“Now Mining Coal is for the Big Boys”: Agency and Adaptation in the Changing Culture of Tazewell County

Across Central Appalachia the boom and bust cycle of the coal market has shaped the character of company-owned coal towns since their inception. Existing scholarship on mining has focused on economic imbalance and labor unrest, primarily in West Virginia and Kentucky. These studies generally obscure cultural practices of adaptation and modes of resilience embraced by coal camp families throughout periods of flux. Drawing from the collection of oral histories, this study explores the complex reactions to the post-WWII years of increased mechanization and declining paternalism throughout the coal camps of Tazewell County, Virginia