Written in Blood by Wess Harris

Author:Wess Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2017-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

Cecil Roberts (with glasses) leads fellow strikers at Moss 3 Pittston mine in September 1989.

Kline: Ninety-nine?

Roberts: Ninety-nine strikers and one minister—but we had 1,200, 1,400 strikers outside—rushed in by car caravan about same moment. We held that plant from Sunday afternoon until Wednesday night. And no one could come in or go out without our permission. And the police, the U.S. marshals, judges, federal and state, none of them could do anything about it. They fined us very heavily, obviously. But that was a significant victory for the Union, and it sent a loud clear message to the company that we were not going away. So about the second day there, the U.S. marshals came out to serve us an injunction ordering us out of there. The state police were gathered around also. So in that picture you see the state police, but there were also U.S. marshals there with guns on. And we’re into a conversation with them about how they were going to serve all one hundred people that were in the plant, as well as ourselves and John Cox, who was with me, and others. By the time that ended on Wednesday—we always had rallies on Wednesday nights in St. Paul—since we were at the preparation plant, we just had a rally there. And the Roanoke Times ran a story and they estimated a crowd of about 5,000 outside that plant on Wednesday night. They said it was like “a Billy Graham crusade at altar call time” is how they described it. There was music and speeches. We had the miners from inside the plant come out and drop their backpacks and everything in a truck. And got them out of there while we had a big crowd on hand so the police could not identify them and arrest them. It was probably a highlight of my career during the Moss 3 takeover in the Pittston strike of September 1989.

The West Virginia State Museum

Kline: Well now, I’ll tell you. I got my first look at the Coal exhibit at the State Museum at the Culture Center in Charleston last week. And I went there having seen your letter of July 26, in which you laid out some concerns you had about the exhibit. And having recently seen the exhibit I can’t find that it reflects the details you’ve been telling me over the last forty minutes about your own life in the coalfields. The story just isn’t there. It doesn’t come alive. You would think the people who developed that exhibit, that none of them had ever seen a coal mine or even talked to a coal miner. None of this you’re telling me is reflected in that exhibit. And I’m wondering how you feel about it.

Roberts: I think, as I looked at the museum, maybe I’m wrong, but it seemed to me that they were trying to speak to how they would like to see our history perceived, as opposed to how our history is. (Laughs)

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