It was a late winter’s day at a union hall in Clothier, West Virginia, and a resident named Marty had a pointed question for the organizers of that day’s community meeting.

The organizers were representatives from the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, located in nearby Matewan and supported by the United Mine Workers of America. Founded eight years ago, the museum is dedicated to telling the story of the state’s Mine Wars — a struggle spanning the early part of the twentieth century that pitted a multiracial, multiethnic group of miners against coal companies in a violent fight for union rights and better working conditions. The Mine Wars culminated in 1920 at the Blair Mountain, where the largest labor uprising in American history was ultimately defeated by the US Army.

Last January, the Mine Wars Museum received a $100,000 grant from Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based public history and art nonprofit, to support a project called “Courage in the Hollers: Mapping the Miners’ Struggle for a Union.” The aim of the project was to commemorate the Battle of Blair Mountain not just at the site of the battle, which already has a monument, but along the miners’ route to the mountain. The project’s organizers sought input from residents of the two small towns where they wanted to build: Marmet, the starting point of the march, and Clothier, the end point. That’s how they came face-to-face with Marty, whose question was simple enough.