Julia “Judy” Bonds (1952-2011) was a coal miner's daughter who realized the damage that the industry was having on her home and spent the rest of her life fighting for it.
Julia “Judy” Bonds (1952-2011) was a coal miner's daughter who realized the damage that the industry was having on her home and spent the rest of her life fighting for it.
History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.
Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Lindsey Kratochwill. I’m one of the writers and producers behind Womanica, as well as another Wonder Media Network show that features stories of climate change progress and poetry. It’s called As She Rises.
This month, we’re highlighting Eco Warriors: women fighting for conservation and ecological justice.
Today’s story is about a woman from the Appalachian mountains who wasn’t called to environmental work until much later in her life. She was a coal miner's daughter who realized the damage that the industry was having on her home. So she spent the rest of her life fighting for it.
Please welcome Julia “Judy” Bonds.
Julia Belle Thompson Bonds, or Judy, as people would later know her, was born on August 27, 1952 in Marfork, West Virginia. She was one of eight children, two of whom died at birth. Her parents were Oliver and Sarah Thompson, who came from families that lived in West Virginia for generations. Her father and grandfather were coal miners. Her dad died of black lung disease soon after he retired from the coal mines. He was 65.
Throughout her life Judy worked in restaurants and convenience stores, and was uncertain how she felt about the risks of coal mining. Things all started to change when Massey Energy came to town. Massey Energy was a big coal company that arrived to begin operations in the green narrow valleys of southern West Virginia. Massey used a practice called “mountaintop mining” or “mountaintop removal.” This involves blasting off the tops of mountains in order to get at the layers of coal below. It’s as destructive as it sounds.
The practice pollutes waterways with toxic metals and releases fine particles in the air that can cause nearby communities to develop asthma and lung disease. It displaces animals, damages homes, and the noise from explosions can cause PTSD.
When the Massey Energy company began blasting in Judy’s town, people started moving out. But Judy refused to leave. Then one day in 1996, her six-year-old grandson was playing in a creek when he asked his grandmother: “What’s wrong with these fish?”
Judy found he was surrounded by dead fish floating belly-up in the water.
As she later told Sierra magazine, “I knew something was very, very wrong. So I began to open my eyes and pay attention.”
Judy credits that moment as a turning point in her environmental activism. She began volunteering with the Coal River Mountain Watch and started down a long path fighting to protect her community from the effects of mountaintop mining.
In 2001, Judy was forced to leave her home when Massey began to build a dam up-river that was meant to hold back millions of gallons of coal sludge. Judy and her family had to leave to avoid what would be catastrophic flooding if the dam broke. Being displaced only reinforced her determination to keep fighting these mining powers.
Judy became the outreach director of the Coal River Mountain Watch and a symbol of opposition to mountaintop mining in West Virginia. She was outspoken. She traveled nationwide to speak to young people about her experiences. She testified in hearings. And she denounced the profits coal companies were making at the expense of the health of her low-income community. She built coalitions; organized rallies, marches, and picket lines; and even filed lawsuits to rein in the coal companies. The Coal River Mountain Watch also tracked permits that coal companies were issued to mine in the area and held public hearings for people to challenge them.
Judy faced harassment from people who felt she posed a threat to their livelihoods. But She stood her ground and shrugged off the argument that her community needed the coal industry’s jobs.
“If coal is so good for us hillbillies,” she said at a 2008 Appalachian Studies Association conference, “then why are we so poor?”
In 2003, Judy was awarded the $125,000 Goldman Environmental Prize. At the time she had been earning $12,000 a year as an activist. After paying off some family bills, she donated the remaining nearly $50,000 to the Coal River Mountain Watch.
Judy brought a lot of attention to the effects of mountaintop removal in Appalachia.
She helped organize a “hillbilly march”, as she liked to put it, to Washington D.C in September of 2010. Two thousand people joined the “Appalachia Rising” march. Judy herself couldn’t join because she had fallen ill.
She passed away from cancer on January 3, 2011. She was 58 years old.
The Coal River Mountain Watch created The Judy Bonds Center for Appalachian Preservation in her honor and it now serves as the organization’s community center.
For more information find us on Facebook and Instagram @womanicapodcast.
Special thanks to Jenny and Liz Kaplan for inviting me to guest host today’s episode.
Talk to you tomorrow!