"The Price of Coal" (23 March, Swansea)

From:  http://www.dis-ind-soc.org.uk/en/events.htm?id=1
Roadshow: The Price of Coal

Sat 23rd March 2013

National Waterfront Museum, Swansea

Disability history roadshow at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, 23^rd March 2013 (10am–4pm).

Click here for the day's programme (PDF)

Click here for the flyer (PDF)

Did you or a member of your family work in the coal industry in south Wales? Did you face difficult working conditions or the constant threat of accident? Did you experience injury, illness or disease as a result of this work? If so, come along to the Disability History Roadshow at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea on Saturday 23 March 2013 between 10am and 4pm. The Roadshow will focus on the human costs of this most dangerous of industries and explore the consequences for the people of the mining communities of south Wales. It will include:

• talks by historians on the industry and working conditions;
• historic documentary films on disease and disability;
• photos, documents and archives;
• readings of poetry and historical sources;
• medical equipment;
• archivists on hand to discuss any historical documents relating to the coal industry that you might wish to bring along.

Come and find out more about how our fathers and grandfathers, working in the bowels of the earth, faced danger, disease and death in the course of their daily lives and paid the heavy price of coal.

Confirmed speakers and guests include: Rhodri Morgan, Hywel Francis MP, Steven Thompson (Aberystwyth University), Ben Curtis (Aberystwyth University), Anne Borsay (Swansea University), David Turner (Swansea University).

Flickr: Jack and Della Mae Smith in Front of the Beer Joint He Operates in Rhodell, West Virginia, near Beckley 06/1974

Jack and Della Mae Smith in Front of the Beer Joint He Operates in Rhodell, West Virginia, near Beckley 06/1974
Originally uploaded by The U.S. National Archives

The Flickr Commons project continues to include images from the history of disability. In this 1974 color photo from the US National Archives, we see Jack Smith with his wife, seated under an "RC" sign. Jack is in a wheelchair. The couple have their arms across each other's shoulders, and Jack seems to be smiling at something Della Mae is saying.

The US National Archives Flickr stream includes other photos of Jack Smith from 1974: alone, holding the family dog, with one of his young daughters, with three of his daughters, with two of his brothers, heading down the street, and working on a union poster. All the photos were taken by photojournalist Jack Corn as part of the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica project.

Jack Smith was a new coalminer in West Virginia when he lost both legs in a mine cave-in, years before these photos taken. He remained active in union work, and ran a "beer joint" with Della Mae in Rhodell, West Virginia. In the notes attached to one of the photos in the series, it says "During the Strike for Black Lung Benefits His Wife Wheeled Him in Front of a Train to Stop It."