On Tuesday, July 7, 2015, Dr. Paul Rakes will discuss the “‘Meanest County’ in the Nation: Hip-Pocket Ethics on the Early New River Coal Mining Frontier, 1890-1910” in the Archives and History Library of the Culture Center in Charleston. The program will begin at 6:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Any mention of saloons and gunplay in mining towns usually produces popular images of more nationally famous locales such as Deadwood, South Dakota, made famous by early dime novels and, later, by Hollywood film makers. In reality, the earliest coal operations of West Virginia’s Fayette County possessed most of the elements common to all of the nation’s mining frontiers. As with early mining towns in the legendary Wild West, Fayette’s early rudimentary coal camps attracted a number of young, transient, often “hotheaded” males who adhered to a philosophy that required one to stand-his-ground in confrontations. Contrary to popular images, miners both in the west and in the east who carried pistols usually did so in a hip pocket and the dramatic increase of violent confrontations in Fayette County often resulted from the guidelines of “hip-pocket ethics.” In fact, the increase of violence associated with the early camps led one Ohio newspaper to refer to Fayette as the “meanest county in the nation.”
Paul Rakes will consider not only the statistical evidence frontier-style violence in Fayette County, but also specific cases of saloon show downs, arguments over females, and minor disagreements that led to deadly outcomes.
A third generation coal miner, Paul H. Rakes, Professor at WVU Tech, worked as a coal miner for twenty years before leaving mining to earn his Ph. D. in history at West Virginia University. His research focuses both on technology and on the labor culture of coal miners in West Virginia. He has produced such professional journal articles as “Technology in Transition: The Dilemmas of Early-Twentieth Century Coal Mining” for the Journal of Appalachian Studies and “West Virginia Coal Mine Fatalities: The Subculture of Danger and a Statistical Overview of the Pre-enforcement Era” and “Casualties on the Homefront: World War II Era Coal Disasters in West Virginia” for West Virginia History. Book chapters include “A Combat Scenario: Early Coal Mining and the Culture of Danger” in Culture, Class and Politics in Modern Appalachia (2009) and “‘A Hard-Bitten Lot:’ Non-Strike Violence in the Early Southern West Virginia Coalfields” in Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia (2011). Dr. Rakes has served as a consultant for several televised video productions focusing on coal mining history and is regularly called upon by news agencies to provide insight into current mining developments. Additionally, he contributed a short memoir regarding growing up in the coalfields in Anthology of Appalachian Writers.
On July 7, the library will close at 5:00 p.m. and reopen at 5:45 p.m. for participants only. For additional information, contact the Archives and History Library at (304) 558-0230.
