Closing the blog for a short spell

The blog will be closed until late September, but please scroll down and enjoy yourself.

Thanks!

Reading R.G. Yoho's "The Nine Lives of Charles E. Lively"

The Nine Lives of Charles E. Lively--The Deadliest Man in the West Virginia-Colorado Col Mine Wars
R.G. Yoho
Burlington, North Carolina: Fox Run Publishing, 2020

167 pp., $19.95 paperback
https://www.foxrunpub.com/

Books about labor history and their authors have their ups and downs. Over the past fifty years in the United States we have seen the field of labor history move from institutional histories of unions and strikes and the biographies or autobiographies of union leaders to making arguments in favor of theories about immigration and how classes formed in the United States. There followed from that very-much-needed scholarship on women, certain crafts and trades, people of color, specific immigrant groups and regions, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of radical workers and their organizations. Labor historians and others then delved into researching and writing about the daily lives of "ordinary" people and people and movements who had been important in their day and who have since been written out of history or forgotten about. Along the way we had quite a few working-class people writing labor history as they knew it. None of these areas of study ever disappeared or were ever pushed aside exactly, but as research went on people began asking different questions about our history and searching for answers.

Labor history's fortunes are tied to the fortunes of the labor movement. When union organizing is on an upswing, more work on class struggles gets written and published. When unions are doing less well, there is less published. Much labor history has been written as a part of  a wider attempt to map a history of the United States that includes everyone. That has meant deconstructing or disassembling aspects of our culture, and that is a continuing project. Getting working-class people on tape or film who were closely involved in their communities has been essential to this. The historians have taken us apart, but they have not yet put us back together with a full understanding of who we are. Much labor history has also been about answering specific questions. Why doesn't the United States have a larger labor movement, mass labor and socialist parties, a more cooperativist society as other countries do? Why are race and gender our largely unspoken and unapproached divided lines, and what does this mean in the daily lives of working-class people? How do working-class identities intersect and where and why do they diverge from one another? What do "race," "class," and "gender" mean in the United States anyway?

Labor historians necessarily write from the histories of their countries and their peoples. You can catch up with what is new and interesting in labor history by going to the Labor and Working Class History Association to start with. There are labor history events on Zoom about every week from one source or another. There are journals, films, music, museums, and lots of books being published that are way too expensive for most working-class people to afford. If you're interested in radical analysis of labor history that you can afford, go to International Publishers and Haymarket Books to start. If you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket, head over to the University of Illinois Press to start.

There are many people who write and present about labor history who are not attached to colleges and universities and who self-publish. There are also many professors who teach at smaller colleges who have devoted themselves to doing local labor histories. Over the past few years there has been quite a bit of interest in the West Virginia Mine Wars, and there are people who live in West Virginia who are uniquely qualified to tell the stories of the Mine Wars. The Mine Wars ran from around 1912 into the early 1920s. This was essentially open warfare between mine workers and their supporters, on the one side, and the coal companies, law enforcement and gun thugs, and politicians who sided with the companies on the other side. It is remarkable to understand that working-class people engaged in prolonged armed struggle in Central Appalachia. It is more remarkable to understand that similar battles were fought in Colorado, parts of the South, Illinois, and many other places all within the last one-hundred and-forty years. These were open battles over workers' rights, safety on the job, higher pay and wage floors, the right to union representation, democratic government, and, in many cases, the right of workers to control or have a say in how coal was going to be mined. Please visit the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum and look at the books and learning sessions they offer to begin learning more. 

R.G. Yoho has written a book about Charles E. Lively, a complex and troubled man who worked for the notorious Baldwin-Felts detective agency. Baldwin-Felts is most often remembered as a union-busting and strike-breaking outfit that had on its payroll men who spied on union organizers and used violence and extra-legal means to achieve their ends and most often got away with what they had done. Really, nothing good can be said about Baldwin-Felts and objectivity is impossible when discussing the agency. Lively was a mine worker who took the side of the anti-union gun thugs. He spied on union miners, infiltrated the union ranks, and committed terrible acts of violence in Colorado and West Virginia, and probably in other states as well. In doing this he was part of a large and nefarious cohort. He and a few others were responsible for the murders of Sid Hatfield, the pro-union sheriff of Matewan, West Virginia, and Ed Chambers, Hatfield's friend and deputy, in Welch, West Virginia on August 1, 1921. Lively never paid for his major crimes, unless we consider his downward-spiral over the years as justice.

