African-American Coal Miners

Researcher and author Tim Pinnick will share his insights on African-American coal miners at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 26, at Tarleton State University’s W.K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas in the historic ghost town of Thurber.
 
Pinnick left his job as a public school teacher in 2003 to organize and develop material on African-American coal miners that he had accumulated for nearly a decade. That material includes information on African-American miners who worked for the Texas and Pacific Coal Company between 1888 and 1921, when Thurber was one of the biggest producers of bituminous coal in Texas and largest company town in the state.
 
Thurber’s coal-mining operations reached a peak around 1920, when the town had a population of some 10,000.