Everyone likes a good centennial. Usually, when we reach the hundredth anniversary of a major historical event, there's all sorts of fanfare in the news. Not so during the last week of August, 2021. All through that week I scoured various news sources for coverage of the the Battle of Blair Mountain, which took place in late August of 1921, and could find nothing, outside of a couple of West Virginia periodicals and a trade union bulletin. Nothing in the NY Times, nothing on CNN or NPR, not even Mother Jones magazine, even though Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was front and center in this battle for coal miners to unionize.
I learned about Blair Mountain many years ago, from the unlikeliest of sources, my Aunt Aileen. She was my favorite aunt, the quintessential quirky old lady that seems to be part of every family. The eldest of my mom's sisters, Aileen was a tall, top-heavy woman with finely teased blue-gray hair and bright red lipstick. She always greeted me with a long, smothering hug, during which I got a big dose of the Aileen aroma— a mixture of Avon cosmetic powder and Pell Mell cigarette smoke. She had a contagious, loud laugh that often ended in a smoker's coughing spell.
Aunt Aileen was a faithful letter-writer, and one of her greatest gifts to me was the collection of letters she and my mom wrote to each over the course of 40 years. She and I became pen pals, or more precisely sparring partners, when I went to college and discovered my political leaning. I never heard a word about politics in my growing up years; our household conversations centered on family, church, gardening, and baseball. I didn't realize there was anything political about Vietnam; it was simply a dangerous place where my older brother Jerry was "in the service" and we needed to pray for his safety, and send him chocolate chip cookies. The only thing I understood about Watergate was that it preempted my grandmother's "story" (General Hospital) for several weeks, much to her consternation.
Then, in my late teenage years, I discovered I was a liberal, and that my Aunt Aileen was not. She was not only conservative; she was over-the-top arch-conservative. Mostly, she was a fierce anti-communist. Everything liberal smacked to her of the demonic force of communism. I don't think Aileen was particularly prejudiced or bigoted when it came to race, but as soon as she saw a 1960s billboard castigating Martin Luther King for spending time at a "communist training camp" in Monteagle, she knew all she needed to know about the Civil Rights movement.
The polar opposition of our respective political leanings came out in our pen pal correspondence. Aileen would clip out the letters to the editor she had sent to her hometown paper, and include them with her hand-written letters. Those were sure to elicit a blistering response from me. Then, I would make sure and inform her whenever I got involved in some kind of progressive social justice action, and I could count on her own blistering response in return. This jousting with pens-mightier-than-swords never tainted our deep love for each other; there was never an ounce of personal hostility or judgment. For me, it was a fun pastime.
I thought I really was going to get Aunt Aileen's goat when my wife Kim and I were en route from seminary to our first church pastorate, and along the way we stopped to spend a week in Dante (pronounced "Daint") Virginia, camping out at Camp Solidarity with striking miners from the Pittston Coal Company. I wrote her a long letter about the experience, our marching in the picket lines, playing and singing protest songs— I couldn't wait to see what kind of letter this would provoke in response. When her letter did arrive, I opened it and couldn't believe what I read.
"I am so proud of you," the letter began. "That is really important work they are doing over there. The unions might have strayed away from their mission at times, and there's always the danger of corruption, but they have done so much good for working people in our country. I'm so glad you were there."
What? My mind started reeling. Is this my Aunt Aileen writing? Is this the woman who proudly served as a delegate to the American Party Convention for George Wallace's presidential bid? Where was her fierce rant? I decided this called for more than a letter in response; I needed to go and visit her. The next weekend, I arrived at her door, received the long and tight aromatic bearhug (at least this hadn't changed), and after the requisite catching up on family news, I got down to business. What followed was a weekend full of stories I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams.
I learned from Aunt Aileen that her father, my grandfather, had been a union organizer in the 1920s. He was the foreman of the first union organized in western North Carolina, at the Sayles-Biltmore Bleachery textile mill where he and his brothers worked. She explained just how much gumption it took to engage in this kind of organizing; a lot of people thought it tantamount to insurrection. There at Aileen's kitchen table is where I first heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain, a historical event that took place two years before she was born.
"It was over in West Virginia, in the late summer of 1921, that the miners' efforts to organize were met with the full force of the U.S. military, complete with World War I bomber planes sent in to squelch the uprising of the workers. Do you know this was the only time in history where our government bombed its own citizens?" Aileen explained to me that all the things we take for granted now—a 40 hour work week, vacations, minimum wages, safe places to work, insurance benefits—none of it would be here without the sacrifices of those Blair Mountain martyrs and the courageous work of people like my grandfather.
She began telling stories of her teenage years, like the time when she and my mother and their other three sisters joined their father and his fellow union members in a picket line at the Enka plant. She got a glimmer in her eye when she diverted into a side-story. There was this young organizer she met there on the picket lines. A tall, handsome, smart young man. One thing led to another, and their walking together on the line led to them taking other walks together. Instead of holding signs, though, they found themselves holding hands on these walks. And then there was her first kiss. I blushed as I listened to Aileen describe fairly intimate details of what it was like to fall in love for the first time. "Solidarity forever," she said, "took on a whole different meaning for us." A hearty laugh morphed into a long coughing spell. Then came the clincher.
"All was going according to plan, like a fairy tale, until I got to the picket line one day and found that he was not there. He had gone. Without a word. WIthout as much as a 'see you later.' Without a goodbye kiss."
"Where did he go? Did you ever hear from him again? " I asked.
"Yes, I heard about him. He went to Chicago." She paused as all signs of laughter left her face. "He joined the communist party and became an organizer for them."
Aaaahhhhh. Now everything made sense; my quirky Aunt's life suddenly became clear. All those blistering letters I had received throughout the years were part and parcel of a fierce lifelong response to being jilted. It was the fury of a person scorned, with communism playing the role of the other woman. Aileen would be celebrating her 100th birthday two years from now. So while our nation seems to have forgotten the story of Blair Mountain, if I have anything to do with it, I'm going to make sure that her centennial gets some fanfare, at least in our family circle.
Stan Dotson began his work life as a community organizer in Louisville, KY, then spent a few years as co-pastor alongside his spouse, Kim Christman, in a small milltown church. He shifted gears to spend a dozen years in higher education, teaching and administering civic engagement programs. He finally figured out what his life's calling was when he and Kim landed in Cuba in 2014, working with the Fraternity of Baptist Churches and other organizations there.