Rest Easy, Betty Jean Hall.
Betty Jean Hall, the young attorney who overcame coal company resistance to hiring women miners in the 1970s and went on to become an important federal administrative law judge overseeing decisions on appeals of workers’ compensation claims, has died. She was 78 years old.
Hall founded and led the Coal Employment Project from 1977 to 1988 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The work of the Coal Employment Project was featured in the 1982 Appalshop documentary “Coal Mining Women.”
Rest easy, Betty Jean.