The Redneck Army planned to free their compatriots from jail, help win the Mingo strike, and unionize the southern counties. First, they would have to go through Logan County where Sheriff Don Chafin, whose salary was paid by coal operators, had assembled an army of three thousand deputies and mine guards. Chafin’s “Logan Defenders,” armed with machine guns, took defensive positions along Blair Mountain’s 15-mile ridgeline.
Earlier this year, the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum launched Courage in the Hollers: Mapping the Miners’ Struggle for a Union, a new public history and monument project in the southern West Virginia coalfields…
