Black Diamonds Wins 2007 Jack Spadaro Award
Catherine Pancake received the 2007 Jack Spadaro Award at the 2007 Appalachian Studies Conference recently. “Black Diamonds” had earlier won a Paul Robeson Award in Baltimore where she now lives.
“Black Diamonds” had its world premiere at The South Charleston Museum on March 11th, 2006. A large audience attended the event including Ken Hechler who was interviewed for the film.
Jack Spadaro is the WV native who devoted his life to helping the people of WV and Appalachia as a mining engineer and coal mine safety leader. In 2006 the first film to win the Jack Spadaro Award was “Sludge,”a film from Appalshop about the Martin County, Ky. sludge spill that caused the worst environmental crisis ever in the eastern U.S. The film stars Spadaro for his role in trying to make Massey Energy face justice for their actions leading to the spill.
The South Charleston Museum had the WV premiere of “Sludge” in May 2005 for Labor History Day held in cooperation with The West Virginia Labor History Association. Jack Spadaro himself was present to introduce the film. His former colleague and boss Davitt McAteer was also present to introduce his film, “Monongah 1907.” It was the first time they had appeared in public together since Spadaro was forced to retire from his job as director of the MSHA Mine Safety Academy in Beckley.
