On this day in Labor History the year was 1980.
That was the day that Ida Mae Stull passed away.
She is widely considered to be the first woman coal miner in United States history.
As a little girl other school children teased her for having a “twisted leg.”
She left school and instead went into the mines with her father, an Ohio coal miner.
Ida Mae was just six years old. She continued to mine, even though Ohio law prohibited women from working in the mines.
In 1934, a federal inspector came to the mine where she was working.
According to Ida Mae other women miners hid because they knew he was coming.
But she had no intention of hiding.
Instead she loaded up her coal cart with rotten eggs, and threw them at the inspector.
She chased him out of the mine, and pelted his car with rotten eggs for good measure.
The eggs did not stop her from being kicked out of the mine.
So Ida Mae took her case to the courts. Where she won the right to return to work, because she was actually part owner the mine.
In an interview with a newspaper reporter, Idea Mae explained her fight to return to mining.
“I’ve got no business baking cookies and mending clothes. I’m a coal miner.”
In the same interview she declared, “I can load five tons a day with pick and shovel and that’s as much as any man in the mines can do.”
She went on to mine for ten more years.
In 1978, the Chicago Tribune called on Ida Mae for an interview.
She declared to the reporter, “Ain’t no man or woman live that can beat me down.”
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