While there is something about the artifacts that feels profoundly American, many items sing of the rich cultural heritage brought overseas by immigrants seeking a better life and finding themselves in the hollow of Matewan. One display at the museum specifically showcases such multicultural relics, though the nods to the miners’ homelands can be seen in so many of the photos: kilts and embroidered vests with paisley designs, the clothing of people holding on to their past while working to create a brighter future. That these cultures persevered is ironically the work of the mine owners themselves, who, according to historians of the museum, purposefully kept each culture apart. As immigrants came off the boats in New York, they were offered jobs at the mine, given places to live in their own area of Matewan, and assigned to a shift where they worked according to ethnicity of origin. Cultures were not shared and other languages were not learned, all of which was a tool of the mine owners to avoid unionization—when the miners didn’t know each other, they could resent each other and animosity could grow, which kept them from finding common ground for demanding fair wages and safe conditions.
Ultimately, the groups did meet, talk, and unionize. The red bandannas they wore, originally produced in Scotland with designs taken from Hungarian and Persian traditional patterns, are a tribute to that blending. They were worn like a uniform, a simple way to tell who was on their side. One origin of the word “redneck” derives from these bandannas: the term, which is now used with some amount of xenophobia to refer to small-minded people who typically live in rural Southern areas, in this sense is actually a nod to diversity and working together for a common good. In a photo of the burial of Sid Hatfield, funeral attendees can be seen wearing patterns found in the bandannas, as well as Scottish kilts, lace, and other formal attire brought along during long boat rides to America.
“Today,” Steele sighs, her gaze extending into the rich green forest just beyond her porch, “without the unions bringing people together, there is more bigotry. Just how they’ve always wanted it, keeping workers apart instead of fighting together.” Steele’s husband, Terry, a retired mine worker and member of the United Mine Workers Association (UMWA) union, agrees. The way he sees it, today’s workers are paid good wages and when they are let go, it’s blamed on the increasing government regulations that cost King Coal money in upkeep. But the regulations are necessary for the people to live, because they affect their own drinking water and air quality, their own children’s welfare.
Unions are a contentious topic in Mingo County, with no active miners among the 850 members of the UMWA; many miners blame the union and the government for the hard times miners are facing as interest in coal diminishes. From the union perspective, the main reason people are losing their jobs is because the mine owners—including Blankenship—didn’t want to lose money by keeping up with regulations when they could afford it. Meanwhile, some people hate the unions because the unions are getting paid through tax dollars. “But that’s only because the mine company didn’t pay into the pensions when they had the money and now that they aren’t doing as well, they certainly don’t want to pay,” Terry says.
Indeed, some in King Coal country are doing worse than others. Although Blankenship now lives in Tennessee, he maintained his home in Mingo County until retirement (though once his actions at Massey polluted the water, he did have special plumbing installed to source clean water from outside the county7—a luxury not available to his workers and neighbors). Since the Upper Big Branch disaster, critics of Blankenship seem to have no difficulty seeing evil in his beady eyes and villainous mustache. Certainly, they’ve been given little reason to see anything else. Maybe it’s her art-teacher openheartedness, or her love for her fellow West Virginians, but Steele is the first to comment on the complexity of Blankenship: He’s not quite evil, and that’s perhaps even more dangerous.
“He’s the kind of person who really listens to people, really tries to figure out who they are,” she says. “When we were in school, he was a nice guy, I mean a really nice person. Everyone liked him. And if somebody didn’t, well, they were the jerk, and that was generally known.” When asked what happened to make Blankenship grow up to be the type of person who would care so little for his fellows, she could only shrug: “Coal got him.” When he originally came to Massey as an office manager, she says, he could have cleaned up a lot of King Coal’s practices. Instead, he became known as the leading force against the UMWA. When the victims from the Upper Big Branch explosion were autopsied, it was revealed that 71 percent of them suffered from black lung, the deadly coal dust disease. The industry average is 3.2 percent.
Blankenship has visited the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, presumably curious as to what version of history
