On August 29, 1933, the National Miners Union shut down mines in Gallup, New Mexico. This labor action, which in many ways pitted Mexican miners against Navajo miners, demonstrates the racial complexi
This is such a weird story. Mountaintop removal is a horrible, nasty, awful thing, one that reshapes an entire region’s geology, some of the oldest mountains in the world, and dumps toxins in th
Building on my podcast last week with Jarod Roll, his book discusses briefly a 1940 film called Men and Dust. This is a leftist film about the life of the lead and zinc miners in the Tri-State area of
For today’s podcast, I interview Jarod Roll of the University of Mississippi about his new book Poor Man’s Fortune: White Working Class Conservatism in American Metal Mining, 1850-1950. Th
On May 29, 1935, a strike by mineworkers in Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia) to protest taxes levied on them by British colonial administrators was met with murderous violence, with about 28 workers k
On October 12, 1898, a racialized battle over strikebreaking broke out in the southern Illinois coal mining town of Virden, Illinois. The so-called Battle of Virden demonstrates the ways that employer
On August 12, 1946, South African mineworkers went on strike, a critical moment in the struggle against racism and which is one of the major early moments that challenged the apartheid state. As most
I think we all agree that the move toward renewable energy is not just a policy imperative, but a moral one necessary to save the planet. That said, we also have to pay attention to the production of