Coal mining is a large and important part of Appalachia and Appalachian culture. Because of that, McConnell Library’s Archives and Special Collections has gathered and preserved a wide variety of items representing it. We are lucky to have several artifacts of coal mining at this time- helmets, 
head lanterns, and scrip that are part of the Earl Palmer Collection; actual coal, lunch buckets and a variety of other tools on loan to us from the Appalachian Regional and Rural Studies Center; an extensive collection of personal papers from the Harley Cordle Coal Mining Collection ; items from the personal collection of union leader Bill Blizard and his son, journalist William C. Blizzard; and photographs by William O. Trevey, Willis Vail, and Rufus Ribble.
The photographs mentioned above, those of Trevey, Vail and Ribble are part of the very large George and Melody Bragg New River Coal Fields Photographic Collection which is composed of glass plate negatives, regular negatives, cirkut camera negatives, and cirkut camera prints. Many of these have been digitized and appear online for public viewing as the Trevey and Vail collections. It is partly because of this digitization of the Trevey images that we were contacted by members of a documentary team The Film Posse from Boston, Massachusetts. Through their research, they found that we owned the collection and after a full day of viewing scans and negatives with us, and several days of phone and email contact, 32 images were chosen from our collection to be used in their documentary- The Mine Wars.
Instead of trying to summarize the documentary myself, I will just copy the synopsis they provide on their website-“Go inside the coal miners’ bitter battle for dignity at the dawn of the 20th century with The Mine Wars. The struggle over the material that fueled America led to the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War and turned parts of West Virginia into a bloody war zone.”
Blue Ridge Public Television (PBS) at 9:00PM Tuesday, January 26.
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