Chronotopic Figurations of Coal Mining at Blair Mountain
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CHRONOTOPIC FIGURATIONS OF COAL MINING AT BLAIR MOUNTAIN BY DAVIS BOURLAND A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Communication May 2011 Winston Salem, North Carolina Approved By: Margaret Zulick, Ph.D., Advisor John Llewellyn, Ph.D., Chair Michele Gillespie, Ph.D. Bourland ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………….iv ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 RATIONALE……………………………………………………………………………...3 LITERATURE REVIEW: THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS……………………….7 Trope and Metaphor……………………………………………….....................................7 The Chronotope…………………………….……………………………………………10 LITERATURE REVIEW: CULTURAL ARTIFACTS…………………………………14 Speeches of Mother Jones………………………………………………………………..14 Blair Mountain Marching Song………………………………………………………….18 Speeches of Judy Bonds…………………………………………………………….……22 CHAPTER II “TIME THAT TRIES MEN’S SOULS”: THE CHRONOTOPE AND SPEECHES OF MOTHER JONES Introduction: Mother Jones at Lens Creek………………………………………….……26 Mother Jones’ Rhetorical Style……………………………………………………..……29 Theorizing an Autobiographical and Folkloric Chronotope……………………….…….34 Analysis I: Figures of the Autobiographical Chronotope………………………….…….41 Analysis II: Figures of the Folkloric Chronotope………………………………………..52 Bourland iii CHAPTER III “WE’RE GONNA HANG DON CHAFIN TO A SOUR APPLE TREE”: CULTURAL APPROPRIATION AND FOLK SONG Introduction: Sid Hatfield, Don Chafin, and the March on Blair…………..……………63 Theorizing Cultural Appropriation………………………………………………………67 “John Brown’s Body”……………………………………………………………………71 Analysis: Figures of an Autobiographical and Folkloric Chronotope……………….…..76 CHAPTER IV “NATURE’S DEADLINE, NOT OURS”: A RHETORIC OF COAL MINING AND SPEECHES OF JUDY BONDS Introduction: Judy Bonds and Blair Mountain………………………………………...…83 The “Godmother” of a Mountaintop Removal Movement………………………………88 Analysis I: Figures of an Autobiographical Chronotope………………………………...92 Analysis II: Figures of a Folkloric Chronotope……………………………………….....99 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………106 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..109 CURRICULUM VITAE………..………..……………………………………………..117 Bourland iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ASA: Appalachia Studies Association CRMR: Coal River Mountain Rally MTR: Mountaintop Removal Bourland v ABSTRACT Blair Mountain, West Virginia, site of both the largest labor insurrection since the Civil War and, more recently, contested terrain for mountaintop removal mining, is an exemplar of Appalachia coal mining’s uniquely American tropes. In 1921, roughly 8,000 miners were held up at Blair as they marched south to Logan to protest labor conditions and petition for the right to unionize southern coalfields. Currently, citizens of Blair are fighting to protect the mountain from a coal extraction process commonly known as mountaintop removal mining (MTR). In 1921, striking miners, having returned from World War I, displayed an oft-told story about American labor strife and the struggle for unionization. Current activists engage in a less publicly understood environmental dispute with coal corporations and government officials over the risks associated with mining methods. While the present debate has shifted paradigmatically from that of the past (i.e., from a labor to an environmental dispute), the cultural and social milieu in Appalachia has not. For West Virginians invested in the future of Blair Mountain, its cultural and political histories have been “thrust back into remembrance” (Nida and Adkins 14). For opponents of MTR, Blair Mountain’s history is simultaneously present and dangerously close to extinction. Bourland 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Blair Mountain, West Virginia, site of both the largest labor insurrection since the Civil War and, more recently, contested terrain for mountaintop removal mining, is an exemplar of Appalachia 1 coal mining’s uniquely American tropes. In 1921, roughly 8,000 miners were held up at Blair as they marched south to Logan to protest labor conditions and petition for the right to unionize southern coalfields. Currently, citizens of Blair are fighting to protect the mountain from a coal extraction process commonly known as mountaintop removal mining (MTR). In 1921, striking miners, having returned from World War I, displayed an oft-told story about American labor strife and the struggle for unionization. In contrast, current activists engage in a less publicly understood environmental dispute with coal corporations and government officials over the risks associated with mining methods. While the present debate has shifted paradigmatically from that of