Energize Eckley: Edward Slavishak, “Bleak Truthfulness: Hollywood Comes to Eckley”

By using the village as its primary filming location, 1968's The Molly Maguires rescued Eckley from strip mining and cemented it in American film history. Susquehanna University's Dr. Edward Slavishak kicks off our summer speaker series by taking us back to that decisive moment and revealing how Hollywood helped transform Eckley into an historic site with a complicated relationship to the past.

Ed Slavishak is professor and chair of the history department at Susquehanna University. He is the author of Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh (2008) and Proving Ground: Expertise and Appalachian Landscapes (2018). His current research focuses on cars, roads, and crime during the Prohibition era.

Energize Eckley is a speaker series bringing today's preeminent scholars to Eckley Miners' Village to rethink the anthracite region's past, present, and future. Ticket sales support the design of Eckley's planned interdisciplinary research, learning & discovery center.

With support from: