Kasama

Kasama is publishing a five part series on communist political work in the miners’ strike wave of the 1970s. We will be posting one piece a day over the next few days.

Ambush at Keystone:
Inside the Coalminers’ Great Gas Protest of 1974

Part 2: The First Picket

By Mike Ely

On the bypass that night, I didn’t at first notice anyone I knew. It was a bit awkward coming alone, and standing at the side looking around.

Then, to my relief, I saw Larry, a white guy I knew from Keystone. He was standing with the boys he grew up with farther east, near the town of Bluefield in Mercer County. I went out with his crew of friends that first night.

The Mercer boys and I rode in a small convoy down off the Welch bypass, east along the Tug Fork, past my house, and on to where the Eureka Holler opens up toward the south.

Our little line of cars moved in the darkness, up Eureka Holler, past the round black openings of now-abandoned coke ovens cut into the wall of the mountain. And there, where the flat bottom land starts to climb and the valley narrows, a small dirt road went up, off to the right, through the steep wooded slope. It was the road that led to the Eckman mine.

We simply unloaded on the main road, right where that dirt road turned off, From a nearby ditch, we gathered handfuls of mud, carefully smeared our license plates, and then just waited for the first shift of the week to turn up.

The first miners to arrive after the weekend, late on Sunday night, are the pump-men and those union men who inspect the mine faces for methane gas. And after them, one by one, the carloads of miners arrive.

Our picket crew arrayed itself simply. Five of us stood in the road, and one man approached each car, and explained that the whole county was out, that we were protesting the gas shortages and the Governor’s quarter tank rule. And that as long as one man didn’t have enough gas, then none of us did, and we were all staying at the house.

And many of the workers were openly supportive, and certainly all of them turned around without question. And to those who said “it’s about time,” we explained that pickets were meeting at the Welch bypass each night, to send out teams of pickets as needed.

And protected behind our line of parked cars, five or six of us stood as visible backup, just watching the whole scene, ready for trouble.

After a couple hours, there were no more cars, and the valley settled into the silence of a forest at night. We piled into our cars and dispersed, after making arrangements to meet again in the morning for the day shift.

At the beginning of a strike you had to be there at each shift, so all the workers knew what was going on — so you could look each of them in the eye.

Home, Briefly

I barely slept that night, filling in Gina on all the details, and going over what I had said and done, and getting her advice.

I have to admit that in the excitement of all this, I really did not understand then all the ways that we were impacted by the way that work and struggle here were centered among men.

Gina and I didn’t just have an ideological commitment to the equality of men and women – we had always been close partners in our previous years of political work. And we worked within radical circles that encouraged constantly digging at the habits and assumptions of male chauvinism.

But here in the West Virginia coalfields, life was strictly divided by sex roles. Only men worked in the mines. The women here sometimes found jobs in the schools, the hospitals or stores. Really, most women were confined to domestic chores and raising children in small ingrown coal camps. Even at parties in people’s homes, men and women would often separate off – each grouped in their own room – having very different conversations, based on very different experiences.

In ways I would not see for a long time, this impacted us communists too. Here I was — in the midst of all this exciting work – working in the mine every day surrounded by both danger and companionship, and now jumping with both feet into this picket movement. Meanwhile, in ways completely out of character, Gina was watching a great deal of this from the outside, often stuck in the house with a new kid.

She was, of course, alive and active as always — making new friends in the community where we lived, seeking out the local Black Lung organization, and so on. But as long as our organization saw the struggle of the miners themselves as our “center of gravity”– the female comrades were often watching that work from the outside, especially during the waves of major strikes.

The male supremacy of the surrounding society impacted our own organizational dynamics (and even our marriages) in unexpected and unintended ways. And, it must be said, it affected the outlooks of male communists who saw themselves doing “the important work” at the center of the action.

In any case, after talking excitedly through the night, Gina and I separated. I went out to picket that day shift at Eckman. And she drove north to meet with our organization, to bring them a report, and discuss our efforts to help spread this strike in new areas.

