Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.

I had already finished this episode and emailed the outline to Holly when I was trying to figure

out what I was going to talk about next and realized listener Angela requested this

ages ago.

So thank you, Angela.

I mean, incredibly long time ago.

Thank you, Angela.

Today, we are going to talk about an industrial disaster.

One that's sometimes described as the worst industrial disaster in US history.

And unlike a lot of industrial disasters that involve kind of a single acute incident,

like an explosion or a gas leak or a collapse, the hawks nest tunnel disaster involved

thousands of workers being exposed to silica dust over the entire course of the project.

And then people continued to get sick and die for years after it was finished.

In the words of representative Glenn Griswald in a house subcommittee report, quote,

it is the story of a tragedy worthy of the pen of Victor Hugo.

The story of men in the darkest days of the depression with work hard to secure driven

by despair and the stark fear of hunger to work for a mere existence wage under almost

intolerable conditions.

A lot of the men who died as a result of their work on this project were black men who

had come to West Virginia from farther south.

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