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Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Under Construction, 1930
Drilling through solid sandstone, the construction of the Hawks Nest Tunnel in West Virginia became the site of the worst industrial tragedies in United States history. Nearly 3000 men, including 2000 African American migrants from the South, labored at break-neck speed with no safety precautions to carve out the tunnel for Union Carbide’s electro-metallurgical power plant. Their work is seen in this stark black and white photograph showing the jagged, hard rock that was chipped away to create the cavernous route. The by-product of that labor also produced insidious silica dust. As hundreds of these young men were exposed to essentially breathing in glass, their lungs quickly hardened, and they died from acute silicosis. The calamity of Hawks Nest Tunnel received nationwide attention, with hundreds of lawsuits filed, congressional hearings and policy change enacted, and an artistic lamentation enacted through folk music and poetry. Label by Kelly Conway