Portal:Appalachia/Aotd

Charles Everett Lively (March 6, 1887 – May 28, 1962) was an American private detective who worked as a labor spy for the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency. He played an active role in the Coal Wars in Appalachia and Colorado during the early 20th century.

Lively spied on the United Mine Workers of America in West Virginia and five other states, sometimes while working as a coal miner. After fatally shooting a striking miner during the Colorado Coalfield War, Lively spent several years working for Baldwin–Felts in the Great Plains before his assignment in Matewan, West Virginia.

Lively was so successful posing as a UMWA activist that he became a union delegate and was once photographed with Mother Jones. His cover was abandoned in the wake of the Battle of Matewan in May 1920, in which seven Baldwin–Felts detectives were killed. The following year, Lively and another Baldwin–Felts operative killed Sid Hatfield, Matewan's pro-union police chief, and his associate Edward Chambers, apparently at the behest of the detective agency. Lively successfully claimed self-defense in the double homicide. His participation in three killings, with scant consequences, cemented his reputation as one of the most violent opponents of efforts to unionize the coal fields. He has been called "the deadliest man in the West Virginia-Colorado coal mine wars". (Full article...) anywhere list: American black bear Coyote Groundhog