Do You Have A Relative Who Died Working On West Virginia's Hawks Nest Tunnel Project?
February 7, 20184:22 PM ET

NPR is looking for relatives and descendants of African-American workers who died at the Hawks Nest Tunnel project in Fayette County, West Virginia between 1928 and 1932.

An estimated 764 workers died of silicosis while working on the tunnel. Two-thirds of those workers were African-American — many of whom migrated to West Virginia from states farther south, like Georgia and Alabama.

The deceased were often buried in unmarked graves, and some families were not notified of their loved one's death or given the chance to bring them home.

Have you ever heard family stories about an uncle or cousin who left to find work in West Virginia and never returned? Do you know that your grandfather died tunneling at Hawks Nest? Do any of the following names look familiar to you? Please fill out the form below, and an NPR producer may follow up with you for an upcoming story.

{snip the form}

Disaster clouded in mystery

August 7, 2011
Disaster clouded in mystery

By C.V. Moore Register-Herald Reporter

It has been called the most deadly industrial disaster in United States history, and it happened right here in southern West Virginia. In 1935, Union Carbide completed a massive, 3-mile-long tunnel that diverted water from a dam on the New River at Hawks Nest, through Gauley Mountain, to a hydroelectric plant near Gauley Bridge.

The purpose of the project was to provide additional electricity to Union Carbide’s metallurgical plant in Alloy, but when it was discovered that Gauley Mountain was rich in silica, the tunnel project also doubled as a silica mine. Silica, as it happens, is a mineral that is used in the production of steel alloy.

The majority of workers who drilled the tunnel were African American migrant workers from the south. They came to West Virginia because they heard there were jobs here, a rarity in the Depression-era U.S.
....

Water still flows through the Hawks Nest Tunnel, but information on the fate of the men who built it hasn’t always flowed so freely. What happened to their bodies is a mystery that is still unraveling. Some were buried in the slave section of a churchyard in Summersville; some in unmarked graves near Gauley Bridge; and some in a cornfield in Nicholas County. Racist thinking at the time made disposal of bodies difficult. Rumors of burials in the woods, and even at the mouth of the tunnel, have circulated for years.

—E-mail: cmoore@register-herald.com

Final rest for forgotten victims of industrial tragedy

Friday September 7, 2012
by Zack Harold
Daily Mail staff

....
Charlotte Yeager Neilan moved to Summersville from Charleston in 1990, where she and her late husband, Charles, became editor and publisher of the Nicholas Chronicle newspaper. ... About 10 years ago, Neilan heard rumors of a lost cemetery for Hawks Nest tunnel workers. The story piqued her interest but no one wanted to talk about it.
....

Finally, in 2009, she heard about Richard Hartman, a West Virginia State University history professor. He also was haunted by the story of the lost graveyard but, unlike Neilan, had actually located the plot.

Hundreds dead

Hartman first learned of the site in 2000 while working on a master's degree in history at Marshall University.

He was writing a paper about tunnel contractor Rinehart and Dennis when he came across a passage about black workers buried on the White family farm.

From: Jordan Barab <jbarab@gmail.com>

To: confinedspace@googlegroups.com

This Charleston Gazette article chronicles one of the most tragic stories in the history of workplace safety (or workplace murder): The death of 764 mostly African-American workers from exposure to silica while digging a tunnel in West Virginia in the early 1930's. You can also view a short video clip about the disaster (which also stars Rush Holt's father – who was then a Senator from WV):



It's taken from a 27 minute video called "Can't Take No More," which you can view on Google Video here: