July 8, 1908

After years of escalating tensions over pay, miners in the greater Birmingham area took a stand. United Mine Workers District 20 had more than 20,000 members, and on July 8, 1908 declared a strike against U.S. Steel, which had just purchased the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Rail Company (TCI). TCI led other operators in a sharp pay cut, and on that first day more than 4,000 miners stayed off the job and protested visibly. Evicted from company housing, thousands were staying in tent cities. The strike garnered national attention, but Gov. Braxton Bragg Comer called on the military to cut down the tents, and the strike ended unsuccessfully at the end of August.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

In 1908, miners of the District 20 United Mine Workers union in Birmingham held a two-month labor strike against the coal companies. The failure of the strike established the groundwork for future labor relations in the state. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

Alabama miners’ houses near Birmingham, December 1935. (Photograph by Walker Evans, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Coal mining interests in Alabama built company housing for workers, which were managed and controlled with heavy-handed tactics by corporate agents. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Library of Congress)

Photograph of B.B. Comer, March 16, 1920. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Coal miners, Birmingham, February 1937. (Photograph by Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Untitled photograph, likely from the Birmingham coal miners’ series, coal miners, February 1937. (Photograph by Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.