CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Betty Jean Hall, an Appalachian attorney and federal administrative judge who paved the way for women to enter the coal mining workforce, has died. She was 78.
Hall died Friday in Cary, N.C., where she had lived since her retirement in 2019, her daughter Tiffany Olsen told The Associated Press on Monday. The Kentucky native obtained her bachelor’s degree from Berea College in 1968 before studying law at Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C., and founding the Tennessee-based advocacy group the Coal Employment Project, in 1977.
Hall became interested in women pursuing mining careers after learning that a Tennessee mining company was refusing to even let women tour its mine – much less work there, according to a 1979 profile in The New York Times.
Before Hall came on the scene, there were virtually no women in coal mining, said Davitt McAteer, who was assistant secretary for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health…