On a late spring day in 2022, Rev. Brad Davis was riding along the twisting roads of McDowell County, West Virginia. 

Davis was soon to start his current job pastoring five United Methodist churches here, and was getting a tour from his predecessor. As they drove, Davis’ colleague advised him that the challenges he would encounter in the southern coalfields were akin to its topography.

“You’ve got an uphill climb, a challenge here, as far as growing churches, for a number of factors,” Davis recalls him saying, “but one of the chief ones being because there are people here that, no matter what, would never darken the door of a Methodist Church.” 

“Why is that?” Davis asked.

“Because we were the company church,” the reverend replied.

During the first half of the 20th century, McDowell County meant coal. Lots of coal. And along with the industry came coal company towns, complete with churches, schools and the infamous company stores, where coal miners paid for goods with company scrip. It was an exploitative system, and the county’s United Methodist churches were where those at the top of the company hierarchy — management — went to worship. 

But Davis — a native of Williamson, in nearby Mingo County — had a different idea of how the church should relate to the community. 

Rev. Brad Davis / Photo by Rev. Caitlin Ware

Last fall, he convened a group of about 40 people from outside the region to learn about the challenges in the coalfields and hear from residents. Out of that experience came From Below: Rising Together for Coalfield Justice, comprising locals dedicated to “reimagining what we can be.”

Founded by Davis and co-directed with his colleague Rev. Caitlin Ware — likewise a West Virginia native and a recent graduate of Duke University’s divinity school — From Below is attempting to turn things around in McDowell. They’ve distributed thousands of bottles of water to homes that report orange, black and “goopy” tap water. They’re partnering with other local and regional community-based groups, including a homegrown organization that’s working to reclaim and revitalize land for farming in a once-vibrant Black community.

Davis and Ware want to use the church that once divided McDowell County into miners and management to reclaim what has been taken from them. 

“We are in desperate need of healing,” wrote Davis in a letter to corporations whose only presence in the county is their ownership of a substantial amount of land, much of which lies idle.

The time is long overdue for a “jubilee” to take place in coal country, Davis says, a reference to an Old Testament practice that included the restoration of land to its rightful owners. Jubilee, he wrote, is “a reorientation and reset of the current order where God’s intention for the full flourishing of life comes to fruition.”

It’s a concept that resonates in McDowell County.

Rev. Caitlin Ware talks with Anawalt resident Betty Stroup, who helps coordinate water distributions in McDowell County. Photo by Rev. Brad Davis.

‘Free State of McDowell’

Rising up against the order of things, Davis attests, is in McDowell County’s DNA. “We’re rooted in radicalism down here,” he says. “It’s a DIY attitude, that we’ll get things done on our own.” 

There’s a phrase rooted in the local Black community that’s used by many to express that attitude: the “Free State of McDowell.” The phrase was originally popularized by Tom Whittico, founder and editor of the county’s first Black newspaper, the McDowell Times, to describe the freedom the Black community enjoyed here.

Black Americans came to McDowell County after the Civil War to work in the coal mines and made significant contributions to the economy and culture of the region. At the time, the industry was booming; the county led the nation in coal production until the mid-1950s. Plus, McDowell was less segregated than other counties in the state, giving Black residents the opportunity to build political and economic power. 

Keystone was the state’s first incorporated Black town, and the first state chapter of the NAACP was founded in 1921 in Gary. Even today, McDowell County remains one of West Virginia’s most racially diverse. According to the most recent U.S. Census, two-thirds of Keystone’s residents are Black. But the county’s population has dipped to below 15,000, and it’s the poorest in West Virginia.

Evidence of coal’s glory days and the corresponding wealth of the United Methodist Church linger in the soaring ceilings and stained-glass windows of Welch First United Methodist, where Davis is pastor. A grand piano sits near the altar rail. 

Less than a mile down the hill is the McDowell County Courthouse, where Matewan Sheriff Sid Hatfield and Deputy Sheriff Ed Chambers were shot to death in 1921 by members of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, a private security firm hired by coal operators to suppress union organizing in the coalfields. 

The sturdy brick church looks over the town of Welch, a once-thriving county seat that’s seen plenty of coalfield history. 

