Echoes of the Past: WVU's Coal Rush Night, "The Logo," and the infamous Cabin Creek Coal Strike

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 'Echoes of the Past' is an article series exploring connections between the WVU sports, the state of West Virginia, and significant historical events and movements.

West Virginia men's basketball celebrated a recently-founded but quite special tradition in terms of state heritage on Saturday as it hosted a Coal Rush Night while welcoming Utah to the WVU Coliseum.

The Mountain State in inextricably linked to the coal industry, with mines becoming widespread in the 1880s, with the state going from 489,000 tons mined in 1869 to over 4 million tons mined in 1889 and over 89 million tons mined in 1917. During World War 1, the mines gave West Virginia workers a sense of patriotism as West Virginia coal helped fuel the war abroad -- mining peaked in the state in 1997 with over 180 million tons mined. Coal mining has dropped off significantly once the 2000s in the state, but mines still remain a common employer.

The Mountaineers donned special black alternate jerseys for the Coal Rush occasion, and fans were encouraged to wear black to the game -- those attendance were also treated to a LED light show inside the arena.

In a letter penned this past October by WVU Athletic Director Wren Baker to Mountaineer Nation, he touched upon how significant he believed WVU's Coal Rush celebrations are while discussing the prior weekend's Coal Rush football game.

"It was so special to honor the brave men and women of the coal mining industry who work underground every day to provide us with energy and to provide their families with sustenance," Baker said at the time.

Earlier this season in January, the Mountaineers celebrated another themed event with fashionable alternate jerseys while giving flowers to another key link to the state and to the program's history. On January 18th, the team hosted Jerry West Day at the Coliseum to honor the late program alumnus -- West is a three-time inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame and was often called "The Logo" due to the fact that the NBA logo, still used to this day, was allegedly designed after the star guard.

West, who passed away last summer, was one of the greatest players of his time during his era, becoming an NBA Champion and NBA Finals MVP in addition to being named a 14-time NBA All-Star and 10-time All-NBA First-Team Selection and co-captaining the 1960 Olympic gold medal basketball squad for the United States of America.

He was twice a Consensus All-American and Southern Conference Player of the Year at WVU, was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom on 2019, As an NBA executive, he became an 8-time NBA Champion and 2-time Executive of the Year. But before his fame and success, he was just a poor child of a housewife named Cecil West and a coal mine electrician named Howard West.

West was also known by nicknames such as "Mr. Clutch" and "Mr. Outside," but one of his nicknames only folks from the region understand was "Zeke From Cabin Creek." This comes from his birthplace of Chelyan, West Virginia -- a small census-designated place on the banks of the Kanawha River that sites side-by-side with the unincorporated community of Cabin Creek. The latter sits at the mouth of a 22-mile tributary of the Kanawha River with which it shares it's name.

And in 2025, while the minds of Mountaineer Nation are squarely upon the state's rich coal mining heritage and Cabin Creek's most famous son -- who came from a father who serviced the mines, nonetheless -- there is no better time to take a look back at an oft-ignored but important part of United States labor history that took place in-and-around the coal mines and surrounding communities near Cabin Creek over 100 years ago.

Of course, I'm referring the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Coal Strike of 1912-1913, which served as a prelude to a series of events a few years later which ended in the largest armed uprising in the US since the Civil War. But we can get to that later.

To start our story, we must go back to that aforementioned time in state history where West Virginia mines were churning out so many millions of tons of coal, and the countless mines that produced that coal dotted every holler and river valley across the state.

But at the time, worker's rights and protections weren't quite what they are in 2025, and it was arguable no workers suffered worse than West Virginia coal miners. Mines across the nation, but particularly in The Mountain State, were known for dangerous and treacherous working conditions that often resulted in men dying young from black lung or trapped in mine collapses.

In fact, just about a half-hour away from where the Mountaineers play in front of sellout crowds in the modern era, the worst mine disaster in the nation's history occurred in Monongah, the hometown of the then-yet-to-be-born college football legend and former WVU assistant Nick Saban. On December 6th, 1907, a pair of Fairmont Coal Company mines experienced a horrific and violent explosion, killing 362 miners.

And aside from the risky working conditions, miners were often underpaid and overworked, receiving none of the typical labor protections that we take for granted in 2025, such as the traditional 8-hour work day or 40-hour work week, proper time off, and guaranteed minimum wages.

Mine companies also often had to build towns from the ground up in the rural and disconnected areas where coal seams were plentiful -- they would own the housing miners lived in, build 'company stores' that were the only place miners could purchase supplies to live, and paid miners in 'company scrip' instead of US currency, which they could only use at company-owned stores.

Charles Keeney, who is a historian, founder of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, and descendant of Mine War-era mine union leader Frank Keeney, discusses those conditions on the American History Tellers podcast.

"I have a piece of scrip at the West Virginia Mine Wars museum that says 'good for one loaf of bread,' is the piece of scrip. And when you see that and realize that some individual got this on his pay day, you can understand how and why the coal miners turned to radical action."

Miners were also rarely given any control over weighing the coal they provided, and they were paid per ton mined -- so many coal bosses would instruct their workers to short the miners on the coal actually mined and pocket the leftover profits for the company.

Mine companies were also granted a widespread amount of jurisdiction in enforcing the rule of law in their company towns and the surrounding mines, and hired private security forces such as the Baldwin-Felts Agency to protect the mines and the equipment and prevent federally legal unions from trying to organize the miner population for better conditions and better pay. This often involved the loss of traditional civil liberties and Constitutional rights for miners, and the 'law' was rather often enforced with brutality, efficiency, and violence. Keeney describes it as an "industrial police state."

"The only way in and out of these communities was by train, and they'd be guarding at the train stations, asking people why they were coming into town -- it was almost like a KGB. They read people's mail, they filled out people's ballots for them...You really didn't have democracy here, you didn't really have people's constitutional rights here."

It is into these living conditions and socioeconomic environment we must journey for this story -- at the time, Cabin Creek and the neighboring Paint Creek (about 6 miles further down the Kanawha River) were a hot bed of mining activities, with 96 active mines employing over 7,500 miners in the area on the eve of the strike.

The 41 mines up-and-down Cabin Creek and the rest of the Kanawha coal fields had been organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), but 55 mines on Cabin Creek were non-union. In addition, miners in the Paint Creek mines received 2.5 cents less per ton of coal mined in comparison to other union miners in the region.

"I teach in the coal fields, so when I talk about coal company control it's obviously not too hard of a sell to the audience I'm dealing with there," Keeney said. "What, I think, that people find difficult to understand is the extent to which companies had control over people's lives...immigrants that would come in would be told, 'we're going to give you a house, we're going to give you a job,' then they'd get here without any money and be fronted the money for the first-month's rent for their house, they had to buy all their equipment at the company store."

"They wouldn't have the money to do this, so there would be advanced credit. So what happens is these people immediately get stuck into a credit system where they're always in debt. That's something modern audiences can understand -- particularly young people."

In 1912, the Paint Creek miners went to negotiate a new contract with the coal operators and demanded a pay raise, pushing to earn equivalent wages as other area miners. The coal bosses refused, and the Paint Creek miners began a general strike -- their demands included but were not limited to full recognition of the union, standard pay, the restoration of their oft-ignored right to free speech and peaceful assembly. They were soon joined by their non-union brothers in the Cabin Creek mines.

Enter the aforementioned Frank Keeney, who would arise in due time as one of the most prominent union leaders and agitators in the area. At the time, the coal bosses enlisted the help of the Baldwin-Felts Agency to break the strike -- they sent an additional 300 armed mine guards to the area to protect coal boss interests, including Albert Felts and Lee Felts, who were the brothers of the co-owner and director of the agency.

Miners -- including Frank Keeney -- were soon evicted from company housing with no notice and forced into tent camps in the wilderness, and subject to all forms of violent sabotage from the mine guards in an attempt to suppress the strike.

Fortified machine gun units were placed throughout the region, and trains and bridges out of the region were blocked. So Frank Keeney also enlisted some help, bringing iconic and well-known labor activist Mary Harris Jones, known by many as 'Mother Jones,' into the struggle.

Jones was well-versed in the coal fields of West Virginia (which she previously referred to as 'Medieval West Virginia') and started bringing new miners into the strike -- she organized a march to the State Capitol in Charleston and addressed then-state governor William Glasscock. During the summer of 1912, Harris referred to Glasscock as a “goddamned dirty coward."

In one speech, she warned “this little governor” to take up the miner's cause and help disarm the mine guards and send them packing, telling him “unless he rids Paint Creek and Cabin Creek of these goddamned Baldwin-Felts mine guard thugs, there is going to be one hell of a lot of bloodletting in these hills.” She then prompted all miners present to return home and arm themselves, and "kill every goddamned mine guard on the creeks."

The governor would issue a proclamation asking citizens to lay down their arms and refrain from unlawful assembly, but the miners kept stashing weapons in the hills and organizing military-style units in preparation for a fight. Over the summer, the strike escalated into guerilla war tactics, and a miner was killed at the hands of mine guards -- he became the first official death in the West Virginia Mine Wars.

The miners would attack the Baldwin-Felts local camp at Mucklow (present-day Gallagher) in July, with 12 striking miners and 4 mine guards falling dead in the battle. Within the next month, 5,000 miners from the opposite bank of the Kanawha would join the strike and the miner's tent city -- a major tent colony of later importance was established at Holly Grove, just a couple miles south of the mouth of Paint Creek.

Glasscock declared martial law in September, and West Virginia State Police units entered the region to confiscate weapons and enforce the law -- though the enforcement was perceived as one-sided and favoring the coal operators, with miners subject to speedy, unfair trials and prevented from exercising their right to public assembly. Martial law was ended as the conflict wound down in October, but was re-instated from November to January as more action picked back up.

In February, another attack on Mucklow brought casualties, andthe coal bosses and local police responded with cold-blooded murder and brutality. Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill and Baldwin-Felts agents rigged an armored train with machine guns and high-octane rifles -- they called it the "Bull Moose Special," after popular politician and 26th U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt -- and drove it down the railroad tracks through the Holly Grove tent camp, firing indiscriminately and resulting in the death of miner Cesco Estep.

Sarah Blizzard, an activist and mother of prominent union officer Bill Blizzard, led a group of women to damage the tracks to prevent further attacks. Another deadly guerilla warfare attack on Mucklow by the miners led to two more deaths, and martial law was imposed for the third-and-final time during the struggle. Jones was arrested in Pratt, a small community at the mouth of Paint Creek, and was charged in a military court for inciting a riot and conspiracy to commit murder. She refused recognition of the military court's jurisdiction and did not enter a plea.

But soon, newly-elected Governor Henry Hatfield travelled to the region, released a number of people being held under martial law, and Jones was transferred to Charleston for medical treatment for a recently-developed case of pneumonia. Hatfield brokered a peace between the miners and coal companies with terms that were a bit more favorable to the miners without challenging the companies authority too staunchly. Over the spring and summer, both the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek miners would eventually agree to a ceasefire and the terms of the peace.

Jones was eventually released after 85 days of house arrest, and Indiana's pro-labor Senator John Worth Kern led the Senate to launch a formal investigation into the conditions of West Virginia coal mines and the recent violent strike, which was followed by investigations into mines in Michigan and Colorado as well.

"They did win the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike," Charles Keeney said of the miners. "They were able to get union recognition, some of the things they were wanting...they were able to get mine guards out of certain areas of the state."

"There was a very popular book written a couple of years ago [by current US Vice President J.D. Vance] called 'Hillbilly Elegy,' which talks about the people of the region, the big part of their poverty is because they were stuck in this fatalistic attitude and don't want to change anything. The history of the Mine Wars flies in the face of that notion, because it shows in fact that the people who were living here were willing to take up arms to improve their lot in life."

Over the next year, Mother Jones, the UMWA, and the Baldwin-Felts Agency would all find themselves embroiled in another coal war across the country, playing prominent roles in the Colorado Coalfield War from 1913-1914 that ended with the Ludlow Massacre that saw 21 miners, women, and children killed and their tent colony burned to the ground.

The coal industry would be the recipient of a boon from the wartime efforts over the next half of the decade as the US entered World War 1, and production in the West Virginia coalfields would increase further.

This would eventually lead to a second series of conflicts that completed what is known as the West Virginia Mine Wars, as the UMWA attempted to infiltrate further into southern West Virginia and organize non-union mines in the Mingo County region -- The Blizzard family, Frank Keeney, Mother Jones, and the Baldwin-Felts Agency were all once again involved.

The union were met with some the their steepest resistance from coal operators yet and the violent conflicts between the miners and coal bosses led to the infamous Matewan Massacre and eventually, The Battle of Blair Mountain -- known as the largest armed uprising in the US since the Civil War. But we'll save that story for the next WVU Coal Rush game.