Betty Jean Hall, lawyer who championed female miners, dies at 78

As a young lawyer in the 1970s, she helped open the coal industry to women and fought on their behalf for workplace equality and safety.


Betty Jean Hall, front right, attends a meeting of the Coal Employment Project in Charleston, W.Va., in 1984. (Earl Dotter/UMW Journal/AP)

By Emily Langer
August 28, 2024 at 11:42 p.m. EDT

Betty Jean Hall grew up in the coal country of eastern Kentucky, a place where thousands of men braved the heavy darkness of the mines, the gruesome injuries that often befell them deep inside the earth and the agony of one of their occupation’s most infamous hazards, black lung disease. The men emerged from the mines at the end of a shift dirty and exhausted but proud, having provided for their families with another day’s work.

Never, Ms. Hall later reflected, did she ever encounter a woman who worked in the mines or even entertained such a possibility. Mining was a man’s job. The mere presence of a women in a mine, as on a ship at sea, was reputed to bring bad luck. Even the vast majority of clerks and secretaries employed by coal companies were men.

Only a few years out of law school in the 1970s, Ms. Hall — who died Aug. 16 at 78 — helped change the mining industry in ways that coal country scarcely could have imagined when she was a girl. … As the founder of the Coal Employment Project (CEP) based in Oak Ridge, Tenn., Ms. Hall filed a federal complaint in 1978 against 153 coal companies, alleging that together they embodied “one of the most blatantly discriminatory” industries in the United States and demanding that the companies open their ranks to women.


Betty Jean Hall in 1983. (Coal Employment Project Records/Archives of Appalachia/East Tennessee State University)

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A crew at a coal mine in Boone County, W.Va., in 1983. (Marat Moore)

Women have ventured into mines in small numbers for generations, posing as men by necessity to earn a paycheck. During World War II, they took on jobs previously held by men who were away at war. But not until 1973 or 1974 — accounts vary — was a woman officially hired as a mine worker in the United States.

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From left to right, coal miners Emily Wampler, Shirley Blankenship, Brenda Price and Brenda Osborne after their shift at a coal mine in Vansant, Va., in 1976. (Earl Dotter/UMW Journal)

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By Emily Langer
Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Post’s obituaries desk. She writes about extraordinary lives in national and international affairs, science and the arts, sports, culture, and beyond. She previously worked for the Outlook and Local Living sections.follow on X @emilylangerWP