Melissa Fay Greene

In October 1958, a subterranean catastrophe collapsed the deepest mine on the planet, in the coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada.

A hundred men died. Long after hope was gone, rescuers continued the dreary task of recovering bodies until, in a miraculous discovery unequaled in modern times until the Chilean rescue, they found a dozen men walled-in, alive, and they brought them to the surface.
Two days later, a second mind-boggling discovery was announced to the world: a vertical mile underground, six more men clung to life. One in their group had died and others were near death.

The fantastic rescues received global coverage, the first such stories of the television era.
In the U.S., in the State of Georgia, a fantastic PR plan was hatched by the tourism staff of white supremacist governor Marvin Griffin. ‘Let’s invite the survivors of Springhill to come recuperate on the Georgia coast in an all-expenses-paid vacation! The whole world will watch. Then folks will want to come to Georgia’s beaches for vacation instead of Florida’s!’
The invitation was relayed and accepted before the last men were brought out of the pit and hospitalized.

The last man out, a father of twelve children, was Afro-Canadian miner, Maurice Ruddick, who had nursed and befriended his fellows underground, becoming an overnight folk hero.

He was black, Georgia was segregated, there was no place for the Ruddick family to stay on the beach, and Governor Griffin tried to avoid shaking his hand. The clever PR idea turned into an internationally-reported American insult of a Canadian hero.

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