The Herald-Dispatch
MATEWAN, W.Va. — The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, located in Matewan, West Virginia, is
launching the Mingo County Black History Project, according to a news release.
In the Mine Wars era, more than 64,000 African Americans lived in West Virginia and made up about 20% of the state’s coal-mining workforce. In 1920, when miners in Mingo County went on strike for union recognition, about one in four were Black. And in 1921, Mingo County coal miners elected Frank Ingham, a Black miner, to represent them as a delegate at the national convention of the United Mine Workers of America.
“Mining coal helped our area move ahead,” Francine Jones, a Mine Wars Museum board member, said in the news release. “But many died in the mines and in the efforts to unionize. Only through the unity of all miners and their families were they victorious.
“For there to be an oral history project on Black people here,” Jones continued, “means that their part in
this history will be told.”
The Mingo County Black History Project will start this summer by recording ten oral history interviews with members of Black families that have deep roots in the county’s history.
One goal of the project will be to document families who trace their histories back to the Mine Wars era and the establishment of early Black communities in the county. A second goal will be to document the evolution of these families over time through events like the desegregation of schools, the mechanization and outmigration of the 1950s and 1960s, and more recent changes including continued outmigration.
