Battle of Blair Mountain Centennial Project

FAIN: ZR-256737-18

West Virginia Mine Wars Museum (Matewan, WV 25678-0764)
Catherine Venable Moore (Project Director: February 2017 to present)

A series of interactive, multimedia events called the Battle of Blair Mountain Centennial Project, that educates the public about the importance of the West Virginia Mine Wars in US labor history.

The Battle of Blair Mountain Centennial Project will bring together humanities and civic institutions across southern West Virginia to plan and implement a series of events to commemorate the Centennial of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection in U.S. history since the Civil War. The Centennial will include five days of interactive interpretive events in five coalfields counties where the March on Blair Mountain and Battle of Blair Mountain occurred in 1921. A Blair Centennial Project Director will convene and coordinate this collaborative work and prepare the public with information about the historical background and context of the Battle of Blair Mountain, to get them interested and engaged in the run-up to the 2021 Centennial. Through these events, the public will gain a greater understanding of the national significance of the state's labor history and how the actions of unionizing coal miners in West Virginia impacted the US labor movement more broadly.