Appalachian Ghost by Raymond Thompson Jr.

Appalachian Ghost by Raymond Thompson Jr. is a gut-wrenching account of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel disaster, one of the United States’ worst industrial accidents. Thompson explores this largely unknown subject through a visual history that repeoples the story of Hawk’s Nest (6), carefully sifting an archive to expose the human suffering buried in a West Virginia valley. 

In 1930 the Union Carbide Company used over 5000 workers, nearly two-thirds of which were African American, to build a tunnel that diverted portions of the New River’s flow into a hydroelectric powerplant that fired a singular factory. Through unsafe drilling practices and lack of protective equipment the workers were exposed to silica dust, and nearly 800 of them died from a disease known as Silicosis – 800 deaths for one factory. Silicosis slowly drowns its victims in the fluid of scarred and inflamed lungs. Beyond the tragedy of the deaths of so many workers, the Hawk’s Nest disaster is marred by the intentional erasure of that humanity from the historical record. Thompson’s work makes the people of the Hawk’s Nest disaster visible, if only briefly.

Appalachian Ghost explores the margins of the archive without bursting its limits. As in many racialized traumas and events in U.S. History, people are removed, leaving a sanitized event. History told without its humanity reshapes narratives and absolves collective guilt. Thompson uses archival breadcrumbs to splice the men who worked and died in the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel into the predominant story, illuminating sacrifice and injustice. Images of men captured at the margins of remaining photographs are brought into sharp relief at image center. Thompson inserts his subjects into current photographs of the hills they traveled to and from their toils while the silica dust ate into their lungs. White dust, like that of the tunnel drilling, clouds Thompson’s images like the mist that often clouds West Virginia hollers. The mix of photography, both old and new, coupled with Thompson’s prose conjures sorrowful emotions in the reader that are absent from many accounts of the disaster.

Appalachian Ghost reminds readers of the depth and folds present in all narratives. What we think we know is at the mercy of an archive’s construction or sometimes deliberate masking and erasure. There is no clean story, no single dimension event. Triumphs and tragedies both come at the expense of people. Good history makes the forgotten or hidden dimensions of a historic episode visible. Appalachian Ghost is that type of history.

---

JD Swinney is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Duke University (2019) where his research focused on how U.S. cultural movements have shaped the American military. He was born and raised in Versailles, Indiana and longs for time spent out of doors. JD, his Wife, and two Daughters live in Fort Knox, Kentucky…. At least until it is time to move again.