By RICK STEELHAMMER
Charleston Gazette-Mail
SUMMERSVILLE, W.Va. — They were lured to West Virginia from homes in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and other southern states for jobs on a long-term tunnel excavation project that would allow them to better the lives of their families during the Great Depression.
For their willingness to pull up stakes, move far from familiar territory, and work hard to improve their lot in life, they were rewarded with an early, often painful, death.
The 42 construction workers buried in the Hawks Nest Workers Memorial Cemetery along U.S. 19, five miles south of Summersville, were among at least 764 workers — about 75 percent of them black — known to have died while building the Hawks Nest Tunnel from 1930 to 1935.
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