Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Black Country has no single set of boundaries, though traditionalists define it as the area where the coal seam comes to the surface including West Bromwich, Coseley, Oldbury, Blackheath, Cradley Heath, Old Hill, Bilston, Dudley, Tipton, Wednesbury, and parts of Halesowen, Walsall and Smethwick. Today the term commonly refers to the majority of the four metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton.
The first recorded blast furnace in the Black Country was built at West Bromwich in the early 1560s. Coal mining was carried out for several centuries starting from medieval times, and metalworking was important as early as the 16th century spurred on by the presence of iron ore and coal in a thick seam.
The dispute commenced on the 9th of May in Wednesbury when workers employed in the area's steel tube trade came out for two months demanding a 23 shilling minimum weekly wage for unskilled workers. A settlement was reached on the 11th of July after arbitration by government officials from the Board of Trade led by Sir George Askwith, leading to the growth of organised labour across the region which had previously effectively eschewed trade unionism.
The top thin coal seam is known as Broach Coal while beneath this lie successively the Thick Coal, Heathen Coal, Stinking Coal, Bottom Coal and Singing Coal seams. The Thick Coal seam was also known as the Thirty Foot or Ten Yard seam and interspersed with these seams are deposits of iron ore and fireclay.
The last colliery in the region Baggeridge Colliery near Sedgley closed on the 2nd of March 1968. It was only in the late 1970s and 1980s that the region began to become deindustrialised following global shocks and political change affecting British industry.
The Flag of the Black Country was designed by Gracie Sheppard of Redhill School in Stourbridge and was registered with the Flag Institute in July 2012. This followed a competition organised after four years of campaigning which resulted in the adoption of the flag alongside the Black Country tartan registered in 2009.