"They did it right. You have to stand up.

[Brigid]

"You may not win, but you have to stand up."

--Margaret Hager, daughter of a coal miner.

Back in 1921, when she was 10 years old, a violent strike broke out in the coal fields of Mingo County, WV, known as the Battle of Blair Mountain. A bomb, dropped by a plane hired by the mine owners, landed in her family's back yard.

[JimDandy]

1. I don't get the context of this.

Would like to know and don't mean to be dense...

[Brigid]

3. Not dense at all.

I'm watching a documentary about Appalachia, and it includes a riveting account of the Battle of Blair Mountain. I first saw this doc on the History Channel a few years ago, and it was the first time I had ever heard this story. Check it out by looking up Blair Mountain on Wikipedia. I apologize for not linking, but my phone just will not link to Wikipedia.

Anyway, I have always loved Hager's comment. If it isn't typical of her tough, independent people, I don't know what is.

[JimDandy]

5. Thanks.

Love what she said: "You may not win, but you have to stand up."

That's what I told my sons as they grew up, but added "...for what's right" at the end.

[Brigid]

4. It's a fascinating story.

In the documentary I saw, another woman, who was five at the time, remembers shots being fired into her family's house.

Your grandfather and his brothers were probably part of the Redneck Army. Thousands of miners tied red bandanas and marched from Charleston through Logan County to Blair Mountain in Mingo County, carrying their hunting weapons. Some drove, some even commandeered trains. The mine owners monitored their progress from the air, and even dropped homemade bombs. Not since the Civil War had there been anything like it.

[Brigid]

7. Sid Hatfield was the sheriff in Matewan.

His assassination by "private detectives" from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency sort of set things off.