Good Morning POU!
African Americans have been mining coal and fighting bosses for over 200 years. Slaves were working in coal mines around Richmond, Va. as early as 1760. During the Civil War, a thousand slaves dug coal for 22 companies in the “Richmond Basin.”
Black miners were expected to load four or five tons of coal. Slaves able to fill this quota were fed supper. Those who couldn’t were whipped.
Slavery in the mines didn’t end after the war in 1865. For decades prisoners convicted of “vagrancy” and “loitering” worked as virtual slaves for private outfits in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. From 1880 to 1904, 10 percent of Alabama’s state budget was paid by leasing prisoners to coal companies.
African Americans accounted from 83 percent to 90 percent of these slave miners in Alabama. Sixty-nine percent of Tennessee prisoners digging coal in 1891 were Black. Some poor whites were railroaded to jail as well.
Conditions were horrendous in these convict mines. Nearly one out of ten prisoners died annually at the Tracy City, Tenn. mine operated by the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI).
TCI was bought by United States Steel in 1907. USS continued to operate TCI’s mines in Alabama for another 20 years. USS and the backing of JPMorgan/Chase Bank made this steel goliath the first billion-dollar corporation in 1900.
Three hundred miners with guns freed prisoners at TCI’s Briceville, Tenn. facility on July 15, 1891. The following week 1,500 miners returned to free more prisoners. H.H. Schwartz of the Chattanooga Federation of Trades reported that “whites and Negroes are standing shoulder to shoulder” and armed with 840 rifles.
James Knox, an African American convicted of passing a $30 bad check, was tortured to death by guards at Alabama’s Flat Top mine on Aug. 14, 1924 because he was unable to meet the mine’s daily ten-ton quota.
The uproar over this murder finally forced Alabama to shut down its slave mines. On July 1, 1928, 499 Black prisoners singing the “Negro” spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, turned in their lamps and picks for the last time.
Black Labor Summoned to the Mines
By 1930 there were over 55,000 Black coal miners. That year African Americans accounted for 53 percent of Alabama’s coal diggers.
These Alabama miners went on strike in 1894, 1904 and 1908. Eleven thousand miners—75 percent of whom were Black—struck again from Sept. 7, 1920 to March 12, 1921. Among the Black leaders were J. F. Sorsby, United Mine Workers District 20 vice-president, and International organizers, William Prentice and George H. Edmunds.
Despite bold tactics that included dynamiting a Southern Railroad train carrying scab coal, the strike was crushed by the National Guard. At least 16 people were killed. But the UMW came back to organize these mines in the 1930s during the Great Depression when militant struggles were being carried out by labor.
Twenty-two thousand African Americans were employed in West Virginia’s mines in 1930. Black and white miners there fought side-by-side in the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1913-14. The Black union man known as “Few Clothes” Dan Chain —portrayed by James Earl Jones in the powerful John Sayles film, “Matewan”—became legendary for his courage.
The “mine wars” in Mingo and Logan counties from 1919 to 1921 produced the biggest armed confrontation in U.S. labor history. Logan County Sheriff Don Chaffin was paid $32,700 a year (worth about $400,000 today) by mine owners to keep out union organizers.
Following the assassination of the pro-union sheriff Sid Hatfield on Aug. 1, 1921, 8,000 armed miners, one quarter of whom were Black, marched on Logan County. While ten union members were killed at Blair Mountain, one hundred of Chaffin’s mercenaries were slain.
Army Gen. Billy Mitchell wanted to bomb the miners. Only the dispatch of 2,500 soldiers by President Warren G. Harding prevented the union’s victory.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, blacks shouldered a disproportionate share of the unemployment and hard times. Their percentage in the state’s coal mining labor force dropped from more than 22 percent in 1930 to about 17 percent in 1940. The Depression and World War II also unleashed new technological and social forces that transformed the coal industry, and stimulated massive out-migration in the postwar years. Loading machines rapidly displaced miners during the 1940s and ’50s. Black miners recall that the mine management always put the first loading machines where blacks were working, meaning that black miners were the first to lose their jobs.
