Community School In Crisis Coal Camp

 When Elsie Ripley Clapp agreed to leave her cushy community school post in Jefferson County Kentucky and move her work to FDR’s Arthurdale, West Virginia New Deal project, this is what she faced.

Scotts Run Destitute Coal Miners

The NMU, National Miners Union, was organizing all over the place. Our federal government honchos feared a “commie insurrection”, and with good reason given the living conditions, so the combined idea of a subsistence homestead and a community school was born.

Miner Housing Scotts Run WVA

Elsie Ripley Clapp left the luxury of the Ballard Memorial School and parachuted directly into an economic cauldron of greed, labor abuse, human neglect and starvation.

There are many good things to report about the community school developed in Kentucky but later for that. Because nothing had prepared Clapp and her team for what they encountered in WVA. The mine owners disappeared once there was no profit to be made. And left behind miner families in shacks with no food, fuel, light, water, water or hope. The NMU was the only organization with a presence and a platform. Something had to be done.

Miner Family No Food, Water, Lights, Heat Or Hope