Profiles and Interviews: Mabel Butler

Mabel Butler lives in Jennings, Md. She is 85 years old and is the wife of the late Berman Butler, one of the roads strikers in 1970.

Mabel and Berman grew up on nearby farms. Her father was a coal miner just up the road at Modart Mines #1. Berman’s father was a foreman in the roads department.

“We didn’t like to strike, but they needed a raise,” said Ms. Butler. When her husband started on the roads, he only made $3,000 a year.  In the wintertime he would come home at 3:00 p.m. to sleep a couple hours and then go right back to work plowing the roads. “We didn’t have much money. We bought one thing and made payments until we paid it off and then bought something else,” she said, “We got food stamps [during the strike], we had a garden and my parents had beef cattle. They would butcher a cow and they saw that we had meat [during the strike],” she added.

“Berman always went to union meetings,” said Ms. Butler. “The strike made things better for us,” she said.