the past (i.e., from a labor to an environmental dispute), the cultural and social milieu in Appalachia has not. For West Virginians invested in the future of Blair Mountain, the pathetic rhetoric of exploitation in the coalfields in the early 20th century has been “thrust back into remembrance” (Nida and Adkins 14). For opponents of MTR, Blair Mountain’s history – be it factual or cultural – is simultaneously present and dangerously close to extinction. This project isolates a collection of artifacts from both 1921 and today to explore the rhetorical foundations of discursive life in the American southern coalfields. Blair 1 Appalachia is treated in this study in terms of place – that is, the mountainous region in the eastern U.S. spanning from Alabama and Mississippi to southern New York. However, Appalachia may also represent the culture and history of the “Appalachians” (Evans) – individuals living in the many cities and locales throughout the mountains in Appalachia. Conflation is widespread in both academic and popular references to the area and its histories. Bourland 2 Mountain is one site in which we can see both historical narratives of confrontation and current debates about strip mining in the figurative language of public discourse. In particular, this paper highlights several speeches by Mother Jones in 1920 and 1921, the marching songs, “We’re gonna hang Don Chafin to a sour apple tree” and “Every little river,” and several speeches by Judy Bonds from 2007 to 2009. Debates about MTR hearken to Blair Mountain’s history and recall labor rhetorics from the turn of the twentieth century. Anti-MTR activists are currently lobbying for Blair Mountain to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which would protect the site from future surface mining operations and provide the opportunity to receive archival research funding. In order to explore the rhetorical functions of these artifacts, this project indicates metaphorical and tropological figurations in the texts to highlight the assertions and values they espouse. Of Burke’s four master tropes, metaphor is perspectival: it “brings out the thisness of a that, or the thatness of a this” (421). In this way, metaphor redefines lived experience. Metaphors operate in particular ways across time for texts at Blair; light-dark metaphors (Osborn) and familial metaphors (Adams) are two of the most commonly used. This paper attempts to show connections between tropological figurations used in 1921 and those used today in order to portray the historical complexities underpinning current struggles. Of course, both the miners’ march in 1921 and current debate about MTR are distinct moments in time separated by nearly a century of historical and technological change. However, many see present strife as unambiguously tied to the past. Perhaps such looking back is indicative of nostalgia for a bygone era, or maybe the “battleground” Bourland 3 serves as a useful rhetorical agent for publicizing MTR. Whatever the case, current discourse at, and about, Blair emphasizes its labor history. The two moments interact spatially and temporally, or as Bakhtin indicates, “chronotopically,” which for him defines space-time relationships of continuity and change within novelistic discourse. In this way, narratives told about Blair Mountain (e.g., Nida and Adkins) broadly conflate the complexity of the site’s historical agonism such that time seems to stand still. Thus, this paper attempts to show how emergent folk tropes are characterized by chronotopic understandings of environment and place at Blair Mountain. First, I explain the project’s import for rhetoric and discuss the need for scholarly work about Blair Mountain and MTR. I ground several commonly held historical generalizations about coal camps and indicate issues associated with MTR. I argue that rhetorical study is well-suited to engage in and learn from the cultural history of coal mining. RATIONALE Few scholars have dealt with the interaction between the bituminous coal industry and folk life from a cultural communication perspective. However, there is a breadth of work on the diversity of issues this paper presents [e.g., protest rhetoric and social movement theory (Browne), rhetoric of song (Branham and Hartnett), coal laborlore (Korson), and MTR (Shnayerson)]. The United States has depended on coal since before the first major mining operations beginning in 1840, and its dependency raises concerns today as the country pushes toward more environmentally friendly and renewable resources. The current climate regarding MTR is fraught with uncertainty about the Bourland 4 future of Appalachian jobs and communities. In other words, conflicts at Blair Mountain provide the rhetorical critic examples of exigencies, or “imperfections marked