Quote: Our tour of Beckley’s Exhibition Coal Mine lasted an hour, but we spent longer at the museums in the "Company Store" and the rest of the "camp" moved here piece-by-piece from other locations. Our ticket for the mine admitted us to museums. This site is probably within the Beckley city limits today, and their promotional literature touts Beckley as "the city with a mine of its own." That ought to "stick"! But even that epithet doesn’t convey the dignity with which this city presents a difficult heritage involving racism and injustice.

Every miner was a "victim" of the company, and that is addressed underground and in Company Store museums. Particular injustices to black miners are evidenced by the two-room schoolhouse moved here from Helen, WV. Helen is located "up a hollow called Berry Branch," and the coal company built the school there (1925) for the children of black miners. Some of these men were convicts forced to work without pay. (One must wonder how much back-scratching worked this deal!) Even after serving their sentences, they were paid only half white miners’ salaries! We learned this and more from the black attendant, and this is why I like this site. The schoolhouse, superintendent’s home, and miner’s house have guides who talk and demonstrate whatever they can. The schoolhouse is also a virtual museum of antique schoolbooks. I didn’t find my Jim and Judy first-grade reader, but McGuffey is on hand.

In the superintendent’s house, two guides showed us the stove and refrigerator. The stove uses coal, of course, and a compartment holds hot water. We had questions about dinner services displayed in kitchen and diningroom, and these were answered. The house was built in 1906 by Samuel Dixon, a coal baron who envisioned a "beautiful," ideal coal town in Skelton, WV, named after the town where he was born in England. The city of Beckley dismantled the house in Skelton and moved it here, and the piece-by-piece reassembly took three years. Sociological issues weren’t really addressed by the guides at this house, but they didn’t need to be. All one has to do is to walk from the "super’s" to the laborer’s, and the differences in lifestyles are apparent.

First thing I noticed in the miner’s house was the picture of John L. Lewis on the wall. Two pictures of FDR also decorate the livingroom. These people had "heroes" they depended on for a better life! They had no power to scratch backs! Floors are linoleum, and the furniture is mostly 1930’s. Dinner service is surprisingly Wedgewood, just like the super’s. (I remembered that even my poor grandma had good dinner service and good Sunday dresses.) The town seemed authentic.

We visited the church--no attendant there--and a one-room shanty where a bachelor miner lived or itinerant miners staying for the week and commuting home on weekends. It was a pleasant afternoon, a history lesson, a touch of nostalgia. It’s world-heritage material, American-style--without the designation.

From journals Mountain Hoppin' with Plenty o' Stoppin'