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Exhibit on Coal Mines: Then and Now |
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Photo journalist Earl Dotter, known for his award-winning work documenting the lives of working Americans, joined with the Appalachian Institute at Wheeling (W.Va.) Jesuit University, to produce a powerful new photo exhibit, “Our Future in Retrospect–Coal Miner Health in Appalachia.” The exhibit is dedicated to the 21 coal miners killed on the job in West Virginia, Kentucky, Utah and Maryland this year. Click here for a list of those who perished.
The exhibit combines Dotter’s present-day look at health and safety issues in America’s coalfields with Russell W. Lee’s 1946 documentary photography on the gamut of issues in coal communities: mining fatalities, miners’ lung health, coalfield clinics, nutrition, water quality and housing.
Lee was assigned by President Harry S. Truman to a federal investigative team to collect data and document health and safety conditions in the nation’s mines and coalfield communities. The investigation was in response to a 1946 Mine Workers’ strike driven by health and safety concerns.
That investigation’s report, which included hundreds of Lee’s photographs, was the genesis for significant improvements in the lives of miners and their families, including the creation by the union and coal operators of the UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund. In addition to providing health and retirement benefits, the fund helped establish a system of Appalachian coalfield hospitals.
Federal mine safety laws also were enacted in the wake of the report as well as state and federal legislation that addressed and provided compensation for coal mining’s most significant occupational disease: black lung.
Yet 60 years later, serious coal mine and coal community health and safety problems remain and the exhibit allows viewers to compare and contrast conditions six decades apart.
The exhibit is on display at the AFL-CIO building in Washington, D.C., 815 16th St., N.W., from April 3 through May 1. It is open to the public 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday, including April 28, Workers Memorial Day.
The Appalachian Institute also has an online version of the exhibit.
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