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Photo, Print, Drawing Jess Duncan, union organizer, seated in front of a union banner on the first floor of the union hall

About this Item

Title

  • Jess Duncan, union organizer, seated in front of a union banner on the first floor of the union hall

Names

  • Duncan, Jess (Depicted)
  • Eiler, Lyntha Scott (Photographer)

Created / Published

  • September 28, 1995

Headings

  • -  Fall
  • -  September
  • -  Year-round work
  • -  Mining
  • -  UMWA Local 6608 Union Hall
  • -  Photographs
  • -  Ethnography
  • -  West Virginia -- Raleigh County -- Sundial

Genre

  • Photographs
  • Ethnography

Notes

  • -  The Union Hall in Sundial is the meeting place for Union Local 6608 of the United Mine Workers. During the field project there was much discussion of the Massey/Pittston strikes that had occurred in the 1980s, and about the deeper history of District 17, which some called "the backbone of the United Mineworkers." Districts 17 and 23 had been prominent in the famous March on Blair Mountain of 1921, when 10,000 armed miners attempted to march against the industry's hired thugs in Logan County in order to establish the union there. That uprising was put down by the federal government. In the 1990s, after many decades of union strength in the coal fields, coal is being removed in record quantities with a greatly reduced workforce, much of it non-union. We encountered many miners who had been laid off after nearly twenty years in the mines, just short of eligibility for pensions. Blair Mountain itself is slated for mountaintop removal. We met with members of the UMW Local to ask them for their views on forest issues. A number of miners linked forest health with their hope that deep mining will return to replace mountaintop removal mining -- both as a means of putting more men to work and minimizing the destructive impact of mountaintop removal mining on the land.

Medium

  • 35 mm Color Slide

Call Number/Physical Location

  • AFC 1999/008: CRF-LE-C014-16

Source Collection

  • Coal River Folklife Collection (AFC 1999/008)

Repository

  • American Folklife Center

Digital Id

Online Format

  • image

IIIF Presentation Manifest

Rights & Access

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Copy photographs of numerous historical still photographs owned by Woody Boggs and Rick Bradford were made and are reproduced here with permission of the owners.

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Credit line

Coal River Folklife Project collection (AFC 1999/008), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Duncan, Jess, and Lyntha Scott Eiler. Jess Duncan, union organizer, seated in front of a union banner on the first floor of the union hall. West Virginia Raleigh County Sundial, 1995. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/cmns000037/.

APA citation style:

Duncan, J. & Eiler, L. S. (1995) Jess Duncan, union organizer, seated in front of a union banner on the first floor of the union hall. West Virginia Raleigh County Sundial, 1995. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/cmns000037/.

MLA citation style:

Duncan, Jess, and Lyntha Scott Eiler. Jess Duncan, union organizer, seated in front of a union banner on the first floor of the union hall. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/cmns000037/>.