Coal War in the Mahoning Valley: The Origin of Greater Youngstown's Italians

by Joe Tucciarone, Ben Lariccia

The struggles and successes of the industrious coal miners in Ohio's Mahoning Valley.
Year after year, local Welsh coal diggers supplied the ravenous and roaring ironworks in Mahoning Valley but the good times ended in the closing weeks of 1872. The demand for iron slackened, and with it, coal orders fell. Responding to plunging coal prices, mine owners cut wages, but rank-and-file miners would have none of it. On New Year's Day, they went on strike. The bitter stalemate broke only when operators sidestepped local labor by employing African Americans from Virginia and Italian immigrants crowding the Eastern Seaboard. Violence followed. Yet this vicious strife opened the Mahoning Valley to permanent Italian settlement. Authors Ben Lariccia and Joe Tucciarone uncover this forgotten chapter in the region's storied labor history.

Genres: Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2019

Reviews

[Paul Lunger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Tucciarone & Ben Lariccia's "Coal War in the Mahoning Valley: The Origin of Greater Youngstown's Italian Americans" takes a look at the history of Italian immigration into the US as well as their unfortunate at times plight to reach places such as the Mahoning Valley. The majority of this story revolves around the coal mining industry in the Youngstown area & how the coal barons needed scab laborers to handle things when strikes were happening. This book written in 2019 reminds we the reader of at times how immigrants have been treated to this day & that we haven't learned a lot since the late 19th century. The good that did though come out of this was the fact that the Italians that did come & stayed did help create the community that the Greater Youngstown area has today & can be traced back to this dark chapter in Ohio & American history.

[Angela Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is an intersting account of racial and ethnic tensions that has been brushed over. The relevance of the situations described from the authors is argued smartly and eloquently. I would recommend this to anyone interested in Northeast Ohio history or the plight of the Italian immigrant. Ben and Joe have put in so much research and care to their narrative and that makes it appealing for the reader.