1920 Alabama coal strike

The 1920 Alabama coal strike, or the Alabama miners' strike, was a statewide strike of the United Mine Workers of America against coal mine operators. The strike was marked by racial violence, and ended in significant defeat for the union.

The strike was officially authorized by UMW president John L. Lewis to begin on September 7, and as many as 15,000 of the 27,000 coal miners in the state stopped work. UMW vice-president Van Bittner was sent to the state to oversee the effort.

One main union demand was for union recognition, and one fundamental obstacle to union recognition was the fact that the UMW was racially integrated. Popular opinion was turned against the strikers almost immediately, particularly the disapproving black middle class, who saw racial solidarity and cooperation with capitalists as their only route to economic self-defense.

Major operators in Alabama's coalfields were also still using convict labor under abominable conditions with no salary cost whatsoever, the convict leasing system, described by some as "Slavery by Another Name". Mines of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company had phased out convict leasing five years after its acquisition by U.S. Steel, but the mines controlled by Sloss Furnaces and Pratt Consolidated continued the practice until 1926.

The strike's first major confrontation happened on September 16, in Patton Junction, Alabama (in Walker County), where strikers killed the general manager of the Corona Coal Company, Leon Adler, along with Earl Edgil, a company guard. But African Americans bore the brunt of the violence: among many such threatening incidents, black miner Henry Junius was found in a shallow grave outside of Roebuck a few weeks into the strike. At least thirteen houses of strikebreakers were dynamited between September and December. Also in December state troopers terrorized the small black business district in Pratt City with random machine gun fire.

The Alabama State Militia and the state police had been called out by the governor, Thomas Kilby, known as the "business governor". Once on site, state troop commanders typically placed themselves at the service of the coal companies. By February thousands of workers had been evicted from their company houses and left homeless.