Mingo County

They don't have any plans to seize the state capital and declare the Socialist Republic of Greater Appalachia.

They're just trying to get through Logan County and into Mingo County.

And they're trying to get there because other miners have been jailed for trying to organize a union.

In one miner's words, quote, By God, we're going through.

Miners on one bank, guards and detectives on the other, some of them firing from Kentucky soil into West Virginia and back again.

Machine guns answering rifles answering pistols.

Governor Morgan puts Mingo County under martial law.

No meetings, no printing presses, no guns, except for the 250 men he deputizes overnight.

Appalachian Power Company is getting closer to finishing up its broadband expansion project to Logan and Mingo counties.

AEP Managing Director of Broadband, Scott Osterholt, telling the State Broadband Enhancement Council today that nearly 5,000 potential customers in Logan County and 1,500 potential customers in Mingo County are ready for activation.

He says the numbers will grow in the coming months.

That will also be completed in the same timeline.

So that, too, is an American tradition going back over a century.

um they yeah so it would be but not just like the miners it's like the miners and their families their wives their children everyone is living in these encampments so when um they exercise violence against these encampments it's not just the striking workers it is the striking workers and their family in discriminative age right uh which is part of what makes this so brutal um Through the tireless effort, though, of organizers like Jones, as well as union officials like Frank Keeney and Fred Mooney, by July 1920, 95% of Mingo County, West Virginia minors had joined the UMWA.

Which is huge.

Huge.

Dad grew up in Isaban.

West Virginia, which is a small unincorporated community located along Four Pole Creek in both McDowell and Mingo County down in southwestern West Virginia.

So I'm sorry that we were unable to give it to you exactly on the 31st.

But, Kevin, one day late, a very happy 49th birthday, and we shout out everyone in Isaban.

You think of McDowell County, Wyoming County.

Mingo County, where the coal mines have shut down and other things have happened.

People don't have a way to get to work and provide for their family, and that leads to drug abuse and things like that as well.

You know, former congressman, former West Virginia lawmaker in Evan Jenkins used to say, a good job will solve a lot of problems.

So let's get a little taste of that right now.

Mother Mary Harris Jones speared a bloodbath at the Battle of West Virginia's Blair Mountain The United Mine Workers of Mingo County faced eviction by force fulfilled by Baldwin Feld's agency Just a year before when tensions did stir And labor came to be called a mémoire

For my second pick, when you have a 21-year-old wunderkind making a song that sounds like Lenny K would have selected it for the Nuggets compilation way back in 1972, well, I'm on board for that, too.

And that artist is Sharp Pins.

Yeah.

And so the, the governor, uh, is looking around at what to do and, uh, he has, he tells the state police commander in the area to raise a militia, basically, of what they called the Better People of Mingo County.

These are your lawyers, your bankers, your office workers, your- All of your non-miner employees of the mines, you know, um, all these people were armed, mustered, put into actual military formations, and, uh, sent on patrols.

And, um, the governor declares martial law, which, you know, uh, uh, to call back from the previous episode, the National Guard, uh, had been federalized and sent off to Europe, uh, during the First World War, and nobody had gotten around to reestablishing it under state authority anymore.

And so once that starts happening, I mean, these guys are, you know...

Uh, oh, and I should throw in, actually, 'cause I forgot to mention this in the last episode.

The state police commander in Mingo County, he was leading a patrol of state police, uh, before the army had showed up before, like, so the previous fall.

Hmm.