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A collection of typescripts, brochures, pamphlets, books, tape recordings, and assorted ephemeral publications concerning radical political and economic groups and community organizing related to labor history in Appalachia and the United States as compiled by Keith Dix. Organizations and publications represented in the collection include New Directions in Labor (1970-1971), New American Movement (1970-1971), New University Conference (1971), Labor Research Association (1971), Students for a Democratic Society (1963), and Radical Education Project (1968-1969), among others. Also includes material from 1923 to 1976 concerning coal mining labor relations and the role of unions such as the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Topics of these items include rank-and-file members of the union, strikes, agreements, and mechanization. Tape recordings contain oral history interviews conducted by Keith Dix. Interviews chiefly concern coal mining in West Virginia. A more complete list of publications and tape recordings is available in the library. Most of the collection is arranged according in subject files, according to the topic or name of organization.

Transcript of an interview by Richard Hadsell with Major W.P. Tams, Jr., former mine operator in the Winding Gulf coal mining region. Tams discusses his early days in coal mining, the opening of the Kanawha coal region, and coal operators and union officials such as: E.J. Berwind, Joe Beury, George Collins, Jarius Collins, Justus Collins, John J. Cornwell, Samuel Dixon, Elias Hatfield, Troy Hatfield, Isaac Mann, S.T. Patterson, J.A. Renahan, James O. Watts, and George Wolfe. Other individuals mentioned include: Henry D. Hatfield, John L. Lewis, John Mitchell, Fred Mooney, Bob Patterson, and "Mother" Mary Jones. Tams also discusses the Winding Gulf Collieries, the Beaver Coal Co., the Smokeless Coal Field, the N&W Railroad, the C&O Railroad, the Virginian Railroad, Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, unions and strikes, racial relations, blacks, scrip, company stores, Atwater, and Castner, Curran and Bullitt.

Letter from Mary "Mother" Jones to T.V. Powderly, Department of Labor, Washington, D.C. "Mother" Jones introduces Fred Mooney, secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, District 17, asks Powderly to get him a passport, and says she does not know when she will leave for Mexico.

The collection consists of the "Proposed Rules of MFD Caucus", from District 3l, UMWA, and the transcribed testimony of Charles M. Culp, a West Virginia miner, given in Washington, D.C., on 18 February 1972 in an investigation of his retention by District 31 as campaign worker for the Boyle-Titler-Owens international slate in 1969. Culp's handwritten statement and other evidence are included with the testimony.

The collection consists of case papers for the trials of coal miners and UMWA leaders, indicted for treason in connection with the armed march into Logan County, West Virginia, during August and September, 1921. The main part of the papers concern the trials of Walter Allen, William Blizzard, C. Frank Keeney, Rev. J.E. Wilburn, and John Wilburn. There are also photocopies of an indictment dated 17 September 1921 and an indictment dated 12 January 1922, as well as other court records concerning the trials, collected by Prof. Festus P. Summers of West Virginia University.

This collection contains miscellaneous records regarding history of the coal industry. Types of records include correspondence. See "Scope and Content Note" for additional information regarding material within the collection.

The collection consists of: a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings on the explosion at Monongah Mines No.6 and No.8 on 6 December 1907, rescue operations, the inquest, and mine law reforms; photographs of the disaster; maps of the interior of the mines; printed and typescript reports and pamphlets on mining operations; script of a 1952 television broadcast on the disaster; material on mine disasters in Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Illinois; and newspaper accounts of the agitation for the removal of Judge Alston G. Dayton; and on the imprisonment of Miss Fannie Sellins, a labor organizer.

Typescript memoir of the life of Mother Jones, entitled "Mother Jones: the Life Story of the Irish Immigrant Girl Who Became the Most Unique Character in the American Labor Movement, Living Past 100 Years," written by Lillie May Burgess of Hyattsville, Maryland, and copyrighted 8 February 1938. The manuscript is in two parts, several pages of which are missing. The first part (241pp.) is entitled "The Life Story of Mother Jones: American Labor's Joan of Arc," and is a narration of events in Mother Jones' life. It includes a description of her early years, before she became a labor activist, and some of the highlights of her labor career. Her activities in organizing miners in West Virginia and Colorado receive most emphasis, but also included are her activities among women brewery workers, her participation in the 1919 steel strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, her interest in the Mexican Revolution of 1911, her views on woman suffrage and prohibition, her meetings with various presidents and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and her friendship with Terence V. Powderly, fellow labor activist. The narration follows closely that of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MOTHER JONES, published in 1925 by Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, Ill., with the addition of some chapters on her life after 1925. The second part (106pp.) is entitled "The Last Years of Mother Jones (Personal Reminiscences)." It is a narration of the later years of Mother Jones' life, ca.1927-1930, most of which she spent under the care of the author, Lillie May Burgess, at the Burgess home in Hyattsville, Maryland. Mrs. Burgess relates the circumstances under which Mother Jones and she became friends, how Mother Jones came to live with the Burgess family in 1927, and what these years of her life were like.