Near the mouth of Hazy

 

The hard-working people of West Virginia are as deeply rooted in the land as the coal that's being taken from it. The communities of Shumates and Hazy are no different. People here hold a wealth of knowledge from generations of living as part of these mountains, a knowledge that has carried them through bloody, protracted labor strikes and unending hardship. However, “This is ground zero for the climate battle, where the most direct impacts of our use of coal are felt, and any transition away from coal has to center around economic transition in Appalachia,” said Rory McIlmoil, wind campaign coordinator for Coal River Mountain Watch. “We've ignored, ridiculed, and exploited those living in the coalfields of Appalachia for far too long.  It's their turn, we owe them, and they need our help.”

 

Massey Energy named the mine surrounding Hazy Hollow, Edwight—which produced the sludge that buried Shumates Branch. What's left of the Hazy and Shumates communities is now often referred to by the Massey-given moniker. “Edwight is a town on the banks of the Coal River in northwestern Raleigh County. Edwight is bounded on the north by the juncture of Hazy Creek and the Coal River; to the southwest by a hillside of the Cherry Pond Mountain chain; and to the south by Shumates Branch,” Edwight resident Rick Bradford wrote in his book about the town where he grew up, Edwight, Near the mouth of Hazy. Daniel Shumate gave Shumates Branch its present name when he built a cabin in the bottom near its mouth where he lived for three or four years before moving to the Marshes of Trap Hill. He fought against the British in the Revolutionary War and was given land by the state of Virginia afterward, in lieu of money. Speculators accumulated sizable tracts of land shortly thereafter when “the Virginia General Assembly passed a bill allowing anyone to acquire 'waste and unappropriated land at $2.00 per hundred acres,'” Rick wrote.

 

For most of the 19^th century, the area was filled with farmers where sufficient flat land existed, the mill at the mouth of Shumates Branch served people from miles around, the water was clean and the people were free to roam the mountains. All that began to change as Northern industrialists started buying timber rights at the end of the century. A handful of men were also amassing large tracts of land, sometimes through dubious circumstances, and later formed the Rowland Land Company. They utilized the broad-form deed to separate land ownership from occupancy. This is discussed in more detail in the Absentee Landownership section.

 

 

Labor Unions

 

More detail on unions in the Coal River Valley is in the Labor Unions section of History & Social Geography. Some Edwight miners took part in the famous Battle of Blair Mountain.  “The miners lost that fight but made the nation aware of their brutal working conditions.” Michael Shnayerson wrote in his book, Coal River: How a few brave Americans took on a powerful company—and the federal government—to save the land they love. “That led President Roosevelt, more than a decade later, to legalize union organizing.” Thirteen of the Edwight miners were put in jail and Van Hunter, later-Circuit Clerk of Raleigh County, bailed them out of jail in Logan. Hunter was relieved of his job when he returned to Edwight and, after the insurrection, Edwight and Hazy were still non-union operations.  For more on Blair Mountain, see Blair Mountain Resources and Friends of Blair Mountain.

 

“There was a brief labor strike at Number 1 (in Hazy) and strike-breakers were sent to break it up. A shot was fired at the strikebreakers from the hill behind Wilburn Pettry's house,” Rick wrote. “...secret union meetings were held in the schoolhouse at the mouth of Sugar Camp.

 

“A hot union man in Hazy, Jimmy Hendricks, saw his house burned to the ground. But Edwight was organized and was presented Local Union Charter 6815 UMWA on December 22, 1933. A copy of the charter was presented to Mike Vergis for allowing the miners to meet secretly in his restaurant to organize and conduct business.”

 

In the late-1940s, the mines were being mechanized. That meant fewer workers and new hazards. “Miners had to be watchful not to be crushed and run over by these machines and they had to be careful not to get their hands, feet, or clothing caught in the machines,” Bradford wrote.

 

"I don't know if you ever heard the story of the Edwight mine. They had a bench, and when you were there on the job you could go over there and sit down on the bench and when they carried somebody out you could go and take their place," Naoma resident Glenn Henderson said. The Raleigh-Wyoming Coal Company brought in efficiency experts who, referred to by the miners as “minutemen,” would time a man as he did his job. “The result was that one man would do a job formerly done by two or three men,” Rick wrote.

 

The unions began to lose ground in the mid-1980s, with Massey Energy and its ruthless chairman Don Blankenship leading the charge. Blankenship would commonly buy a union mine and shut it down until the union contract ran out, then re-open the mine non-union. More on Massey's union busting is available in the Massey section.