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In the summer of 1921 ten thousand armed men walked into the mountains of West Virginia. Black men and white men. Side by side. Shoulder to shoulder. On the same road going to the same fight for the same reason. That is the part of the Battle of Blair Mountain that history forgot to tell. The coal companies of Mingo County had spent years crushing any attempt at unionization with hired gun thugs, mass evictions, and the full cooperation of the state government. Miners who joined the union were fired and thrown out of their company houses with their families in the same day. Union organizers were beaten and murdered. The sheriff of Mingo County ran a private army on the coal company payroll. In August of 1921 the miners had enough. Ten thousand of them, a significant portion of them Black miners who understood better than anyone what it meant to have no rights and no recourse against men with money and guns, armed themselves and marched toward Blair Mountain to liberate the coalfields of Logan and Mingo counties. The coal operators called in private mercenaries. The governor called in the state police. The federal government sent the United States Army and military aircraft that dropped bombs on American citizens on American soil. The miners held Blair Mountain for five days before surrendering when faced with federal troops. They lost the battle. But the story of what happened on that mountain, ten thousand men of every color standing together against one of the most powerful industries in America, is one of the most extraordinary and most deliberately buried chapters in American history. It deserves to be remembered. #AppalachianHistory #BattleOfBlairMountain #BlackHistory #TheLostMountain #CoalMining #LaborHistory #AppalachianHeritage #WestVirginia #DarkHistory #NeverForget