The mechanization of mines has wiped out 400,000 union jobs since 1950. Just a few thousand African Americans are working in mines today.
Coal Camps
A coal camp is a Company town where everything was built and owned by the coal company, including schools, churches, residential structures, theaters and the Company Store.
A company store is a retail store selling a limited range of food, clothing and daily necessities to employees of a company. It is typical of a Company town in a remote area where virtually everyone is employed by one firm, such as a coal mine.
The store typically accepts scrip or non-cash vouchers issued by the company in advance of weekly cash paychecks, and gives credit to employees before payday. Except in very remote areas, company stores became scarcer after the miners bought automobiles and could travel to a range of stores. Even so, the stores could survive because they provided convenience and easy credit.
Company stores have had a reputation as monopolistic institutions, funnelling workers’ incomes back to the wealthy owners of the company. Company stores often faced little or no competition and prices were therefore not competitive. Allowing purchases on credit enforced a kind of debt slavery, obligating employees to remain with the company until the debt was cleared.
Muchakinock, Iowa
IN THE EARLY 1880s, recruitment of African American miners to Mahaska County led to the development of a community that would become a thriving settlement, home to black miners, merchants, and professionals. The coal camp of Muchakinock, Iowa, which flourished for about 20 years during the late nineteenth century, was an unusual community for that time in the state’s history. After the coal camp management actively recruited African American laborers from southern states (white coal miners were on strike), Muchakinock developed a significant population of African American workers who were willing to leave their homes and travel to Iowa as strikebreakers in order to escape the poverty and racial violence of the post-Reconstruction South. The transplanted miners and their families helped to develop a strong and vibrant community in Muchakinock that was relatively free of racial violence and segregation and that included independent African American merchants as well as doctors, lawyers, journalists, teachers, and other professionals.
By 1887, the African American workers in Muchakinock had organized a mutual protection society. Members paid fifty cents a month, or $1 per family. 80% of this paid for health insurance, while the remainder went into a sinking fund to cover members’ burial expenses. The coal company acted as banker to this society.
News items submitted by the Muchakinock correspondent to the Oskaloosa Weekly Herald provide a sense of the daily life of the camp’s residents. The organization of a brass band, the coal company’s distribution of land to its employees for gardening purposes, and a Fourth of July celebration featuring contests, a dance, and nonalcoholic refreshments all seem to paint a picture of a satisfying life enjoyed by hard-working employees and a benevolent employer. These accounts, however, should not necessarily be taken at face value as they also refer to W. A. McNeill (Consolidation Coal Company President) as an “excellent good fellow” and tout the advantages of railroads as advancing not only the price of land but also industry and civilization as well. The Consolidation Coal Company, like many other coal companies of the time, exercised control over not only the land on which the camp was located but the journalistic dispatches as well.
African Americans headed numerous institutions in Muchakinock. There was a “colored” Baptist church in town, under Rev. T. L. Griffith. Samuel J. Brown, the first African American to receive a bachelor’s degree from the State University of Iowa, was principal of the Muchakinock public school. B. F. Cooper was noted as one of only two “colored” pharmacists in the state.
Muchakinock reached a peak population of about 2,500, but by 1900, the coal of the Muchakinock valley was largely exhausted, and the Consolidation Coal Company opened a new mining camp in Buxton. The founding of Buxton in 1901 led to a “great exodus,” leaving the town nearly vacant by 1904. Today, acid mine drainage and red piles of shale are all that remain of the mines along Muchakinock Creek.
Buxton, Iowa
The camp was named by B. C. Buxton after his father, John E. Buxton, who had managed the mines at Muchakinock. The Buxton post office operated from 1901 to 1923. After a strike by white miners, the company recruited black workers from mining areas in the South.
In 1901, Consolidation’s miners organized locals 1799 and 2106 of the United Mine Workers union, with memberships of 493 and 691 respectively. Local 2106 immediately became the largest union local in Iowa, in any trade. At that time, Consolidation’s mines were described as being “worked almost entirely by colored miners.” In 1913, the Buxton UMWA union local was reported to have “at least 80 percent colored men”. With 1508 members, Local 1799 at Buxton was the largest UMWA local in the country. The benevolent society established at Muchakinock continued in operation at Buxton, as the Buxton Mining Colony.
