- Collection:
- Working Lives Oral History Project
- Title:
- Interview with Leon Alexander
- Contributor to Resource:
- Alexander, Leon
Hamrick, Peggy - Date of Original:
- 1984-07-17
- Subject:
- Alexander, Leon--Interviews
- Location:
- United States, Alabama, Jefferson County, Birmingham, 33.52066, -86.80249
- Medium:
- interviews
transcripts - Type:
- Sound
Text - Format:
- audio/mpeg
image/jpeg - Description:
- In this interview, Leon Alexander recounts his life as a coal miner and his involvement in the United Mine Workers of America. He discusses the challenges of organizing in the South, where there was strong anti-union sentiment. He also recounts the 1922 United Mine Workers of America Strike that was broken up by the National Guard and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. This strike ultimately resulted in men being blacklisted, unable to get another job. Alexander describes the segregated conditions in the mining camps and being required to hold segregated union meetings. These practices eventually ended because men were more concerned about working conditions than upholding racial ideology. He adds that the bath houses at the mine were also segregated. He also describes race relations in Alabama in the 1920s and being treated like a second-class citizen. Alexander recalls being taken in the mines for the first time by his father and deciding this was hard work but at least it would get him out of the hot sun. He had heard about explosions, but they didn't scare him. Other employees never went back after explosions because they were afraid, but the vast majority of the men went back to work. In this interview he says death was a constant companion in mining. There were so many ways of getting killed; they just never paid too much attention to it. He recalls his first day in the mines as the scariest day of his life. He felt like the world was coming to an end but eventually he got accustomed to it. His father taught him how to coal mine. Miners would bring their children into the mine and the fathers would pay the children to help with their tonnage. He explains that if someone carried a child in who got killed, the company didn't have to pay for it, because the child wasn't their employee. Alexander reports that many men were reluctant to strike because these were the same families that were involved in the 1922 strike. He also describes the technological advances in coal mining in the interview and details how unions have improved working conditions.
The digitization of this collection was funded by a gift from EBSCO Industries. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.libraries.ua.edu/cdm/ref/collection/u0008_0000003/id/303
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Images are in the public domain or protected under U.S. copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code), and both types may be used for research and private study. For publication, commercial use, or reproduction, in print or digital format, of all images and/or the accompanying data, users are required to secure prior written permission from the copyright holder and from archives@ua.edu. When permission is granted, please credit the images as Courtesy of The University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections.
- Original Collection:
- Working Lives Oral History Project
- Contributing Institution:
- William Stanley Hoole Special Collections Library
- Rights:
-
