Raymond Thompson Jr. weaves images and poetry to investigate one of the country’s deadliest industrial disasters and “pull Black folks back into the conversation about the labor history of West Virginia.”
Not long after Raymond Thompson Jr. arrived to start a new job in West Virginia, a driver trying to make polite conversation dropped a familiar refrain about the Appalachian region. “He’s like, ‘You know, it’s not like we’re not racist or have a problem with Black people, there just aren’t any Black people here,” Thompson — who, between 2012 and 2021, worked as a media specialist at West Virginia University — tells Pittsburgh City Paper…