CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Betty Jean Corridor, an Appalachian legal professional and federal administrative choose who paved the way in which for ladies to enter the coal mining workforce, has died. She was 78.

Corridor died Friday in Cary, N.C., the place she had lived since her retirement in 2019, her daughter Tiffany Olsen instructed The Related Press on Monday. The Kentucky native obtained her bachelor’s diploma from Berea Faculty in 1968 earlier than finding out regulation at Antioch Faculty of Regulation in Washington, D.C., and founding the Tennessee-based advocacy group the Coal Employment Undertaking, in 1977.

Corridor grew to become focused on ladies pursuing mining careers after studying {that a} Tennessee mining firm was refusing to even let ladies tour its mine – a lot much less work there, in keeping with a 1979 profile in The New York Instances.

Earlier than Corridor got here on the scene, there have been just about no ladies in coal mining, stated Davitt McAteer, who was assistant secretary for the U.S. Mine Security and Well being Administration underneath President Invoice Clinton from 1993 to 2000.

There was a long-standing delusion amongst miners that to enter a mine with a girl was unhealthy luck, stated McAteer. The legend was that the mine is a girl, and to carry one other lady underground would make the mine jealous, he stated.

The Coal Employment Undertaking pressured mining firms throughout the U.S. to rent ladies by submitting anti-discrimination lawsuits. McAteer stated Corridor had a easy, efficient argument that coal firms couldn’t deny.

“Her push was all the time, ‘Mining is the place the roles are and ladies have to generate profits simply as males do.’ She would say, ‘We want the cash as a result of we’ve got infants and we’ve received households, too,’” McAteer stated.

Corridor instructed the Instances in 1979 that if ladies had to decide on between making $6,000 a 12 months in a manufacturing unit and mining coal for $60 or extra a day, “they’ll go into the mines.”

“Positive, coal mining is tough work,” she instructed the newspaper. “However so is home tasks and so is working in stitching factories for minimal wages.”

Inside somewhat greater than a 12 months, the Coal Employment Undertaking filed a lawsuit charging 153 coal firms with gender bias in hiring. By December 1978, a settlement was reached with Consolidation Coal Firm to pay $370,000 to 70 ladies who had been denied jobs and to rent one lady for each 4 males.

In consequence, U.S. coal firms had employed 830 ladies miners by late 1978, in keeping with a historical past of the group compiled by Corridor. By the mid-Nineteen Eighties, that quantity had elevated to over 4,000.

Kipp Dawson, a former coal miner in Pennsylvania and a buddy of Corridor, instructed the Lexington Herald-Chief that the group did extra than simply assist ladies like her get mining jobs. The Coal Employment Undertaking advocated for paid parental go away for miners, an effort that contributed to the passage of the Household and Medical Go away Act of 1993. The group additionally hosted trainings, annual conferences and help teams for feminine miners.

“We received taken extra critically as a result of it wasn’t simply the voice of a single lady,” Dawson instructed the newspaper. “She was our mom.”

Corridor led the Coal Employment Undertaking from 1977 to 1988. In 2001, she was appointed as an administrative appeals choose for the U.S. Division of Labor Advantages Evaluation Board, the place she streamlined the method of issuing selections on appeals of employee’s compensation claims and black lung advantages to make sure injured miners acquired honest and well timed critiques.

Retired journalist and monetary skilled Jim Branscome, who maintained a detailed friendship with Corridor a long time after they had been freshmen debate companions at Berea Faculty, stated she and Coal Employment Undertaking had been so profitable as a result of “they caught a pattern of girls who had been fed up with a world the place a girl may solely hope to be a typist in a coal firm workplace or a clerk within the firm retailer.”

It’s notable, he stated, that Corridor’s first funding got here from a small grant from feminist activist Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Basis for Girls. Considered one of her first awards got here from Ms. Journal. Branscome described her as “more durable than John Henry’s metal driving instruments — completely fearless.”

“The coal firms had been hit with forces they’d by no means confronted earlier than, and fancy regulation companies had been defeated by an legal professional from a really small regulation faculty who had a drive of coal-mining ladies behind her,” he stated.

In an announcement Monday, United Mine Employees of America Worldwide President Cecil E. Roberts referred to as Corridor a “exceptional lady” and a “fearless advocate who revolutionized the coal mining trade for ladies.”

“As we bear in mind her unimaginable contributions, we replicate on the phrases of Mom Jones: ‘No matter your battle, don’t be ladylike,’” Roberts stated. “Betty Jean Corridor embodied this spirit, breaking obstacles and paving the way in which for numerous ladies within the mining trade.”

Corridor is survived by Olsen and her husband Kevin Olsen, her son, Timothy Burke, two grandchildren and a sister, Janet Smith.