My maternal grandfather worked, as a young man, in a coal mine in West Virginia. He never liked to talk about it.

As a young reporter in Roanoke in the 1960s, I visited my first coal mine in Wise County after a cave-in trapped and killed miners. After leaving The Roanoke Times in 1969, I joined the staff of The Alton Telegraph in the St. Louis Area and found Illinois also had deep shaft and strip mines.

At one time, Illinois had more than 7,400 individual mines, many of them in Southern Illinois. By 1969, most of the remaining mines were in the southern of the state with fewer than the peak. I remember having to cover an accident in Gillespie, IL, about an East of St. Louis.

Those who came out of the mine were blackened with coal dust and their tired eyes became something I focused on as a photojournalist. Several photos of Illinois miness are featured in the video posted above.