Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease

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Barbara Ellen Smith is perhaps the leading historian of Appalachia working today, who also has decades of experience as a campaigner for justice. Digging Our Own Graves is her classic work on a disease that remains at epidemic levels in an ever more exploitative industry.

Reviews

"It is unlikely that coal will be back, as promised. 4 What is clearly back, however, is the virulence of black lung disease. This is an essential book to understand that persistence and damage." The Journal of Working Class Studies

"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

"Barbara Ellen Smith has been conducting research on black lung and coal mining for almost

half a century. Her scholarship is of the highest order not only in terms of its breadth and depth

her reference material runs to more than 50 pages but also in terms of her explanation and

understanding of complex issues across a wide variety of disciplines. She is a scholar at the top of

her game. Digging Our Own Graves was one of those books that I read slowly so I could enjoy and

marvel at the quality of its scholarship. Its prose is enlivened by the inclusion of 59 photographs

by Earl Dotter of individuals and events associated with black lung disease and the mining of coal.

This is a wonderful book, an example of outstanding scholarship." BJIR

"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

A valuable contribution to this important history. Grant Crandall

Barbara Smiths 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

Author Bio

Barbara Ellen Smith is professor of women's and gender studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.