"Written In Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction" is edited by Wess Harris who is employed by Appalachian Community Services, Inc. located at 229 Birtice Road, Gay, West Virginia 25244, and the book can be ordered directly from Mr. Harris. The book is listed at $19.95 plus shipping and is well worth the price if you have any interest in the Appalachian coal mining industry and the efforts of coal miners to achieve and maintain safety in their relationship with the generally absentee owners of mines in Central and Southern Appalachia. This book was my first contact with what is known as Esau in the coal fields. My earlier discussion of this practice has been read by hundreds, perhaps a few thousand readers on this blog. The book is composed of about 20 generally short chapters written by several of the more important writers in the ongoing effort to accurately portray the history of the Appalachian coal fields. Those authors and/or interviewees include Wess Harris himself; William C. "Bill" Blizzard who was a writer for the Charleston Gazette for many years before being fired for refusing to cross a pressmen's picket line during a labor strike, and who later worked as a professor of West Virginia History and Labor History at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia; Michael and Carrie Kline whose writing and oral history has been featured in many newspapers and magazines for the past several decades; UMWA official Cecil Roberts; former Mine Safety and Health Administration executive Jack Spadoro; and Joy and Chuck Lynn who previously owned the Whipple Company Store and first brought about awareness and documentation of the practice of Esau in the coal fields.
The book provides an excellent timeline of labor efforts and operator resistance to those efforts primarily in the West Virginia coal fields but also discusses the Adkins Coal Company explosion at Kite, Kentucky, in my native Knott County, along with a discussion of the Martin County Kentucky coal mine blowout of millions of gallons of black water and coal sludge into the Tug Fork River below Warfield, Kentucky. Jack Spadaro's discussion of his inspections and reports at the Adkins facility at Kite, Kentucky, squarely places the blame for the deaths of several miners on the owner's refusal to pay a paltry price for clay "dummies" which were usually inserted into blasting holes behind explosive charges in order to prevent dangerous sparking into the mine's atmosphere during those explosions which could ignite suspended coal dust in the air and which Spadaro found to be the cause of the explosion and the fatalities. Spadaro was also a major player in the research and regulation following both the Buffalo Creek Flood and the Martin County Kentucky mine blowout which caused the severe pollution of the Tug and Big Sandy Rivers and the need for municipalities to shut down 17 water intake facilities downstream from the blowout. It is generally not necessary to explain the Buffalo Creek Flood to most people in coal mining areas since it resulted in the deaths of more than 125 people. Spadaro, Blizzard, and Roberts are all historic figures in the history of the Appalachian coal fields. It is my opinion that, in time, Joy and Chuck Lynn will also be viewed as historically important people in the effort to disseminate the truth about the persistent efforts by the coal industry to stymie organized labor, cover up non-compliance, and minimize the importance of the average worker in one of the most dangerous professions in America.
This book is not a clean, neat, saccharine sweet piece of reading. It tells the cold, hard truth page after page and is not for the timid reader who might have previously been misled into believing the standard propaganda of the typical coal mine operators or acquiescent government officials who would allow anything short of cold blooded murder in order to hang onto a few jobs in the coal fields. The book reports honestly and realistically on opposition to union organizing including the Battle of Blair Mountain in which Blizzard's father, William Blizzard, led UMWA miners in the effort to unionize the Logan and Mingo coal fields in southern West Virginia while facing machine gun fire from coal company hired gun thugs. It also exposes the practice of Esau in the coal fields, particularly at the Whipple Company Store in Raleigh County which I have discussed at length in the blog post linked at the beginning of this story. That is a practice in which wives and daughters of miners who were temporarily unable to work were forced into sexual servitude in order to obtain food or other necessary commodities for their families. That practice was first brought to light by Joy and Chuck Lynn when they were operating the Whipple Company Store as a privately owned museum. They documented numerous accounts of the practice of Esau which were related to them spontaneously by women who had either lived in the coal fields or descended from mothers whose husbands worked in the industry. I spoke at length by telephone with Wess Harris earlier this week about the book and many other issues related to the coal industry in Appalachia. I also made multiple attempts to speak with Joy Lynn this week about many aspects of the book including Esau in the coal fields but was never able to make contact with her other a short e-mail which said nothing. I have also communicated via Facebook Messenger with the West Virginia singer and song writer Mary Hott who has written and recorded an entire CD of songs, "Devil In The Hills", about the practice of Esau and has created a private website at this link both to market her CD and to disseminate the truth about Esau. Joy Lynn has produced two books about the entire experience of operating the Whipple Company Store Museum which can be ordered directly from her and her information can be accessed from Mary Hott's website above.
I repeat that this book is not for the timid or doubtful reader. It will cause you to feel anger, disgust, and a desire to help make the world a better place and that is a good thing. In many circumstances, it is necessary to feel all those emotions in order for wrongs to be righted, evil to be resisted, good to be sown, and for justice to be served. And everyone who has been wronged deserves to have justice even if they never lived to see it while alive in the world. This truly is a story "Written In Blood".
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