Blair Mountain, West Virginia – the site of the largest civil uprising since the civil war.  This uprising is also the only time that the Government of the United States turned its armed forces (they planned to drop bombs on the miners) on its citizens.  That incident occured in 1921.  Today, the battle continues.  The following is a report by Emily Corio of West Virginia Public Radio.  You may hear the original broadcast click: 0325BlairMtn.  For more information on Blair Mountain or how you can help save this important piece of Appalachian/West Virginian History, visit the Friends of Blair Mountain.

March 25, 2010 · In the original Battle at Blair Mountain (1921) Logan County coal miners trying to unionize confronted company detectives and sheriffs deputies, but the present day battle over Blair Mountain pits history buffs and environmentalists against coal companies and state officials.

The history of the mountain and the current day battle were the topic of a labor law forum at West Virginia University’s College of Law Wednesday.

Efforts to get the National Park Service to list Blair Mountain on the National Register of Historic Places have been ongoing for a few decades.

Barbara Rasmussen is the lead historian on the National Register nomination. It’s her objective to see that the site of the largest organized armed civil uprising since the Civil War is recognized and preserved as a significant part of the country’s labor history.

But it’s been a difficult task to try to have Blair Mountain listed on the National Register. The site was on the list for 274 days last year, but the state’s Historic Preservation Office asked that Blair Mountain be removed because the majority of property owners who were affected didn’t want the land listed.

Rasmussen and Appalachian State University Professor Harvard Ayers are now challenging this.

“Far more than 50 percent of property owners in the district do very much support the nomination and the list that had been supplied, we believe is faulty,” Rasmussen said.

“In the meantime, there’s been a grassroots letter writing campaign. We have a Web site. We are looking at asking our Congressional representatives to look into this. It’s very much a moving target. I don’t know what the outcome will be.”

Christopher Williamson is president of the democratic law caucus and a third year law student at WVU. He organized Rasmussen’s discussion on Blair Mountain, because he cares about the history; it’s part of his family’s story.

“I’m from the southern coal fields, had a lot of family who were miners. My great-grandfather was involved in the battle to get unionization in the southern coal fields,” Williamson said. “Not only is it a really important piece of labor history, it’s a very important piece of West Virginia history and a piece of West Virginia history that doesn’t get near the recognition, near the attention, near the appreciation that it deserves.”

Williamson didn’t learn about the Battle of Blair Mountain from text books or history courses in the public schools he attended in Mingo County.

“I had to learn about those things from my grandmother who told me stories about her father who was involved in it and company men would come to their home and he would have to hide under the floor,” Williamson said. “That history does need to be in the classroom.”

With that in mind, Williamson wrote a bill this year as part of a law school course that would have required public schools to teach aspects of the state’s labor history during one week in September.

“They (House members) changed it, took the wording from that, made it into a resolution, and it was adopted in both the House and the Senate this legislative session.”

And thanks to that resolution, West Virginia will recognize labor history week every September. Williamson hopes during that week, more school children learn about Blair Mountain and other labor events in the state’s past.