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LUNCH WITH BOOKS LIVESTREAM: Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease with author Barbara Ellen Smith

February 16, 2021
12:00pm - 1:00pm

LUNCH WITH BOOKS LIVESTREAM: Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease with author Barbara Ellen Smith

This fully updated edition of a classic work from one of the leading scholars of Appalachia documents a community's struggle against the deadly black lung disease. Employment and production in the Appalachian coal industry have plummeted over recent decades. But the lethal black lung disease, once thought to be near-eliminated, affects miners at rates never before recorded.

Digging Our Own Graves sets this epidemic in the context of the brutal assault, begun in the 1980s and continued since, on the United Mine Workers of America and the collective power of rank-and-file coal miners in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields. This destruction of militancy and working-class power reveals the unacknowledged social and political roots of a health crisis that is still barely acknowledged by the state and coal industry.

Barbara Ellen Smith's essential study, now with an updated introduction and conclusion, charts the struggles of miners and their families from the birth of the Black Lung Movement in 1968 to the present-day importance of demands for environmental justice through proposals like the Green New Deal. Through extensive interviews with participants and her own experiences as an activist, the author provides a vivid portrait of communities struggling for survival against the corporate extraction of labor, mineral wealth, and the very breath of those it sends to dig their own graves.

This program will be available to watch live on Facebook Live, on YouTube, and on the OCPL website's LWB Livestream page Log into your Facebook or YouTube account during the program to leave questions for Barbara Ellen in the comments box. She will answer them during the live broadcast. 


PRESENTER BIO: Barbara Ellen Smith is the author or editor of four books and numerous articles about labor, economic justice, women, and social movements in Appalachia and the South, including Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggles over Black Lung Disease (updated version released by Haymarket, 2020). She lives in Charleston, WV, and is professor emerita at Virginia Tech.


Image of book coverBOOK: Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease (updated version published by Haymarket Books, 12/8/2020)
[Can be purchased through Haymarket Books directly – all proceeds will go to the WV Mine Wars museum –or on Amazon.com  |  reserve copy to check out from the Library  |  check out e-book with your library card through Hoopla ]

REVIEWS: "This book offers us a long view on the power of organizing around workplace health and safety that can help frontline workers — from teachers to grocery and sanitation workers — strategize now, but also develop long-term strategies for workplace organizing around the impacts of the less-understood, long-term impacts of COVID-19, which are going to force us to bring disability politics more centrally into workplace organizing." —Jacobin

"Digging Our Own Graves is a lesson on a public health disaster.  Smith explores the deep roots of a worker power struggle in Appalachia that continues today." —Celeste Monforton, (Fellow) Collegium Ramazzini

“Barbara Smith’s updated edition of her book, Digging Our Own Graves, provides a significant addition to the history of the battles against black lung from its beginnings to our current efforts against resurgent severe disease.” —Bob Cohen


Lunch With Books Livestream starts at noon on Facebook and YouTube.

Subscribe to the Lunch With Books Youtube channel or like us on the Lunch With Books Facebook page or to receive notifications of our upcoming LWB broadcasts. To receive emails about our upcoming programs, visit our News page, click the "Subscribe" button to sign-up for our news blasts or download our free OCPL Connect app from your smartphone's app store. 

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"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring lunch (to your computer), feed your brain!


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