BLAIR MOUNTAIN

In 1921, thousands of armed coal miners marched through the mountains of West Virginia-and America came closer to open industrial warfare than most people remember.

For years, miners and their families had lived under a system in which coal companies could influence not only their wages and working conditions, but much of the world surrounding them. Organizing could cost a miner his job, his home, or worse.

Then violence, resistance, and years of accumulated anger pushed the coalfields toward a confrontation at Blair Mountain.

BLAIR MOUNTAIN: The Forgotten War in America's Coalfields reconstructs the people, places, political forces, and extraordinary events that produced the largest armed labor uprising in American history.

From the mine towns and company stores to the Matewan confrontation, the murder of Sid Hatfield, the miners' march, the machine-gun positions overlooking Blair Mountain, and the arrival of federal troops, M. H. Farrow follows the conflict through the people who experienced it-and the families caught in its path.

Blair Mountain was more than a battle between miners and mine owners. It was a struggle over power, dignity, law, labor, and who would control life in America's industrial communities.

And for an event of its scale, remarkably few Americans know its story.

Part of the American Echoes series-recovering the true stories that shaped our nation.