Coal Shovel Hands - -
- - Coal Diggers - - - - And a Warm Heart
Rosa Mary Bonacci
During early in the 1970's--a time that produced
affirmative-action laws by the legislative acts of the federal government and during the time of the biggest coal booms in a half-century--American women began to enter coal mine portals to claim
high-wage mining jobs. By early 1973 several thousand women became rank-and-file
miners, achieving equal pay and accepting equal risk to life and limb in various jobs both underground and on the surface.
As
Women challenged centuries-old superstitions held by male coal miners
who believed that women's presence underground would bring them
disaster. Women miners in and around the coal mines would be highly objectionable.
Women miners became a role model for American women
pioneering in nontraditional employment fields and emerged as activists in the
United Mine Workers of America. Women miners created their own support group, 'The Coal Employment Project.
Proud of the past and confident of the future. The coal industry has reflected our society with 3,300
women among the present day mining work force. But there looms a 'cut off' in the Eastern Kentucky coal mine of Arch of KY, Apogee Mine NO 37* and women will be the first to be cut off because one percent lack
seniority.
There is a collection of photographs on display in the Appalachian Center of the University of Kentucky, Southeast Community College,
Cumberland, Kentucky. A pictoral that illustrates a unique and important chapter in American social and labor
history that depicts women.
