55 Strong: Inside The West Virginia Teachers' Strike

On a chilly dawn in Charleston, West Virginia, nearly 20,000 fiery teachers, bus drivers, and cafeteria staff slammed classroom doors shut on February 22, 2018, unfurling red bandanas and the rallying cry “55 Strong” across every county in the Mountain State. For thirteen nerve-jangling days they stormed gold-domed halls, hammered out picket-line lesson plans, and turned the Capitol rotunda into a thunderous civics lab, demanding fair pay, solid benefits, and respect. Edited by teacher-organizer Jessica Salfia, folklorist Emily Hilliard, and Appalachian historian Elizabeth Catte, 55 Strong: Inside the West Virginia Teachers’ Strike stitches together on-the-ground essays, spirited photos, and vintage union leaflets to reveal how a largely female workforce fused West Virginia’s coal-miner militancy with twenty-first-century social media tactics. Readers hitch rides on packed school buses turned mobile strategy rooms, savor homemade pepperoni rolls passed along snowy picket lines, and feel the electric pivot when humble classroom chatter morphs into a national Labor Rights and Education Equity revolt that soon ignites walkouts from Oklahoma to Arizona. Will today’s parents, pastors, and policy makers harness this raw blueprint for Economic Justice, or let the momentum fade like chalk dust after dismissal bell? Learn more and step into a movement still echoing through every American hallway.