Original Caption: “Forty seven pupils in the second, third and fourth grades attended school in this one room with one teacher; there are not enough books nor desks. Kentucky Straight Creek Coal Company, Belva Mine, abandoned after explosion [in] Dec. 1945, Four Mile, Bell County, Kentucky.”
In 1946, noted photographer Russell Lee was hired by the Solid Fuels Administration for War, a Federal agency, to take photographs for a survey of medical, health and housing conditions in coal communities around the country.
Located in remote areas and patrolled by mine company guards during times of labor unrest, coal communities were normally inaccessible to outsiders. But government seizure of the mines from private operators gave Lee an unprecedented view into coal fields from Pennsylvania to Wyoming.
Russell Lee took more than 2,000 photographs of the miners in their homes, workplaces, and communities.
