Eric Reyes-Barriga

Most of the men were Black migrant workers who had come looking for work from states further south.

When they died, the company buried them in unmarked graves.

Other sick workers left the job site and went back home to their families in the South, where it's very likely they died of the disease at their homes.

Workers were dying so quickly that it became a national news story.

The blues singer Josh White performed a song about the tragedy, titled, Silicosis is Killing Me.

There's even video footage of some of the sick workers.

Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins ordered reports into the disaster and had the Department of Labor make a film raising awareness about silicosis, aptly titled Stop Silicosis.

The federal government was only just beginning to attempt to regulate the most basic aspects of private workplaces.

It would take over 30 more years for national legislation to be passed about silicosis or about any workplace disease.

In the meantime, industry worked together through their own groups to try and set their own health standards and inform businesses of workplace health risks.

In the immediate aftermath of the Hawksnest Tunnel disaster, over 200 industry representatives came together to form the Air Hygiene Foundation.

The group later changed its name to the Industrial Hygiene Foundation.

Over the next 30 years, similar industry groups would form to release voluntary safety guidance about a number of different workplace harms.

That included asbestos, which causes cancer when inhaled.

But companies' attempts at self-regulation weren't successful enough.

In the years leading up to 1970, illness and injuries on the job had increased, and the federal government finally took action.

That year, President Nixon signed the Occupational Health and Safety Act, or OSHA, into law.

It was the first time a federal agency was tasked purely with protecting workers' health.

The Occupational Health and Safety Agency was housed in the Department of Labor.

The act also established another agency called NIOSH, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.