Hawks Nest tunnel, near Gauley Bridge, is the site of the worst, yet least known, industrial disaster in American history. At least 764 workers, three-fourths of them black, died of acute silicosis contracted during the 1930-31 drilling of the giant Union Carbide tunnel through Gauley Mountain. An unknown number were buried in unmarked graves in a cornfield near Summersville.

After hearing the story of the tragedy, a middle-aged man said, "I grew up near Summersville, not far from that cornfield. Until now I never heard anything about the deaths at Hawks Nest. Why?"

Until well into my adult years, neither did I. Looking back, I am puzzled by the fact that the Hawks Nest disaster was never mentioned in my high school classes. Neither were the 1920s coal mine wars, the Matewan Massacre, or the Battle of Blair Mountain. My history teachers traveled a familiar road - settlers in the mountains, Morgan Morgan, the Civil War, construction of railroads and airports, industries that brought employment. 

Why? Consider the following. During the Great Depression, unemployed writers across America found jobs in President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, the WPA. The WPA Writers' Project wrote histories of each of the 48 states. In 1939, drafts of our state's history, "West Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State," raised major concerns for then Gov. Homer A. Holt. He took umbrage with the chapter on the state's labor history and the Hawks Nest tunnel disaster. He insisted on a heavy editing, even censorship, of the manuscript.

Holt's outcries took place against the background of the Great Depression's hard times and worries about political radicalism. In Washington, D.C., Martin Dies, chairman of the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities, led investigations of alleged radicalism inside the Writers' Project. Dies cited the WPA state histories as vehicles for class struggle and hatred.

Responsibility for West Virginia's history rested with the state's Conservation Commission. Holt appointee Roy Bird Cook, a Charleston druggist and historian, was to review the project for the Commission.

But the project director, concerned about Holt's censorship via Cook, proposed transfer of the history project to the West Virginia Superintendent of Schools, W. W. Trent. Trent had been independently elected and supported a more inclusive, factual rendering of the history of the state's labor struggle and Hawks Nest.

The proposed transfer of the project incensed Gov. Holt. In September 1939, he wrote letters of protest to President Roosevelt and the WPA national administrator. In October, Holt warned Washington officials that if Trent's department sponsored the Guide, he would withdraw cooperation of all other departments of state government. His near-hysterical outcry became a topic for Drew Pearson's nationally syndicated columns, and prompted articles in the national magazines "The Nation" and "The New Republic." Holt derided the Guide as "...propaganda, from start to finish."

Hawks Nest tunnel, near Gauley Bridge, is the site of the worst, yet least known, industrial disaster in American history. At least 764 workers, three-fourths of them black, died of acute silicosis contracted during the 1930-31 drilling of the giant Union Carbide tunnel through Gauley Mountain. An unknown number were buried in unmarked graves in a cornfield near Summersville.

After hearing the story of the tragedy, a middle-aged man said, "I grew up near Summersville, not far from that cornfield. Until now I never heard anything about the deaths at Hawks Nest. Why?"

Until well into my adult years, neither did I. Looking back, I am puzzled by the fact that the Hawks Nest disaster was never mentioned in my high school classes. Neither were the 1920s coal mine wars, the Matewan Massacre, or the Battle of Blair Mountain. My history teachers traveled a familiar road - settlers in the mountains, Morgan Morgan, the Civil War, construction of railroads and airports, industries that brought employment. 

Why? Consider the following. During the Great Depression, unemployed writers across America found jobs in President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, the WPA. The WPA Writers' Project wrote histories of each of the 48 states. In 1939, drafts of our state's history, "West Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State," raised major concerns for then Gov. Homer A. Holt. He took umbrage with the chapter on the state's labor history and the Hawks Nest tunnel disaster. He insisted on a heavy editing, even censorship, of the manuscript.

Holt's outcries took place against the background of the Great Depression's hard times and worries about political radicalism. In Washington, D.C., Martin Dies, chairman of the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities, led investigations of alleged radicalism inside the Writers' Project. Dies cited the WPA state histories as vehicles for class struggle and hatred.

Responsibility for West Virginia's history rested with the state's Conservation Commission. Holt appointee Roy Bird Cook, a Charleston druggist and historian, was to review the project for the Commission.

But the project director, concerned about Holt's censorship via Cook, proposed transfer of the history project to the West Virginia Superintendent of Schools, W. W. Trent. Trent had been independently elected and supported a more inclusive, factual rendering of the history of the state's labor struggle and Hawks Nest.

The proposed transfer of the project incensed Gov. Holt. In September 1939, he wrote letters of protest to President Roosevelt and the WPA national administrator. In October, Holt warned Washington officials that if Trent's department sponsored the Guide, he would withdraw cooperation of all other departments of state government. His near-hysterical outcry became a topic for Drew Pearson's nationally syndicated columns, and prompted articles in the national magazines "The Nation" and "The New Republic." Holt derided the Guide as "...propaganda, from start to finish."

Holt withheld approval until a final version of the Guide reduced the chapter on West Virginia labor history from 17 pages to five paragraphs. His censorship removed findings from the 1936 congressional investigation of the Hawks Nest tragedy that cited poor air circulation, the absence of respirators for workers, and high concentrations of silica dust due to dry rather than wet drilling. 

Gov. Holt's successor Matthew Neely restored much of the content Holt had censored.

The bottom line? Homer Holt's criticism of the department headed by the state's senior educational official combined with his railing against the content of the Guide sent a powerful message. People in high places objected to the public discussion of labor unrest and the tunnel tragedy. Education officials and teachers took the lesson to heart. For at least two generations, including mine, our public schools taught a sanitized version of West Virginia history.

In recent years that has changed, but only some. Our labor history and the Hawks Nest disaster are now included in textbooks, though accounts of the Hawks Nest tragedy continue to significantly understate the number of deaths from acute silicosis. Neither do those accounts raise questions about the massive violations of human rights at Hawks Nest by Union Carbide.

Today, as in the 1930s, we face hard times. We need to ask if again, in the name of jobs, we are failing to require full disclosure of health, safety and environmental risks. In 2008, an explosion at the former Union Carbide plant at Institute now owned by Bayer CropScience killed two men and could have ruptured a 50,000 gallon tank of methyl isocyanate, the chemical that killed thousands in Bhopal. Plant management denied any danger to the community. Then outside investigators revealed the chilling truth - the Kanawha Valley came very close to another Bhopal.

I hope my fears are unfounded. But past history and recent corporate behavior suggest otherwise.

Harshbarger, of Morgantown, is an adjunct professor of community medicine at WVU, a senior fellow at the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and author of the novel Witness at Hawks Nest, witnessathawksnest.com.