The Road to Blair Mountain: Saving a Mine Wars Battlefield from King Coal by Charles B. Keeney

Much larger than the January 6th, 2021, assault on the U. S. Capitol by supporters of Donald J. Trump attempting to prevent the election of his successor, the Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest armed uprising in the United States since the Civil War. It happened from August 25 to September 2, 1921, and involved some 10,000 union miners confronting 3,000 lawmen in an attempt to unionize all of West Virginia’s coal mines. Perhaps as many as 100 deaths and many times more arrests occurred. Then from 2009 until 2018 another Battle of Blair Mountain occurred. This time it was fought to place the battlefield on the National Register of Historic Places and thus0 prevent the mountain from being utterly destroyed by mountain-top removal coal mining. One of the union leaders of the battle 100 years ago was Frank Keeney, and one of the leaders of the twenty-first century battle was Charles B. Keeney, his great-grandson. He is the author of this book and a history professor at Sothern West V