The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom by James Green

Author:James Green [Green, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2015-02-02T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

There Can Be No Peace

in West Virginia

May 30–August 7, 1921

Outraged by the military autocracy Major Davis had imposed in the Williamson minefield, Harold Houston decided to challenge the legality of Governor Morgan’s martial law regime in an appeal to the state supreme court. The attorney would base his argument mainly on a case of the arrests of two strike activists, Frank Ingham, an African American community leader, and A. D. Lavinder, the veteran UMWA organizer and socialist agitator.

Frank Ingham had loaded coal in the Mingo mines for fourteen years when the UMWA launched its organizing drive in the spring of 1920. He had become a prominent figure in the community by then, and therefore Ingham had more to risk than others when he decided to join the union. The consequences were immediate. A few days after he took the oath of obligation, Ingham was fired and evicted. After working in Kentucky for a while, Ingham returned to Mingo and pleaded his case to his old mine superintendent. The boss said he respected Ingham as a miner and told him that he could have his old job back, but only if he renounced his oath to the UMWA. The boss declared, “No man would ever poke his head into a drift if he claimed to have a drop of union blood in him.”1

Before Ingham could make his decision, a law officer arrested him without charges and put him on a train bound for Welch, where he was locked up in the McDowell County jailhouse with other union men who were being held there because the Mingo County lockup was full of strikers and UMWA organizers. When Ingham asked county sheriff William “Bill” Hatfield for permission to call his wife so that she would know he was in jail, the lawman replied, “I am not going to let you out of jail,” and then added, “The only message you can get out will be to God . . .”

That night, Ingham tensed as he heard jangling keys and the footfalls of jailers coming his way. Sheriff Hatfield appeared, took Ingham out of his cell and then said to him: “I want to carry you down the road; there is some men down there that want to talk to you.” Ingham had spent his life talking to white men and calculating how he could stand up for himself, even under the worst circumstances. He recalled saying calmly and respectfully to the sheriff and his deputies: “Gentlemen, this is a very unusual thing, to take me out of jail and have me make a statement to men down the road. If they want me to make a statement I would prefer to make it here.”

While he waited for a reply, a deputy sheriff hit Ingham on the head with an iron club and knocked him down; then two officers dragged him out of the jail and threw him into an idling automobile. A few miles outside of Welch, the deputies pulled Ingham out of the car and beat him on the head with iron clubs until they thought he was dead.

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