it whatsoever.
I also missed any demonstration of the reason(s) why by 1994 there were only 22,000 West Virginia miners, down from a peak of 150,000 less than just 50 years earlier. source
In other words, when it comes to the saga of what the labor movement in general and coal companies in particular have done in West Virginia, the museum presents not a whole lot more than a couple of poorly lit cubby holes filled with a mish mash of confusion. It's not as important to figure out which of those five "experts" is responsible for displaying deep mine tools implemented upside-down as it is to understand that there is neither a meaningful narrative nor any evidence of what coal operators, land companies, and their puppet politicians have conspired to do to West Virginia for over a century now. Had the original pre-renovation museum display properly depicted that, then perhaps we wouldn't be in nearly the mess we are today.
Ultimately, the renovation is a dismal failure that adds deep insult to the original injury. I am old enough to have known my beloved home state in its heyday, only to watch as it circles the drain towards economic oblivion. Coalocrat revisionists have hidden the plug to that drain for far too long now.
Is it merely a coincidence that WV lost a seat in Congress' House of Representatives because so many people left the state during the same period that surface mining was rapidly expanding? The question is relevant because the history of interplay between coal operators and our state leaders is obviously long and sordid, yet the museum has gone out of its way to suppress it.
It is the perfection of symbolism that after the renovation the larger-than-life bronze likeness of WV governor Arch A. Moore, Jr. remains on public display on its prominent perch directly above Hillbilly Disneyland. In his heyday he was King Coalocrat personified. What makes the symbol's display pure perfection is the part where we're somehow all supposed to automatically understand why there's a lack of any description of his arrest and subsequent multiple convictions.
After all, the museum has its revisionist narrative reputation to uphold, doesn't it?
If you think I'm nit-pickinging, take a gander at what the WV Division of Culture and History published online about the first governor to succeed himself since 1872. What the administrators and their consultants obviously left out even on-line tells far more about West Virginia's political dilemma than the details provided about our past:
At the beginning of Moore's third term, West Virginia had the highest unemployment rate in the nation due to a recession in the coal industry. Moore expanded corporate tax credits to attract businesses to the state. In addition, the legislature reduced the amount coal companies were required to pay into workers' compensation.
That is all true. Every word of it. What is left out, though, is the amount of economic pain that the one-two punch of Moore's "Super Tax Credits" and his lowering of worker's comp payments by the coal companies wrought upon our work force and our small businesses. But if you're not yet persuaded that what was left out of their narrative isn't "revisionism", then get a load of what's missing in the next part:
In 1988, he was defeated in his re-election bid against Democrat Gaston Caperton. In 1990, Moore was found guilty of mail fraud. He served over two years in federal prison and paid a settlement to the state. source
Any guess as to what compelled the vaunted experts over at the WV Division of Revisionism to whittle Moore's list of convictions down to mail fraud? Because the fact is that after an extensive federal investigation in 1990, Moore actually pleaded guilty to five felonies.
That's right, folks, the WV Division of Culture and History has been caught red-handed attempting to actively revise Governor Moore's sordid past. And if there is any doubt what may have motivated them to do so, one of the indictments they chose to leave out strongly indicates their motivation. As a bonus, it also demonstrates why, of all our governors, they choose to keep his likeness proudly displayed.
The following is my own narrative of the facts listed in such a way that the reader can naturally reach a logical conclusion.
Instead of just the single conviction of mail fraud, Governor Moore additionally pleaded guilty to:
an indictment based on his obstruction of the investigation;
an indictment based on his admission he accepted illegal payments during his 1984 campaign;
an indictment that said he accepted illegal payments during his 1988 election campaign; and finally, most revealingly, his revisionist pals left out
an indictment based on his "extortion" of more than $723,000 from coal operator H. Paul Kizer of Maben Energy Corporation. That happens to be a coal company based in the town of Beckley. The money paid by Kizer was for Black Lung refunds and for Moore's lucrative state "Super Tax Credits."
source
Now let's connect some more dots. Kizer was naturally never indicted, because the term "extortion" was on Moore's indictment. But the names/ types of businesses which "illegally contributed" to Moore's campaigns on his other indictments were never published by WV's "History Archives", either.
YIKES!
Isn't the fact that there is no accurate list in either the online archives or on display at the museum indisputable evidence that coalocrats are revising the state's history?
Y'all be sure to come see our HillBilly Disneyland,now, y'hear? And don't fergit that its a-sponsored by the same people that brought us all that Clean Coal! |
