Through the early 19th to mid-20th century, coal mining was the industrial engine of downstate Illinois. Workers organized under the banner of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to win safe working conditions and better pay.

In the summer of 1932, thousands of Illinois miners split from the union after UMWA President John L. Lewis undermined a wage referendum and imposed a company-supported contract on the workers.

The dissident miners formed a new union, the Progressive Miners of America, in order to reclaim the rights of rank and file miners and reject Lewis' autocracy.

No Backward Step: the struggle for democracy in the Illinois coal fields is a documentary project produced by Greg Boozell which tells the story of the new union and the mine war that followed.