Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

This is an oral history interview conducted by Gordon L. Swartz III featuring Karl Kafton, a West Virginia coal miner and active member of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) union. Kafton shares his parents' story of immigrating to the United States from Ukraine in the early 20th century and his father's experiences working in coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. He describes his childhood in a predominantly immigrant mining community, his experiences in grade school, and leaving school early as a teen to serve in World War II. Kafton also discusses how various pieces of labor legislation passed throughout the 20th century shaped trade unions in the US. In addition to sharing his experiences working in West Virginia coal mines, he also describes the dynamics of interracial and multi-ethnic collaboration in union organizing efforts. Kafton talks at length about the inner workings of UMWA, critiquing and comparing the practices of leaders like John L. Lewis, Sam Church, Arnold Miller, and Tony Boyle. Kafton also describes his involvement in the Miners for Democracy movement within UMWA, campaigning for Joseph Yablonski, and aiding in the investigation of Yablonski's assassination. Swartz initially recorded the interview on two cassette tapes and later digitized the recording onto 3 CDs. The run time for the interview is around 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Includes records created and used by the West Virginia University Extension Service's Mining Extension program. This collection reflects a broad range of the program's activities, like material from classes offered on topics such as mine gas metering, fire and emergency prevention, mine engineering, industrial machinery, welding, and mine protection. It also features administrative records, like instructor travel expense logs, budget information and supply requests, departmental correspondence, correspondence with mining industry governing agencies, documentation of certificates conferred by the program, and more. Additionally, it includes material related to the practical mining work that the Mining Extension oversaw and had students participate in at locations like Rush Run and with entities like the Scotia Coal and Coke Company. These records include things like coal return receipts, weekly coal reports, and documentation of injuries, deaths, and related compensation. Lastly, there is a small quantity of material relating to the Fire Service Extension's programming, which looks to have shared some overlapping faculty with the Mining Extension at the time these records were created. These items mainly include correspondence, both within and outside of the department, and material from classes taught by the program. The majority of the collection, Mining Extension records, comprises Series 1. The smaller portion of the collection, the Fire Service Extension records, comprises Series 2.