Coal, community, and collective action in McKinley County, New Mexico: 1900--1935

"Coal, Community, and Collective Action in McKinley County, New Mexico: 1900--1935" examines some four decades of labor-capital relations in Gallup and neighboring coal camps. Two foci of the work are: (1) "ethnic relations" and (2) women's unique experience of class and the collective action women took to gain their share of the economic pie. The use of oral histories and of McKinley County and Spanish and Italian newspapers, published in the U.S.A., give insight into the rich matrix of the county's ethnic groups drawn to live and work in the region's coal fields---Slav, Italian (mainly Piedmontese and Abruzzese), Celts, English, and native-born Euro- and African-American---as the lives of the region's new inhabitants overlapped. This study explores the nature of inter- and intra-ethnic relations in work, school, politics, public spaces, and miners' unions in order to understand how, in spite of ethnic origins and institutional racism directed at Hispanos, mining community people transcended their differences to maintain solidarity during the United Mine Workers of America coal strikes of 1917, 1919, and 1922 and the 1933 National Miners Union coal strike.; In McKinley County, during the 1930's, women's collective action in public spaces---on the picket lines and in protest in the streets---showed their courageous response to class and ethnic disabilities unique to their gender as they strove for economic equity during the 1933 National Miners Union strike and in the strike's aftermath that culminated in the notorious 1935 case of the "Gallup 14." This study demonstrates mining community women's vital role in New Mexico mining strikes prior to World War II as well as the price they paid for standing up for themselves.