A Hundred Years Ago,

Article by Stan Dotson

Published in The Porch Magazine, September 2021

Everyone likes a good centennial. Usually, when we reach the hundredth anniversary of a major
historical event, there's all sorts of fanfare in the news. Not so during the last week of August,
2021. All through that week I scoured various news sources for coverage of the the Battle of
Blair Mountain, which took place in late August of 1921, and could find nothing, outside of a
couple of West Virginia periodicals and a trade union bulletin. Nothing in the NY Times, noth-
ing on CNN or NPR, not even Mother Jones magazine, even though Mary Harris "Mother"
Jones was front and center in this battle for coal miners to unionize.

I learned about Blair Mountain many years ago, from the unlikeliest of sources, my Aunt Aileen.
She was my favorite aunt, the quintessential quirky old lady that seems to be part of every fam-
ily. The eldest of my mom's sisters, Aileen was a tall, top-heavy woman with finely teased blue-
gray hair and bright red lipstick. She always greeted me with a long, smothering hug, during
which I got a big dose of the Aileen aroma— a mixture of Avon cosmetic powder and Pell Mell
cigarette smoke. She had a contagious loud laugh that often ended in a smoker's coughing
spell.

Aunt Aileen was a faithful letter-writer, and one of her greatest gifts to me was the collection of
letters she and my mom wrote to each over the course of forty years. She and I became pen
pals, or more precisely sparring partners, when I went to college and discovered my political
leaning. I never heard a word about politics in my growing up years; our household conversa-
tions centered on family, church, gardening, and baseball. I didn't realize there was anything
political about Vietnam; it was simply a dangerous place where my older brother Jerry was "in
the service" and we needed to pray for his safety, and send him chocolate chip cookies. The
only thing I understood about Watergate was that it preempted my grandmother's
"story" (General Hospital) for several weeks, much to her consternation.

Then, in my late teenage years, I discovered I was a liberal, and that my Aunt Aileen was not.
She was not only conservative; she was over-the-top arch-conservative. Mostly, she was a
fierce anti-communist. Everything liberal smacked to her of the demonic force of communism. I
don't think Aileen was particularly prejudiced or bigoted when it came to race, but as soon as
she saw a 1960s billboard castigating Martin Luther King for spending time at a "communist
training camp" in Monteagle, she knew all she needed to know about the civil rights move-
ment.

The polar opposition of our respective political leanings came out in our pen pal correspon-
dence. Aileen would clip out the letters to the editor she had sent to her hometown paper, and
include them with her hand-written letters. Those were sure to elicit a blistering response from
me. Then, I would make sure and inform her whenever I got involved in some kind of progres-
sive social justice action, and I could count on her own blistering response in return. This joust-
ing with pens-mightier-than-swords never tainted our deep love for each other; there was never
an ounce of personal hostility or judgment. For me, it was a fun pastime.

I thought I really was going to get Aunt Aileen's goat when my wife Kim and I were en route
from seminary to our first church pastorate, and along the way we stopped to spend a week in
Dante (pronounced "Daint") Virginia, camping out at Camp Solidarity with striking miners from
the Pittston Coal Company. I wrote her a long letter about the experience, our marching in the
picket lines, playing and singing protest songs— I couldn't wait to see what kind of letter this
would provoke in response. When her letter did arrive, I opened it and couldn't believe what I
read.

"I am so proud of you," the letter began. "That is really important work they are doing over
there. The unions might have strayed away from their mission at times, and there's always the

1
 A Hundred Years Ago,

Article by Stan Dotson

Published in The Porch Magazine, September 2021

danger of corruption, but they have done so much good for working people in our country. I'm
so glad you were there."

What? My mind started reeling. Is this my Aunt Aileen writing? Is this the woman who proudly
served as a delegate to the American Party Convention for George Wallace's presidential bid?
Where was her fierce rant? I decided this called for more than a letter in response; I needed to
go and visit her. The next weekend, I arrived at her door, received the long and tight aromatic
bearhug (at least this hadn't changed), and after the requisite catching up on family news, I got
down to business. What followed was a weekend full of stories I could never have imagined in
my wildest dreams.

I learned from Aunt Aileen that her father, my grandfather, had been a union organizer in the
1920s. He was the foreman of the first union organized in western North Carolina, at the
Sayles-Biltmore Bleachery textile mill where he and his brothers worked. She explained just
how much gumption it took to engage in this kind of organizing; a lot of people thought it tan-
tamount to insurrection. There at Aileen's kitchen table is where I first heard of the Battle of
Blair Mountain, a historical event that took place two years before she was born.

"It was over in West Virginia, in the late summer of 1921, that the miners' efforts to organize
were met with the full force of the U.S. military, complete with World War I bomber planes sent
in to squelch the uprising of the workers. Do you know this was the only time in history where
our government bombed its own citizens?" Aileen explained to me that all the things we take
for granted now—a 40 hour work week, vacations, minimum wages, safe places to work, in-
surance benefits—none of it would be here without the sacrifices of those Blair Mountain mar-
tyrs and the courageous work of people like my grandfather.

She began telling stories of her teenage years, like the time when she and my mother and their
other three sisters joined their father and his fellow union members in a picket line at the Enka
plant. She got a glimmer in her eye when she diverted into a side-story. There was this young
organizer she met there on the picket lines. A tall, handsome, smart young man. One thing led
to another, and their walking together on the line led to them taking other walks together. In-
stead of holding signs, though, they found themselves holding hands on these walks. And then
there was her first kiss. I blushed as I listened to Aileen describe fairly intimate details of what it
was like to fall in love for the first time. "Solidarity forever," she said, "took on a whole different
meaning for us." A hearty laugh morphed into a long coughing spell. Then came the clincher.

"All was going according to plan, like a fairy tale, until I got to the picket line one day and found
that he was not there. He had gone. Without a word. WIthout as much as a 'see you later.'
Without a goodbye kiss."

"Where did he go? Did you ever hear from him again? " I asked.

"Yes, I heard about him. He went to Chicago." She paused as all signs of laughter left her face.
"He joined the communist party and became an organizer for them."

Aaaahhhhh. Now everything made sense; my quirky Aunt's life suddenly became clear. All
those blistering letters I had received throughout the years were part and parcel of a fierce life-
long response to being jilted. It was the fury of a woman scorned, with communism playing the
role of the other woman. Aileen would be celebrating her 100th birthday two years from now.
So while our nation seems to have forgotten the story of Blair Mountain, if I have anything to do
with it, I'm going to make sure that her centennial gets some fanfare, at least in our family cir-
cle.