The murder of Hatfield and Chambers was a moment in a two-decade struggle between coal miners and industry officials known as the West Virginia Mine Wars. It culminated with the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, where federal troops were deployed to nearby Logan County to break up a force of about 10,000 armed coal miners in the largest labor uprising in U.S. history.

The wounds from those days are still fresh, as are negative perceptions of the United Methodist Church. 

“Since the labor struggles here, we’re still carrying that baggage around with us and dealing with that legacy of being the company church,” Davis says. 

Front door view of Welch First United Methodist Church in Welch, W.Va. Photo by Rev. Brad Davis

These old company towns, and churches, are now struggling. The UMC has lost a quarter of its membership in the West Virginia Conference, which includes all but three of the state’s Eastern Panhandle counties. And the public infrastructure built by coal companies has crumbled since industry left, leaving residents in several communities scrambling to find safe water for cooking, bathing and drinking.

Summoning the coalfields’ rebellious tradition, Davis and Ware and their colleagues in faith communities throughout the region are forging alliances with lay organizations to fashion the future they envision.

Mountain Farming 

In a state in which absentee private landowners control hundreds of thousands of acres, access to land is critical to realizing that vision.. 

Twenty miles southwest of Welch, a 40-minute drive down WV-16, Jason Tartt is farming on roughly 350 acres, much of which he’s leasing from the investment-management company Berwind, formerly the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company.

Jason Tartt, standing on the land where his family has farmed for generations, Photo by Jesse Wright, 100 Days in Appalachia

Berwind Land Company owns about 25,000 acres in McDowell County. 

“As citizens,” Tartt says, “we go to these companies and we ask them, ‘Well, can I lease this land?’ And they’ll tell you, ‘This community is dying; this community is struggling.’ But you won’t give the people access to the land to make a living?”

Tartt is co-founder of EDGE — Economic Development Greater East — a training, demonstration and research farm. “This is where we call home,” Tartt says. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the United States.” 

He sees great promise, given a new vision of the future. That future is not in coal.

“That single-sector economy thing doesn’t work,” Tartt says. “We know it doesn’t work. So what do we do now? We figure out what are the economic drivers in places like McDowell County, West Virginia from now going forward.”

Agriculture, he believes, is the most viable solution, one that can preserve the resources and beauty of the landscape.

“But if you’re not talking about land access,” he stresses, “you’re not serious about agriculture. So we’ve gotten really serious about educating and developing producers in land access.”

Tartt is deeply familiar with the land he farms. His family migrated from Alabama to McDowell County in the early 20th century, joining thousands of Black Americans who found work and community in the coalfields. 

Jason Tartt works in a cornfield on the EDGE farm. Photo by Jesse Wright, 100 Days in Appalachia

Listen: Jason Tartt on his family’s legacy

His parents and grandparents lived and farmed here for decades, making a way for themselves and their families. Tartt owns about 20 acres of the EDGE farm. 

His view is that the state’s political leaders have no sense of how to make things work in the southern coalfields. “What is the West Virginia Department of Agriculture doing, for example?” he asks. “What is the Department of Commerce doing?” 

He’s charting his own path forward. And instead of picking fights with the coal industry and land companies, Tartt wants to find common ground.

“What we need to do is figure out how to create a different language to build relationships with these companies,” he says. 

Listen: Jason Tartt on changing the language with companies to build partnerships

Davis agrees. And for him, faith undergirds the pursuit of tangible results for his community. 

“We literally live in the hollers; we live in the low places. But we live in them figuratively as well,” Davis says. “But if we understand God to be a God who is very much concerned about the human condition, and very much concerned with those who exist in the low places, then we understand that the gospel tells us that God lifts up the lowly.” 

That’s the core concept, he says, behind what he calls the holler gospel.

“It’s an understanding of a God who is still coming to the low places to lift the lowly out of their condition and to bring them to the flourishing of life — the conditions of life in which God intends for all of humanity to live.”

Together, faith and laity, this coalition is advancing a movement, dismantling the status quo.

Next: Reclaiming and Revitalizing Resources in West Virginia’s Southern Coalfields

Laura Harbert Allen covers religion, culture and democracy for 100 Days in Appalachia and is a Report for America Corps member. Taylor Sisk is 100 Days in Appalachia’s health care correspondent.

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