What Just Happened in West Virginia?

On March 6, West Virginia lawmakers resolved a state-wide teachers’ strike, ending a nine-day action that closed schools in all 55 counties, impacting an estimated 20,000 teachers and members of staff. At the center of the strike were frustrations with stagnated wages, a broken insurance program, and the devaluation of their work and credentials by state lawmakers. In the background, a more slippery tension about who and what investment in West Virginia and the larger Appalachian region should favor—individuals like teachers, who represent a rapidly shrinking common good, or industry, whose fickle largesse has, especially of late, taken much more from the region than it has given. For now, teachers and service personnel have won a five-percent raise and the guarantee that a special task force will hear their issues with the state’s insurance program and address their concerns with skyrocketing premiums, temporarily frozen at the moment.

But where are the clues to uncovering the origins, deeper meaning and significance of the recent West Virginia teachers’ strike? The stakes feel incredibly high—low-paid and stretched-thin teachers in other states like Oklahoma and Kentucky are now building movements of their own. A public hungry for signs that progressive politics are taking root in so-called Trump Country are analyzing these connected actions for any indication a blue-wave might hit the 2018 mid-terms. The most obvious answer for the strike’s significance can be found in the voices, actions, and demands of strike participants and how they understand their place in the word and political economy. But there are important clues in the history of West Virginia and Appalachia as well. For those who want to explore its history and learn how it informed the strike, here are a few suggestions toward understanding the region, its labor struggles, and where we go from here.

Matewan Before the Massacre, Rebecca J. Bailey

Historians consider the Matewan Massacre the spark that ignited what are known in the region as the mine wars—violent conflicts in the early 1920s during which coal miners in southern West Virginia took up arms to fight for the right to unionize and control their labor. Matewan Before the Massacre sets the stage for what’s to come by exploring the earliest efforts at unionizations in the West Virginia coalfields and the political and economic corruption directed toward suppressing those efforts.

When Miners March, William C. Blizzard, edited by Wess Harris

When Miners March is a first-hand account of the most infamous episode of the mine wars and one of the most significant labor uprisings in the history of the United States, the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. The saga, as told to William Blizzard by his father, a union organizer and participant in the battle, comes alive through reproduced documents, letters, photographs, and court transcripts. It’s a digestible read but those who prefer fictionalized accounts might enjoy Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven.

The Book of the Dead, Muriel Rukeyser

In 1931, an epidemic began to hit the workers, most African American, employed by Union Carbide to construct the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel in Summersville, West Virginia. They were dying, with little concern from state leaders and their employer, from silicosis, a close cousin of black lung. Muriel Rukeyser’s Book of the Dead is a poetic account of the value of human life in a world of commodity and extraction.

Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll 

J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, boasted that his version of Appalachia was free of villains. Not so in Steven Stoll’s Ramp Hollow, which is a comprehensive environmental history of the region’s land dispossession. Those who want the newest authoritative text on West Virginia should start here.

Reading Appalachia from Left to Right, Carol Mason

One of the first so-called text book controversies in the United States unfolded in West Virginia in 1974 when conservative citizens in Kanawha County raised objections to a new language arts textbook. Mason dissects the controversy, comparing how it unfolded in the media versus in the community and provides a cautionary tale to those dismissive of nuance.

Working Class Radicals, Frederick A. Barkey

Working Class Radicals explores the rise and fall of the Socialist Party in West Virginia against the back-drop of strikes, mine wars, and sweeping transformations in the state’s political landscape.

Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver

Kingsolver’s Holding the Line is not about Appalachia or West Virginia (although she spent her childhood in Appalachian Kentucky) but a strike that occurred in Arizona in 1983. A non-fiction account, it seeks to understand how a single strike can transform lives and communities and centers the actions and impact of women.

Justice in the Coalfields, Anne Lewis

For those who prefer visual history, this Appalshop documentary provides an excellent primer on more recent labor struggles in Appalachia, including the 1989-1990 Pittston Strike. The strike resulted in more than $64,000 in fines for the United Mineworkers of America and over 4,000 arrests.

Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity, Micah Uetricht

Strike for America is an account of the years-in-the-making 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike. The strike took place in a hostile political ecosystem that forced teachers to rely on grassroots allies, not wealthy party leaders—a reality that has shades of West Virginia and offers the chance to reflect on how these growing movements might connect.

How We Get Free, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (ed.)

“The ability to distinguish between the American Dream and the experience of the American nightmare requires political analysis, history, and often struggle,” writes Taylor. How We Get Free is a must-read that revives the legacy of 1970s Black feminism. How is this relevant to a modern teachers’ strike? The Black women of the Combahee River Collective show us how to get back to basics and articulate the principles of what we believe in and why we fight. And, if a movement lead by teachers (a profession in which around 75 percent identify as women) is to be successful, it will need to be intersectional.