- [Narrator] You may not think about North Carolina as coal country.

Pennsylvania?

Yeah.

West Virginia?

Definitely.

The Tar Heel State?

Not really.

But the truth is, in the heart of this state, there's a coalfield with a long history of national consequence, from the Revolutionary War all the way through the Industrial Revolution.

So we traveled there to look into this story.

Our reporting took us to a church founded in secret by enslaved people in the Civil War.

- When I was young, this was a place where horse and buggy were still riding up and down the road.

- [Narrator] And to a graveyard that tells the story of North Carolina's deadliest industrial disaster.

- Everything comes with a price, and they paid a big one.

- [Narrator] The story we found is a story of coal's promise and its price.

Of war, of Southern industrial ambition, and of the struggle for workers' rights.

This is "Homegrown History."

Our story begins along the banks of the Deep River, where a 36-mile long coalfield runs along a geological formation called the Triassic Basin.

It's 250 million years old.

Settlers discovered the coal here just before the American Revolution, and when they did, it became a tool for revolution.

But to explain how, we've got to take you here, out to the coast of North Carolina.

In 1775, colonial discontent with British rule had reached a fever pitch.

People were taking sides, forging alliances, and preparing for war.

But there were colonists whose livelihoods were completely tied to trade with the British, like Thomas McKnight, a landowner, a politician, and a ship builder.

When the time came to choose sides, he chose the Crown.

In North Carolina's Second Provincial Congress, McKnight was the only representative who refused to endorse a complete boycott of British goods.

That choice cost him.

The Assembly issued a province-wide boycott of his enterprises, and a year later, they confiscated all his property, including 39 enslaved people owned by McKnight and his associates.

Soon, these people would be forced into a new kind of labor, arming the soldiers who fought for independence.

As this went on in the east, patriot officials dispatched a team to investigate a Deep River iron forge, owned by a man named John Wilcox.

The revolution needed weapons, but the colonists had always counted on the British to provide them, and that door had just slammed shut.

They'd have to make them on their own, and Deep River had exactly what they needed to do it.

It was there that the team found iron, fuel to refine it, and a vision of a future where the United States didn't depend on any other kingdom or country for national security.

So the state purchased the furnace, and those 39 enslaved people confiscated from loyalists out east were sent to Deep River where they did the dirty, backbreaking work of mining coal and manning the furnace and the highly skilled work of manufacturing patriot cannons, cannonballs, and grapeshot.

But it turned out in the summer the river's water supply was too low, which limited the furnace's output, raising questions about the viability of the enterprise.

Within six months, the state returned the furnace to Wilcox, but it retained control of the enslaved people they'd sent there, who worked the furnace for the rest of the war.

After the war, the state returned the laborers to McKnight and his associates, and the industrial promise of these coalfields faded, until the Confederate War machine came calling.

15 miles from that old patriot furnace sits a cornerstone at the foot of an institution built by enslaved people in Deep River before the Civil War.

Angel Mills' family has been a part of this church for generations.

- Yes, some of these are unmarked over here, and then behind the church there's several unmarked graves as well.

- [Narrator] Saint Paul AME Zion is one of the oldest Black churches in the area.

- This church is originally one that was founded in 1849.

It was founded under a brush arbor by enslaved individuals who met together and worshiped together, 'cause there was nowhere else for them to really go where they could worship in the way they wanted to worship.

- [Narrator] When services here first began, church members met in secret, and they did so at great risk.

The state had outlawed religious gatherings for free and enslaved people of color and made it a crime punishable by 39 lashes.

In 1861, North Carolina seceded from the Union and the Deep River coalfields became a focus of the Confederacy.

To survive secession from the industrialized North, the Confederacy had to figure out how to power locomotives, forge weapons and manufacture munitions with its own resources, and they needed coal to do that.

Because the major coalfields in Pennsylvania and West Virginia were under federal control, the Confederacy had to look elsewhere, and mining had expanded in Deep River after an 1828 geological survey praised its untapped potential.

Locks like these and dams were added along the river, which opened new markets for the area's products.

So a year after secession, North Carolina built this, the Endor Furnace, a massive smelting furnace that produced iron for the Confederacy.

And again, the state brought in enslaved laborers to produce munitions for war.

But as you know, the Confederacy failed.

