Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 2.01 History, Labor, and Activism
Presentation #1 Title
“To Make Plain The Issue”: The Life and Work of West Virginia Mine War Journalist Winthrop D. Lane
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
America’s tumultuous post World War I era made a mockery of President Harding’s call for a “return to normalcy.” A bitter strike in southern West Virginia unleashed twenty-eight months of fighting that led to the largest armed civilian insurrection in America since the Civil War. Among the reporters who flocked to cover the story was Winthrop D. “Dan” Lane who published his dispatches to the Survey and New York Evening Post as the pamphlets Civil War in West Virginia and The Denial of Civil Liberties in the Coalfields. For over fifty years, Lane’s prose and accompanying analysis shaped understanding of this pivotal West Virginia, Appalachian, and American Labor story. No one has ever examined Lane’s mine war publications within the context of his life and career. During his thirty year career Dan Lane wrote about prostitution, incarcerated conscientious objectors in World War I, the Harlem Renaissance, juvenile delinquency, and militarism in American education. I want to bring Lane’s experiences and voice to the forefront in a biography accompanied by annotated excerpts from his other writings. A biography of Lane will illuminate the twilight of American Progressivism that fell between World War I and the New Deal in 1933. This presentation will present my work so far, so that hopefully I can benefit from a critical reception from a peer audience.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Dr. Bailey is an Associate Professor in the History & Geography Department at Northern Kentucky University. She is the author of Matewan Before the Massacre (2008), published by the West Virginia University Press.
“To Make Plain The Issue”: The Life and Work of West Virginia Mine War Journalist Winthrop D. Lane
Harris Hall 139
America’s tumultuous post World War I era made a mockery of President Harding’s call for a “return to normalcy.” A bitter strike in southern West Virginia unleashed twenty-eight months of fighting that led to the largest armed civilian insurrection in America since the Civil War. Among the reporters who flocked to cover the story was Winthrop D. “Dan” Lane who published his dispatches to the Survey and New York Evening Post as the pamphlets Civil War in West Virginia and The Denial of Civil Liberties in the Coalfields. For over fifty years, Lane’s prose and accompanying analysis shaped understanding of this pivotal West Virginia, Appalachian, and American Labor story. No one has ever examined Lane’s mine war publications within the context of his life and career. During his thirty year career Dan Lane wrote about prostitution, incarcerated conscientious objectors in World War I, the Harlem Renaissance, juvenile delinquency, and militarism in American education. I want to bring Lane’s experiences and voice to the forefront in a biography accompanied by annotated excerpts from his other writings. A biography of Lane will illuminate the twilight of American Progressivism that fell between World War I and the New Deal in 1933. This presentation will present my work so far, so that hopefully I can benefit from a critical reception from a peer audience.