These assassinations were carried out in order to revenge the outcome of the Battle of Matewan on May 19, 1920 during which seven Baldwin-Felts detectives were killed. Two miners and Matewan's pro-union mayor were also killed that day, and the number of people wounded has never been determined. The violence in Matewan was one part of class and community conflict in the region as the coal industry sought to take over the state. The killings of Hatfield and Chambers sparked outrage across southern West Virginia and helped lead to a mass armed march by mine workers on Logan County, West Virginia and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Workers had reached their limit and wanted justice and their communities supported them.

Yoho's book is not a reliable labor history. He gets the initials of the United Mine Workers of America wrong and he misses an opportunity to describe the violence that Baldwin-Felts operatives engaged in in Colorado and how one of those operatives was assassinated in Trinidad, Colorado. He gets a story of a lynching in Colorado wrong. The socialists who were so important to mine worker organizing in Colorado and West Virginia get little attention. Yoho uses many newspaper articles as sources that appeared in newspapers far away from West Virginia and Colorado. Mother Jones, often called "The Miner's Angel" for her work in union organizing is mentioned without examination, although she committed serious errors in Colorado and West Virginia. People of color and immigrants who are essential to the story don't get mentioned. Yoho does not take up the fights that mine workers organized to take control of their work and all of the ways the coal operators fought back and insisted on holding the cards.

But Yoho does something else that is remarkable when he follows Lively into what must have been madness and dissolution. Labor historians rarely do this. Yoho is good at questioning motivations and creating a narrative of Lively's fall. He seems to dismiss Lively's anti-communism and reactionary politics as his motivations for betraying others and trying to break the miners' union. He goes deeper and gets as close to Lively's inner self as an author can do from a distance and in a short book. This becomes a good case study of someone who lives at the margins with an outsized temper and a level of alienation that swamps him. We see Lively falling apart over the years and then taking his life as he was hitting rock bottom. This occurred in 1962, or forty-two years after Lively had been one of the team who killed Hatfield and Chambers. It is difficult indeed to find anything redeeming in the life of Charles Lively as R.G. Yoho tells the story, and that helps make this a compelling tale.

This is a book that cries for better editing, less repetition, and less insistence on holding the moral highroad, though I share most of Yoho's sympathies.

If you have not seen John Sayles' film "Matewan" you owe it to yourself to see it. Here is a scene from the film that carries on the legend of Sid Hatfield:

Charles Lively appears in the film here. He is the man who makes "the bad end of the bullet" speech.
                

An important reminder to non-Native parents before school starts

Taken from the Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church and Native Americans Facebook pages:

As summer comes to an end and the school year begins, if you have non-Native kids please take the time to help them understand that many Indigenous children wear their hair long and/or in braids.
Hair is sacred in many Indigenous cultures, our hair is a symbol of strength, wisdom, and identity. Some teach that your spirit lives at the base of your neck and spine which protects you. The longer the braid grows to the earth the more grounded you are.

 
#BackToSchool #LongHair #NativeCulture #IndigenousTradition

Pic: via Pete Cardenas

A Prayer For Workers On Labor Day

Lord God, Master of the Vineyard,

How wonderful that you have invited us

who labor by the sweat of our brow

to be workers in the vineyard

and assist your work

to shape the world around us.

As we seek to respond to this call,

make us attentive to those who seek work

but cannot find it.

Help us listen to the struggles of those

who work hard to provide for their families

but still have trouble making ends meet.

Open our eyes to the struggles of those exploited

and help us speak for just wages and safe conditions,

the freedom to organize, and time for renewal.

For work was made for humankind

and not humankind for work.

Let it not be a vehicle for exploitation

but a radiant expression of our human dignity.

Give all who labor listening hearts

that we may pause from our work

to receive your gift of rest.

Fill us with your Holy Spirit

that you might work through us to let your justice reign.

Amen.

Taken from the The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Labor Network.

Radio station WMMT is back on the air!

WMMT is one of my favorite radio stations. It comes from Whitesburg, KY., and the station went off the air for awhile because of the recent flooding.

The station is back on the air and anyone with a computer anywhere in the world can tune in.

This is non-commercial, listener-supported, and democratically-controlled radio that does the great work of connecting people across a big spread of Appalachia and connecting people who live outside of the region with the region.