Eventually, so did the Endor Furnace.

Today, Saint Paul AME Zion is one of the few institutions of that era that's endured and thrived.

But the story of coal in Deep River wasn't over yet because coal remained an essential resource across the United States.

In the years following the Civil War, investors doubled down on the Deep River coal mines.

Mining towns formed during the era of railroad expansion and the industrial boom, and Black and white workers from near and far settled in the area and worked the mines side by side.

But across the country, the conditions in coal mines were harsh, and sometimes fatal.

There were limited safety measures, poor ventilation, and most workers would not be able to stand upright in them.

And yet, production rose across the nation, and with it, risk.

During this coal boom, 70,000 miners died on the job.

Some of them here, in Deep River.

First, an explosion in Deep River's Cumnock Mine left 40 miners dead.

Then, an explosion in Deep River's Egypt Coal Mine killed 22 men.

But in 1925, the biggest disaster of all struck.

We're here with Debbie Hall looking for a headstone where her kin is buried.

- The people that keep up this graveyard, it always looks exactly like this, so beautiful, and we're so appreciative that they do that.

This is the grave of Henry Grady Hall, who was killed in the mine in 1925.

- [Narrator] A few miles down the road from the cemetery sits the entrance of the Coal Glen Mine.

On Monday, May 25th, 1925, Debbie's grandfather arrived here for work.

- He went to work in the mine on Monday morning and the story he tells is, was, as he started into the mine, the rats and bugs were coming out.

He remembered that an old coal miner had told him, "If things are coming out of the mine, you don't go in."

So he told people, and told his brother as well, and he quit because he was so convinced that he should not go into the mine.

But his brother chose not to quit, and then two days later was when the explosion happened.

- [Narrator] The explosions came in two waves.

Years later, a local reported that the sky went dark with dust and smoke after.

Dozens of men were trapped.

Rescue efforts took days.

Thousands of people from across North Carolina came to offer a helping hand, while mining families stood by, waiting to find out if their loved ones were among the dead.

A photojournalist named Ben Dixon MacNeill documented the heart-wrenching scene.

Debbie found her grandfather in one of these pictures, standing near the mine entrance, waiting for his brother.

Investigators determined poor ventilation led to a buildup of flammable gas that caused the explosion, which is similar to what had caused previous accidents at Deep River mines.

In total, 53 men and three mules lost their lives.

To this day, it's North Carolina's deadliest industrial accident.

One of the men who died was Debbie's great uncle, Henry Grady Hall.

He's buried here at the Farmville Cemetery, less than a mile from the entrance to the Coal Glen Mine.

- Five miners are buried here.

They were the last five to come out of the mine.

For those of us who are history people, those of us that so revere the people that built this area, this country and here, it is a sacred place.

- [Narrator] One final tragedy catalyzed permanent change at the Deep River coalfields.

In 1928, North Carolina leased 182 Black convicts to work the mines, making it the last convict-leasing program in the country.

A year later, four of these men died in a mining accident and public outrage over the convict-leasing program grew.

The program ended and North Carolina passed its first Workers' Compensation Act, a turning point born from disaster.

The act guaranteed injured workers' compensation for medical expenses and lost wages without having to prove that their employer was at fault.

By the 1950s, the mines had closed for good.

[gentle music ends] [machinery whirring] Today, timber operations and housing developments have replaced mining sites, and the river that was once used for trade is now a site of recreation.

The Deep River's complicated history lives on.

If you're willing to ask and listen, this place is full of people who wanna share, who really believe that remembering matters.

- I mean, this church is a community.

That is what, you know, our forefathers did that built this place, they found this as an important place for worship, for education, for just having people to depend on and build family outside of your nuclear family, your extended family.

I hope that as we progress and more people move here, that we can welcome in new people as well as those new people seek us out and wanna know about this place that they're living in and what it was like.

Because I think that's really important to pass down.

- [Narrator] Evidence of the area's mining and labor history lives on in the cemeteries that connect families to their ancestors who built and bled for this community, in closed mineshafts and weathered iron furnaces, and in the memories of the people who believe this history matters.

And the mining disasters of yesterday hold lessons for the community today.

- I think it's important for people to know and remember these people because of their sacrifice, but I do think they're a reminder to us that everything comes with a price, and they paid a big one.

[birds chirping]