Ralph Chaplin (1887–1961) was a labor activist, writer, and artist closely associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. He helped shape early 20th-century labor organizing through both political action and cultural work, most famously writing the words to “Solidarity Forever,” which became a defining anthem of the labor movement.
During the government crackdown on radical labor organizing during World War I, Chaplin was arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917 and imprisoned for his involvement with the IWW. The well-known mugshot taken during his 1917–1918 arrest has since become an enduring image of labor resistance and is often reproduced as a symbol of the period’s political repression.
The following was written by West Virginia Mine Wars Museum Board Member Lou Martin, and was published HERE on the WVMWM website:
Justus Collins, an operator in the New River coalfield, advised mine owners to hire a “judicious mixture” of workers—white and black, native and immigrant—because their differences would prevent them from organizing and uniting. During the West Virginia Mine Wars, miners and their families proved him wrong.
Most coal camps had that “judicious mixture” of African Americans from the South and recent immigrants from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean as well as native-born Appalachians. Outside observers usually did not see a celebration of rich traditions and foodways, instead seeing a confusing mixture of cultures. One reporter from the New York Post visiting striking miners on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek in 1913 wrote, “It is estimated roughly that 50 per cent of the inhabitants are descendants of the mountaineers who once inhabited the country...The remainder of the miners are a strange conglomeration of Europeans and Negroes.”
Yet, when poet Ralph Chaplin visited the same muddy fields filled with canvas tent colonies, he saw something wonderful. He wrote, “They are doing pretty well in their tents. There is no atmosphere of martyrdom about these fighting West Virginians—nothing but a grim good humor and an iron determination.”
He believed that these families from very different backgrounds and traditions, working together to win their rights, had the potential to change the world. Inspired, he later penned labor’s most famous anthem, “Solidarity Forever.” Its last verse captures that sentiment:
In our hands is placed a power
greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies,
magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world
from the ashes of the old.
For the Union makes us strong.
Participants in Coalfield Development’s ReStage Appalachia PATH training finishing the portrait of Ralph Chaplin at West Edge Factory, May 2026.