WV Mine Wars Museum gets $30,000 grant

The National Endowment for the Humanities recently awarded the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum a $30,000 challenge grant for The Blair Centennial Project, a plan to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain in 2021.

The NEH grant committee called the Blair Centennial Project "a bold and collaborative effort to use the humanities to foster cultural tourism and give a challenged community hope for the future through respect for the past," according to a news release.

The Battle of Blair Mountain is the largest armed insurrection in the United States other than the Civil War. Coal mining families in southern West Virginia joined the United Mine Workers of America and rose up against a cruel system denying civil rights that was created and controlled by mine owners.