Betty Jean Hall, Berea debater and advocate for women miners’ rights, dies at 78 • Kentucky Lantern
Betty Jean Hall, the young lawyer who fought against coal companies’ resistance to hiring women miners in the 1970s and later became a key federal administrative judge who ruled on appeals of workers’ compensation claims, has died. She was 78.
Hall attended Buckhorn School in Perry County in southeastern Kentucky and transferred to Berea College Foundation School, then a college-operated high school, when her father became head of woodworking in the Industrial Arts Department at Berea College. She graduated from Berea College in 1968 with a major in history. She was an active debater at Berea, challenging teams from Ohio to Florida.
Just a year after graduating from Antioch School of Law in Washington, DC, Hall founded the Coal Employment Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and directed it from 1977 to 1988. She became the scourge of the nation’s coal companies, which refused to hire women as miners.
The Coal Employment Project filed a lawsuit against 153 coal companies, alleging sexual discrimination in hiring. In December 1978, a settlement was reached with the Consolidation Coal Company to pay $370,000 to 70 women who had been denied employment because of their sex and to hire one woman for every four men. Two of the largest coal companies at the time, the Island Creek and Peabody coal companies, were investigated because of Hall’s tireless work. As a result, by the end of 1978, the coal companies had hired 830 female miners. By the mid-1980s, that number had risen to over 4,000.
The work of the Coal Employment Project was featured in the 1982 Appalshop documentary “Coal Mining Women.”
Jean Kilgore, who represented Hall in a successful lawsuit against what was then the Pittston Coal Company, said Hall had a profound impact on her life. “Betty Jean treated me and hundreds of other women with pure kindness, acceptance, support and equality,” Kilgore wrote in an email. “I learned so much from Betty Jean. To value myself, to help others, to never give up, to never give in, to never stop caring for others.”
Working with the Coal Employment Project was just one part of several leadership efforts in which she engaged with social justice organizations throughout the Appalachian region. She worked at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, and served on the organization’s board and executive committee. She also served as board chair of the Appalachian Alliance Steering Committee, the Southern Appalachian Leadership Training Program (1979-1985), and on the board of the Southeast Women’s Employment Coalition. The Highlander Appalachian Program focused on leadership development of community leaders throughout the mountains to fight for social justice and the right to fully participate in American prosperity.
Hall’s legal and leadership skills were soon recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor. She was appointed as an administrative appellate judge for the federal Department of Labor’s Benefits Review Board in 2001. The board made decisions on appeals of workers’ compensation claims under the Longshore and Harbor Workers Compensation Act and the Black Lung Benefits Amendments to the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. She quickly rose to become chief administrative appellate judge and chair of the Benefits Review Board (1994–2001 and 2014–2019) until her retirement. Under her leadership, the board streamlined the benefits review process and ensured that the compensation claims of miners with black lung and other workers injured on the job were reviewed fairly and in a timely manner.
Her commitment to workers attracted attention. The Louisville Courier-Journal wrote:
“With tough skills concealed in a friendly, front-porch style, she is using the federal bureaucracy, the federal courts and the national media to advance her cause (for women miners). The result, others noted, could be far more than just a women’s bathroom in the bathhouse.”
In 1981, she won the John D. Rockefeller Public Service Award. At the award ceremony, she said:
“Betty Jean Hall is an advocate committed to helping women overcome barriers in the labor market. She successfully led an initiative to create employment opportunities for women in the U.S. coal industry. As director of the Coal Employment Project, she developed an exemplary training program for women miners, which has now been adapted for men. She organized support groups across the country to help isolated women miners overcome common problems. Betty Jean Hall has expanded her efforts to help women in the West find work in the newly discovered coal deposits there, and she is developing training programs for mine managers to familiarize them with the idea of women in the mining industry. Most importantly, her leadership has served as an inspiration and practical guide for women who want to determine for themselves where and under what conditions they will work. The results are improved economic security for women and their families and the important affirmation of individual dignity and basic justice.”
She also won a John Hay Whitney Fellowship Award (1978-1980); the National Women’s Health Network’s Health Advocate of the Year title (1980); Ms. Magazine’s Woman to Watch in the 80s title (1980); and the Berea College Public Service Award (1984). In 2023, she was awarded a Distinguished Alumnus Award by Berea College.
Hall’s admissions to superior courts included the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (1977), the Supreme Court of Virginia (1977), the Supreme Court of Tennessee (1979-1989), and the United States Court of Appeals, 4th Circuit (1986).
Hall retired to Cary, North Carolina in 2019, but found time to serve on the Berea College Alumni Executive Committee. She is most proud of her children, Tim Hall and Tiffany Olsen (Kevin), and two grandchildren, Blake and Athena. She is also survived by her sister, Janet Hall Smith. All family members reside in Cary.
Hall’s fellow students and friends at Berea College have endowed a scholarship in her name at Berea College (donation information). The scholarships go to students from the most economically disadvantaged areas of the Appalachian Mountains, where the coal mining areas are located. A memorial service is planned for October at Berea College.
This article is republished from The Daily Yonder under a Creative Commons license.
