Children Of The Kentucky Coal Fields

Exploring themes of work and labor in everyday life, Richard J. Callahan, Jr., offers a history of how coal miners and their families lived their religion in eastern Kentucky's coal fields during the early 20th century. Callahan follows coal miners and their families from subsistence farming to industrial coal mining as they draw upon religious idioms to negotiate changing patterns of life and work. He traces innovation and continuity in religious expression that emerged from the specific experiences of coal mining, including the spaces and social structures of coal towns, the working bodies of miners, the anxieties of their families, and the struggle toward organized labor. Building on oral histories, folklore, folksongs, and vernacular forms of spirituality, this rich and engaging narrative recovers a social history of ordinary working people through religion.

A muddy river bank in the heart of coal country sets the stage for an unforgettable event that transcends decades. One glorious Kentucky day, in the summer of 1942, a baptizing evokes a memory that captures the everlasting love of home, of family, and of God Almighty. Follow a little girl into the hills of the coal mining era, and experience one of the greatest cultures of all time. Lisa Winter is an author of Christian children's stories with an affinity for historical fiction. She has received a Bachelor of Science degree in Education and a Master of Arts degree in Language Arts from Western Kentucky University and is a teacher in the public school system. Growing up, she was heavily influenced by stories of the coal mining culture, which were told to her by her family. She resides in the heart of the Western Kentucky Coal Fields and continues to embrace the rich culture of the coal mining industry. Jessica Whitehouse is a freelance artist and illustrator. She currently attends Western Kentucky University where she is studying visual art with an emphasis in art education. She has grown up around coal mining, with her father, grandfather and other family members being involved in the industry. She lives in Kentucky with her family.

This book began as a letter to my four children as an attempt to convey to them the values and beauty of their heritage. The central themes include family, community relationships, and the richness of an impoverished life as our ancestors struggled with the challenges of living in the coal fields of Appalachia.

Harlan Miners Speak, originally published in 1932, remains today a vivid record of the plight of coal miners in eastern Kentucky. Led by prominent left-leaning writers Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and Sherwood Anderson, the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners traveled to Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1931 to examine the situation of the miners and their families.

The first comprehensive history of Kentucky during the first half of the twentieth century, presenting a sweeping view of these crucial years when the forces of continuity and change competed for primacy in the state.

Between 1880 and 1922, the coal fields of southern West Virginia witnessed two bloody and protracted strikes, the formation of two competing unions, and the largest armed conflict in American labor history--a week-long battle between 20,000 coal miners and 5,000 state police, deputy sheriffs, and mine guards. These events resulted in an untold number of deaths, indictments of over 550 coal miners for insurrection and treason, and four declarations of martial law. Corbin argues that these violent events were collective and militant acts of aggression interconnected and conditioned by decades of oppression. His study goes a long way toward breaking down the old stereotypes of Appalachian and coal mining culture. This second edition contains a new preface and afterword by author David A. Corbin.