A Reckless Morning in Eureka Holler

That next morning, when I pulled up near the Eckman mine, there was no else one else there to picket. That wouldn’t surprise anyone; I’m always early.

I just sat there in my car, looking up through dark forest at the blinking lights of the Eckman mine. The sun slowly started to brush the trees highest on the mountain. The smell of meadow grass hung in the damp air. It was beautiful and calming.

Suddenly in the distance I saw headlights coming up the bottomland from the main road. The first car had arrived. The other pickets, I thought. As the car reached where I was parked, it suddenly turned off up the dirt road, heading for the mine. Minutes later a few more cars rolled up the valley, and also turned off, climbing that dirt road toward the mine parking lot.

Hmmm, I thought. This is no good. They can’t all be foremen. If Eckman’s union miners are already in the parking lot by the time the other pickets arrived… how would all that get sorted out?

So, largely on impulse, I just decided to start the picketing. I rolled out of my car and stood, alone, in the middle of the hard top road. I was thinking, assuming, that the rest of my picket crew would arrive any moment.

And, within a few minutes, a pair of headlights were heading my way. The car rolled up with three guys inside. Seeing me they cranked down their window. I leaned in and repeated our short rap from the night before: We had met in Welch on Sunday, and the whole county was out protesting the gas shortage. As long as one miner didn’t have gas, none of us had enough gas to go to work.

They nodded, taking it all in, rolled up their window and made a u-turn. But instead of driving back out the holler and going home, they pulled over about a hundred yards away, turned off their lights and waited.

A second car drove up. Same thing. I explained the protest was on, and there was no work today. They made a u-turn, and pulled in alongside the first car.

The traffic picked up, cars were coming rapidly, and five or six cars were soon lined up in front of me, as I leaned into one window after another. The sun was really coming up. The fog was dispersing. And down at that wide spot in the shoulder, there were now ten cars, and a meeting of miners was happening. And I could tell, by the way they were looking over my way, that they were deciding what to do with me.

You have to look at it through their eyes: They had not heard of any strike or protest. They were simply coming to work on a Monday morning and a boy, who none of them knew, barely old enough to shave, was standing there in the road telling them to go home. You could be fired for missing work. Your paycheck would come up short. The local could be fined for striking. And all they had was my word.

I started getting worried that some of them would simply decide to drive on into work, because I was determined to stand in their way and could imagine two or three different ways things could end badly.

What to do?

I decided to change the plan a little. I hardened my face a bit, and walked up to the next car. As the window rolled down, I leaned in aggressively and barked “Listen here, motherfucker. This county is on strike. There’s no work for you here. You can turn around quick and go home, or you can join our picket meeting over here. Or, you can try to scab and get what’s coming.”

I waved my hand vaguely at the dozen cars gathered on the road shoulder. Thinking those men were my back up, and hearing my tone, this brother in the car just nodded sharply, rolled up his window and drove straight down the holler for home. I went to the next car and barked the same threat. He too turned around smartly and left the scene. And the next four or five cars followed, all heading home without stopping to debate or question.

I was 21 years old then, but had been a pretty hard-core Maoist for a while. I knew Mao’s warning not to bluff or strike a pose to intimidate. I just assumed this moment called for an exception.

After seeing that long line of cars start to go home, the fifteen or twenty men gathered by the side of the road loaded up and headed home too — leaving me much relieved and alone once again at the entrance to Eckman. I never did find out what happened to the other pickets.

It was only my second time out, and it had almost gone terribly wrong. I had been a bit naïve and reckless.

At the same time, the incident had a positive side.

I was a complete outsider trying to be active within an illegal movement that was built around tight small-town friendships. This story of my one-man picketing made the rounds. There was some good-natured teasing, but also the beginnings of a certain acceptance among the other pickets that would prove valuable as things got a whole lot tougher.

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