Everybody Was Black Down There": Race and Industrial Change in the Alabama Coalfields (review)

A P R I L 2 0 0 8 157 and their communities from white violence by taking up arms. Scholars of the civil rights movement will find it enlightening and useful. CHERISSE JONES-BRANCH Arkansas State University “Everybody Was Black Down There”: Race and Industrial Change in the Alabama Coalfields. By Robert H. Woodrum. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. xiv, 304 pp. $59.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8203-2739-6. $24.95 (paper ). ISBN 978-0-8203-2879-9. Approximately thirteen thousand African Americans constituted 53 percent of Alabama coal miners in 1930. By century’s end, fewer than two thousand blacks worked in the industry, equating to a meager 15 percent of the state’s mining population. “Why this dramatic decline occurred— and why it happened during the tenure of a strong [union] presence in the Alabama coalfields—form the central questions” of “Everybody Was Black Down There” (p. 2). Secondary themes highlight the coal industry’s downward trend following World War II and address the socio-economic impact on miners, coal communities, and race relations. Robert H. Woodrum argues that “the union’s accords on race ultimately left its black members vulnerable to the economic and technological changes that transformed the coal industry after World War II” (p. 5). For example, in 1950 twenty thousand miners—both black and white—worked under the “equal pay for equal work” policy established by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in the late nineteenth century. By 1970, fewer than five thousand workers populated a waning and predominantly white industry. According to Woodrum, mechanization of the mining process and the advent of strip mining combined to eliminate jobs traditionally held by black miners. In particular, mechanical loaders and continuous mining machines resulted in disproportionate job losses among African Americans. As other energy sources—oil, natural gas, hydroelectric power—eclipsed coal as the fuel of choice, operators made inequitable hiring decisions with tacit approval of the UMWA. This practice violated the union’s traditional biracial policies, but substantiated the unofficial “UMWA formula”—appointing white miners to positions in the public eye while keeping black workers behind the scenes. Woodrum contends that “the UMWA did not give ‘technological unemployment’ serious consideration and essentially allowed the operators a free hand in replacing [black] hand loaders with machines” T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 158 (p. 55). Furthermore, the UMWA tolerated the revival of Ku Klux Klan activity within its ranks. Woodrum identifies numerous conflicts between coal operators and the union as well as significant differences between rank-and-file miners and state UMWA leaders. He expresses surprise at the tendency of Alabama miners to defy national policies established by UMWA president John L. Lewis and to resist directives from state union leaders. This point of view, however, ignores a precedent established by the formation of the United Mine Workers of Alabama in 1893, just three years after the inception of the UMWA. The struggle between miners and state union leaders forms another theme of Woodrum’s work. He concludes that the UMWA ultimately represented the interests of its white members with little regard for the welfare of Alabama’s coal communities. Woodrum fails to acknowledge that economic decline and mechanization affected black and white miners alike. African Americans left Alabama during the Depression and after World War II, but many white miners departed as well. Woodrum admits that “statistics on the migration patterns for coal miners are not available,” yet he concludes that “many likely followed traditional paths” (p.153). Since more white miners remained in Alabama, Woodrum’s desire to focus on African Americans seems misdirected. “Everybody Was Black Down There” provides an impressive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Interviews, archive manuscripts, company records, and government documents support Woodrum’s “collective narrative” of thousands of miners. In addition, he effectively addresses gender issues inherent in the integration of women into the coal-mining industry during the 1970s. Yet, his focus on race clouds the larger issue. Woodrum states his intent to address “problems that have plagued the mining industry since its early days...