Original caption: “The two room house of Charlie Davis, his wife and two children. When he asked the company to make some repairs on this house he was told that ‘the house is good enough.’ ‘When it rains, it’s drier under the trees than it is inside this place,’ he said. Coleman Fuel Company, Red Bird Mine, Field, 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.
