Working in the Coal Mine

An Excerpt from EBONY
Thursday, June 17, 2010
By Kevin Chappell

Love stories are everywhere. Unfortunately, it seems as if it takes tragedy before the best ones are ever told.

For 34 years—in the mountains of West Virginia—Geneva Lynch lived a real-life fairy tale.

Rosie saw to it.

That’s what she called her husband William Roosevelt “Rosie” Lynch. “Either that or ‘Honey,’” she says. He called her “Genny.”

To her, Rosie was a prince. To others in the small town of Oak Hill, W.Va., one hour south of Charleston, he was a 59-year-old coal miner, one of the old-timers who knew the mines like a grizzled trucker knows the back roads.

For 34 years, Genny was a coal miner’s wife. It’s generally agreed that being a coal miner is the toughest job in the state. Being the wife of one has got to be a close second.

Coal is often referred to as West Virginia’s “black diamonds.” It’s honored in museums and studied in grade schools. The stuff’s everywhere. In some places, such as along a winding two-lane road in the north part of town, coal falls off the side of the mountain in chunks the size of candy bars. In fact, there is believed to be enough coal in West Virginia to power the entire United States for decades.

By far, coal mining is one of the best jobs in the state. An experienced miner can make six figures. There are good benefits. A good retirement plan. It’s making it to retirement in good health that’s the challenge.

Even though Rosie never talked about it much to her, Genny recognized the risks. She had encouraged her husband to quit—especially when she found out recently that he was at a site where he had to forage some two miles into the side of a mountain before being lowered some five miles into the ground.

“I told him that was too far in[side] there,” she said.

She suggested that he go back to teaching, a profession he entered after college and walked away from in favor of the camaraderie and financial security mining offered. So close to retirement, she wanted him to do something safer, something that could ease him into his golden years.

Deep down, she knew Rosie would never leave the mine. It’s what kept him young. “He loved producing coal,” she says.

Historical records show that the earliest coal mining in America of any commercial significance involved slaves working in the coal pits in Virginia in the mid- 1700s. During Reconstruction, the coal and railroad industries became two primary employment opportunities for the newly freed Blacks.

“Thousands of them toiled in the pits and shafts, both as slaves and free men,” says Tim Pinnick, who has been researching Black coal miners for some 20 years. He has created a Web site (blackcoalminerheritage.net ) to compile information about Black coal miners that he says “is generally contained in a myriad of documents, often unindexed and scattered in many locations across the country.”

As early as 1860, documentation shows Black coal miners working in northern mines near Pittsburgh. In 1913, a pick miner was paid around 48 cents per ton of coal that he mined, averaging out to an annual salary of about $700. Large mining companies often provided housing for the miner and his family. By the 1930s, there were more than 55,000 Black miners in the United States. But industrialization cut into those numbers dramatically as machines made mining easier and more profitable. By the 1960s, even more Blacks were forced out as unionization resulted in increased wages and better benefits. There are presently only a few thousand Black coal miners in the nation.

Today, coal mining in West Virginia is considered such a good job that nepotism runs rampant within the industry. A miner who works in a union-organized mine gets paid vacation, sick days, holiday pay, full medical insurance and, depending on the company, a production bonus, a safety bonus, clothing allowance and many more benefits.  

Mining in the mountains is much like balling in the ’hood. Little boys in West Virginia start dreaming early of the day when they turn 18, can drop out of school and get a good mining job. For many, it’s their only ticket out of abject poverty. Appalachia poverty. The kind of poverty that makes the ghetto look like the good life.

“Connects”, especially for Blacks, are a must to land a job.

The full text of Kevin Chappell’s “Coal Miner’s Wife” essay, along with photos by Valerie Goodloe is featured in the July issue of EBONY, which also features an exclusive interview with PRINCE.  The magazines is available on newsstands now.