Tine in here.

Support WMMT here.

A great snack recipe

Doesn't this look good?

You can make it with these directions:

1 bag of pecans
1 bag of cashews
1 bag of almonds
1 bag of dried cranberries
1/2 cup honey
6 T coconut oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Heat the honey and oil till melted; add vanilla and cinnamon.

Bake at 275 degrees. Stir every 10 minutes.

The poster I got this from said that she removed her's after about 20-25 minutes but that you can bake 30 minutes for more crunch.

"Out Among The Stars"--Hazel Dickens

I know that many people have done versions of this song. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings did especially memorable versions. But today I heard the version done by Hazel Dickens and it moved me. I have not heard it in many years. I think that this song explains so much of what we see on the news these days. Think a good thought for the people on both sides of the gun because neither side is the right side. If you're one of us who is getting weary bearing your burdens and your scars please talk itr out with someone and get some help.

    

Don't Throw These Away - 10 Useful Things You're Throwing Away!

The Pressley Girls come to us by way of Celebrating Appalachia. We highly recommend that blog. You can also find them on Youtube doing music, giving us meditations, teaching Appalachian language, driving around, and more. This is a good reflection on not wasting and giving some hints on how to repurpose things. That and I feel that this video connects me to people and a place I miss.   

 

"Our tears and smiles reveal the hope hidden behind our daily life, the quiet need we never express."

"Prayers do not need special times or special words. Our prayers exist unspoken in the

 silent spaces between our actions. They are an expression of our ancient spiritual instinct,

 a reaching out into the other world for any help that may be there. Our heart speaks more

 eloquently than any mantra about the things we long for and wish could happen. Our tears and

 smiles reveal the hope hidden behind our daily life, the quiet need we never express. We are praying every day, whether we acknowledge it or not. And our prayers are being heard every day, whether we believe it or not."

--The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston

Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

Something to smile on #18

Every Friday we post some things that we hope will make you smile. There will nothing here on Fridays that will make you think really hard or worry or get angry or depressed (we hope). Please do look around the blog, follow us, argue, use the recipes, get some comfort from all of our other posts. But on Fridays just grin a little. If there is something here that you can read, try clicking on it. Thanks!

"Thank goodness the Thesaurus survived!"

For those of you who didn't get the post above:

Conway Twitty--It's Only Make Believe

An abandoned vehicle on Rt. 119 

Balcony seating at the derive-in

Well, I'm at the emergency room 😩. This day has not been good. I got the chance to go horse back riding. Big mistake. I got on the horse and started out slowly, but I got cocky.  So we started going a little faster and before I knew it, we were going as fast as the horse could go. And when I tried to stop the horse, I couldn't stop him, he must have gotten spooked or something. He was out of control, so I decided to try to jump off the horse, and instead, I fell off but my foot got caught in the stirrup and the horse was dragging me. And he wouldn't stop. Every time I screamed at him to stop, the horse went faster.

🐎

Thank goodness the manager at the grocery store came out and unplugged the machine. But he had the nerve to take the rest of my quarters so I wouldn't attempt to ride it again.

Pastor Kalina preaches in Salem-Keizer, Oregon. She is from Tonga. Being in her

 presence instantly relaxes me. She has been doing these chair praise dance videos for

 awhile now. Most people can do these without much effort. These are meditative.

Monica Ross and Family featuring Daddy (aka Sir Joseph Wilson) “God Will 

Take Care of You” (This really comes home for me.)

I miss people who

*know that "a mess” is how much it takes to feed your family and that "a bate” is how much

 you get to eat of that “mess.”

* know that it's not "directly"-- it's "dreckly."

*know that "Comin' up a cloud" or "Here come a wind" means close the windows, unplug

everything and get away from the windows.

"Be at peace today. Even if it is one of your worst days: be at peace."

"Be at peace today. Even if it is one of your worst days: be at peace. What hurts us will one day cease. What worries us will be resolved. What we long for will be revealed. Even if we are engaged in a great struggle right now, we can be at peace in our mind and heart through the Spirit, for life is more than what limits us. There is an endless love surrounding us, broader and deeper than any ocean. There is beauty and hope and healing. There is change and there is renewal. Remember this promise in sunshine and in shadow. And be at peace. Be at peace today."

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston