Trouble in the Mines: A History in Song and Story by Women of Appalachia

Abstract

Nevertheless, through the oral transmission of songs and stories, women have left an indelible mark on their culture, giving pleasure, spiritual sustenance, and emotional satisfaction to family and community. The store of folklore they have handed down provides us with insight into how people view their own history, traditions, and the moral codes by which they live. I focus here on one small corner of this vast subject: the songs composed by two generations of women from the coal mining areas of Appalachia. Aunt Molly Jackson, her sister Sarah Ogan Gunning, and Florence Reece chronicled the struggle for unionization during the 1920s and 1930s. Later, in the sixties and seventies, Hazel Dickens expanded that repertoire to include feminist issues. There is a rich lode of American industrial folklore composed by women in the Southern Appalachian mountains. It can be attributed in part to a combination of cultural, economic, historical, and psycho-