William C. Blizzard

West Virginia doesn't always get its due, where history is concerned. The State and her people have been called many discouraging things. The motto of "Mountaineers Are Always Free" wasn't always true. The story of Blair Mountain tells of a time when the coal conglomerates owned the miner. The unions fought for the rights of the miners and the rights of man. The Federal Government and the State of WV bombed the miners when they marched and for me to try and do this story justice through a review is thinking large. If you are a West Virginian, a history buff or someone interested in what those before you fought for so that we may have what we have today, you should read this book.
My husband and I listened to the audio edition of this book and I think it made the story all the more interesting.… (mere)

Odd and interesting. This is an account of events in West Virginia's coal fields during 1921 and 1922, especially the march to Blair Mountain in '22--with two decades' context. It was written roughly 30 years after the events it describes, and the author's father was one of the principal characters in the confrontation.

The author was a journalist in the fifties, writing for a labor newspaper, and this book was originally a daily series in that paper written and published over the course of about three months. It works surprisingly well, under those circumstances; while the daily breaks are shown in the text, they had little impact on the organization and don't much effect readability.

This book is essentially unsourced and shows an unabashed labor bias; it shouldn't be quoted without another source. But the main facts are here and well-described; an essential resource for mining or labor researchers.

This review has also been published on a dabbler's journal.… (mere)