This week’s photograph by Marion Post is of a Mexican coal miner in Marion County, West Virginia. The photograph was taken circa 1927 in Scotts Run, a mining area near Morgantown. 50 percent of the miners in Scotts Run were from Eastern and Southern Europe who had been brought – along with African-Americans – to the minefields by coal operators because they would work for less pay than the white workers. Miners in Scotts Run were organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) that had reached an agreement on a pay scale with the coal operators in 1924. Afterwards, however, the coal operators reneged on wages and the number of working days. Consequently, the miners began a prolonged strike, and Mexicans were brought in as strikebreakers (also known as scabs). The strike ran into the Great Depression. The mines closed, and the miners and their families were destitute.
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) sent Marion Post, one of its two women photographers (the other was Dorothea Lange) to document the poverty in West Virginia. She photographed the Mexican community in Scotts Run. Many of the Mexicans remained and were assimilated in the community.