Buxton was a classic company town; it was unincorporated, and the company was the sole landlord. In the words of one commentator, “Mr. Buxton … has not attempted to build up a democracy. On the contrary he has built up an autocracy and he is the autocrat, albeit a benevolent one.” Booker T. Washington described justice in Buxton as being “administered in a rather summary frontier fashion” that reminded him “of the methods formerly employed in some of the frontier towns farther west.”
The Consolidation Coal Company took a paternal attitude towards the town. In 1908, the town covered approximately one square mile, with about 1000 houses, typically with 5 or 6 rooms each. Everything was owned by the coal company. Rental housing was only available to married couples, at a rate of $5.50 to $6.50 per month. Single men were not permitted, and families having any kind of disorder were evicted on 5 days’ notice. Average wage in the mines was $3.63 per day in 1908, when the mines employed 1239 men. Monthly wages varied from $70.80 for day laborers, but about 100 men made over $140 per month.
Buxton school children
As in Muchakinock, African Americans held many leadership roles. The postmaster, superintendent of schools, most of the teachers, two justices of the peace, two constables and two deputy sheriffs were African American. The Bank of Buxton, with deposits in 1907 of $106,796.38, had only one cashier, also African American, and one of the civil engineers working for the mining company was African American. For a brief time between 1903 and 1905, The Buxton Eagle was Buxton’s newspaper. Edward A. Carter, MD, the first “colored” graduate of the University of Iowa College of Medicine, came to Buxton as assistant physician to the Buxton Mining Colony. He served as company surgeon to the mining company as well as the Chicago and Northwestern Railway.
Richard R. Wright Jr. wrote in 1908 that “The relations of the white minority to the black majority are most cordial. No case of assault by a black man on a white woman has ever been heard of in Buxton. Both races go to school together; both work in the same mines, clerk in the same stores, and live side by side.” In the same year, Booker T. Washington wrote of Buxton as “a colony of some four or five thousand Colored people … to a large extent, a self-governing colony, but it is a success.” He recommended a study of Buxton to a textile manufacturer interested in raising capital for a cotton mill employing black labor.
By 1908, as mines 11 and 13 were almost exhausted, the population of Buxton was about 5000. Unlike smaller company towns where miners usually lived within walking distance of the mines, Buxton’s mines were spread out over a considerable distance, so commuter trains were run to ferry the men to the mines.
A group of Buxton men in the YMCA circa 1915.
The coal company gave the YMCA free use of a building, valued at $20,000. The YMCA had a reading room and library, gym, baths, kitchen, dining room, and a meeting hall available for use of labor unions and lodges. The Buxton YMCA drew “the color line” and did “not allow white men in the membership,” although they were “allowed to attend the entertainments, a privilege freely used.”The Buxton YMCA offered a variety of adult education programs, including literacy and hygiene classes, as well as a variety of public lectures. The YMCA also controlled the Opera House, keeping out “objectionable and immoral shows.”
As is typical of mining company towns, there was a company store, the Monroe Mercantile Company. This was a big operation, with 72 employees, some paid as much as $68 per month, and many of them African Americans. There were also barber shops, a tailor shop, a butcher shop, and a hotel, all run by African Americans.
By the time mine number 18 had opened, the center of mining activity had moved miles to the west of Buxton, and it made good sense to open new mining camps closer to the mines. The town declined markedly in the 1920s. By 1938, the Federal Writers Project Guide to Iowa reported that the site of Buxton was abandoned and that the locations of Buxton’s former “stores, churches and schoolhouses are marked only by stakes.” Every September, hundreds of former Buxton residents met on the former town’s site for a reunion.
The abandoned Buxton town was the subject of archaeological survey in the 1980s, which investigated the economic and social aspects of material culture of African Americans in Iowa.
Searching for Buxton
A young African-American goes searching for his family past in a long-disappeared Iowa coal mining town and discovers that much of the prosperity and goodwill his relatives enjoyed nearly a century ago is elusive today. Narrated by Simon Estes.
Part I
Part 2