Restrictions to Access

Use of audio or moving image materials may require production of listening or viewing copies.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Bryan T. McNeil Oral History Collection #20298, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Provenance

Received from Bryan T. McNeil of Advance, N.C., in May 1998 (Acc. 98107)

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• African American coal miners--West Virginia--History--20thcentury.
• Afro-Americans--West Virginia--Social life andcustoms.
• Bethel, Rufus.
• Coal Miners' Strike, U.S., 1949-1950.
• Coal miners--West Virginia--History.
• Coal mines and mining--West Virginia.
• Family--West Virginia--Social life and customs.
• Iddings, Fred.
• Labor disputes--West Virginia--History.
• Labor unions--West Virginia.
• McNeil, Bryan T.
• Oral history.
• Pickett, Roderick.
• Strikes and lockouts--Coal mining--West Virginia.
• United Mine Workers of America--History.
• Vasvary, Louis.
• West Virginia--Economic conditions.
• West Virginia--History--To 1950.

• "In My Time: The Strike of 1949 in the Lives of the Coal Miners of Southern West Virginia" by Bryan T. McNeil (Dept. of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998), North Carolina Collection (C378 UO14.2 1998 v.2), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Bryan T. McNeil was an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In My Time: The Strike of 1949 in the Lives of the Coal Miners of Southern West Virginia" was his honors essay in the Department of Anthropology (1998).

Interviews conducted by Bryan T. McNeil for his honors essay "In My Time: The Strike of 1949 in the Lives of the Coal Miners of Southern West Virginia" (Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998).

The four interviewees are retired from the coal mining industry and are friends and former co-workers of Herman Whaling, Bryan T. McNeil's grandfather. Whaling helped his grandson conduct the interviews, which were recorded at Whaling's home, an interviewee's home, or the UMWA Hall in Keystone, W.Va.. Rufus Bethel is an African-American who worked as a coal miner, Roderick Pickett was a mine foreman, and Louis Vasvary and Fred Iddings are Anglo-American former coal miners.

In the interviews, the participants discussed their lives, including their family history, their childhood, their experiences in the mines, and their thoughts on the United Mine Workers of America and on the mining industry in West Virginia. Special emphasis is placed on the period 1949-1950 with the men talking about the lifestyle during that time, their knowledge of negotiations during the 1949 strike, and their opinions relating to that event.