Betty Jean Hall, advocate who paved the way for women to enter coal mining workforce, dies at 78

Associated Press

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. He daughter Tiffany Olsen says Hall died Friday in Cary, N.C., where she had lived since her retirement in 2019. The Kentucky native obtained her bachelor’s degree from Berea in 1968 before studying law at Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. She also founded the Tennessee-based advocacy group the Coal Employment Project in 1977. The Coal Employment Project pressured mining companies across the U.S. to hire women by filing anti-discrimination lawsuits.