Segregation in Job Hierarchies: West Virginia Coal Mining, 1906–1932

When blacks began to leave the South, one of their first stops was the West Virginia coal fields. There they met with reasonable success. Until the Depression, high-paying machine jobs were open to them and job segregation had almost no impact on their wages, but management positions were off-limits with a few exceptions for all-black workforces. The findings suggest two patterns worth more attention in studies of other industries.