At some point in your travels, you may have visited a war museum before.

There's the World War II Museum in New Orleans, the National Vietnam War Museum near Dallas,

and the Museum of the American Revolution in Philly.

All those museums show the histories of wars that are pretty well known, at least on a basic

level.

But in Mehtuan West Virginia, there's a museum that shows the history of a war that is far less known.

This war took place in the early 1900s.

On one side, you had tens of thousands of striking coal mine workers fighting for fair

treatment in the mines, dignity for their families and above all else union

recognition. On the other you had scaps private guards hired by the coal companies and at one point the US Army.

This was the West Virginia Mine Wars, the biggest domestic armed struggle since the Civil War.

And it might not have happened the way it did. domestic armed struggle since the Civil War.

And it might not have happened the way it did

had it not been for an old lady in her 70s,

Mother Jones.

I always think of her as someone

you didn't want to fuck with.

You know, she just plain and simple.

My name is Baudelaire and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places.

Today we hear the story of the West Virginia Mind Wars and the woman who was at the time

called the most dangerous woman in America.

...