It is home to lawyers, doctors and coal operators; it has a hospital, several banks and a few fast-food . The Federal Government, with the Commissioner of Labor in a fact finding role, acted as a 'neutral' for the first time in contributing to settlement of the bitter coal strike. Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. We are handed copies of court records concerning a certain Claude Beach, who has been hired by Eastover during the strike as a "security guard." Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. Rev. Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. Lois Scott, a woman of about forty-five, begins to speak first. More than twenty-four babies out of a thousand die before they are one year old, and the expenditure per child in the public schools is one-half the national average. They also plan to join with a North Carolina group in protesting Duke's requested rate increase, and they are going to attend the meeting of Duke's stockholders on May 30. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. If any attractive woman became interested in me, I'd think it was a very lovely thing. It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. The accident was the second worst mine fatality in the history of Harlan County coal mining, the worst being Harlan Fuel Company . The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. "Faith, power, and conflict: Miner preachers and the United Mine Worker On Friday, March 25, a continuous mining machine operator was killed by a wall collapse at the Huff Creek No. They relate federal mine-safety figures which show that in 1971 the accident rate in the Brookside mine was three times the national average, and in 1972 was twice the national average. This active organization is made up of those who represent the leader in the mining industry. The sign man for R C Cola has worked this territory well. Harlan County, Kentucky in a Post-Coal America: A Case Study The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. He said that when the coal industry was at its height in 1928, the peak of . Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. COMING THE BOYS OF HARLAN - The Washington Post The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. There was no functioning safety committee Medical and retirement benefits were minimal and unreliable. I've read that in its heyday, the Blackjoe coal camp consisted of 60 or so houses. "In Harlan County, U.S.A., sound anchors, explains, and makes 'authentic' visual imagery compromised by the long history of documentary work in Appalachia.". They want the terms of the standard UMW contract or better. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. They point out that most of the big coal companies, such as U.S. Steel and others, have signed UMW contracts, but that the smaller companies of eastern Kentucky have held out. At first, heading northwest on modern Route 23, through Kingsport, Tennessee, Weber City, Virginia, and Gate City, Virginia, the sights are the same as almost everywhere else in America today. He tells me that the miners plan to picket on Wall Street, hoping to give Duke problems with its stock. There is no water in the house. The Brookside labor dispute erupted spontaneously soon after Miller's election. There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. There are very few vacant houses in the county. We're all involved. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. Harlan: Working under the Gun - Social Welfare History Project Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. Featuring a haunting soundtrack-with legendary country . They're trapped. I have two children and four grandchildren from a previous marriage. Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? It is the second coal mining fatality in . Prior to Miller's election, the union had become corrupt, dictatorial, and a frequent collaborator with the mine owners. "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. It is clear that these women have been a main factor in keeping the mine shut down. It was two o'clock on a Monday morning when the accident occurred, and he'd been in the mine., more than twelve hours. The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. Yarborough replies. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. - Details - SNAC : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! The kind of house she would like, if she could find one, would rent for about $50 a month, but she and her husband cannot pay that much. Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. PDF "I Am a Union Woman": Gender, Class, and Folk Music in The Harlan In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. Home - Harlan County Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. Quakers and Bloody Harlan - Appalachian History He is dressed more like a miner than a mining executive. She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. Almost immediately after the explosion became known rescue teams, under the direction of J. F. Bryson, safety director of the Harlan County Coal Operators association, started into the entry. The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. Bryan W. Whitfield III (1925-2010) - Find a Grave Memorial Nobody knows how long the UMW can keep paying strike benefits. This caused the clergy to denounce the union. Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. Evarts welcomed the miners because it was filled with spurned politicians and business owners who wished to see the company stores and company men in political positions vanish. Middleton died on the scene. The unrest continues in Harlan and surrounding counties as there have been many strikes. Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared . The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. Some seventy-five state policemen were on hand as the crowd gathered. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. Following this episode, the women say, Norman Yarborough asked Judge Hogg to hold the UMW and a number of miners and women in contempt of the Judge's order limiting the number of picketers to six. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. But Barbara Bode has arranged for eleven of them to come up onto the stage at the same time, and they seem to take strength from their numbers. Nonunion workers were attempting to leave the mine. Jacqueline Brophy asks why public services have broken down. The women spent the night. Si says Harlan is a dry countyno legal liquor and no beer. Yarborough's affidavit stated that "the group swarmed out into the roads, stopped cars, and forced company employees into coercive conversations and indulged in generally raucous name-calling and abuse." It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." Two hundred people crowd. Domesticity and Depression: Kentucky Coal Mining, Song, and Organizing My man was mashed up in the mines. There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. Interment at Resthaven Cemetery, Keith, Ky. Visitation 6-9 p.m. at the Grays Knob Bible Church. Hell in Harlan - front page The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. They have done this only since the Brookside strike. Sudie Crusenberg, a plain woman in a cotton dress, gives us some idea of what life is like for a coal-mining family. One of the better houses is already being demolished. All too many Americans are under the naive belief that, while unions may have been necessary in the 30's, they are no longer needed in the United States today. Why wasn't the fuse replaced at once? Grace Elizabeth Hale. It is not all Duke's fault by any means. Listen to "Harlan County Coal" from Pistol Annies' album, 'Hell of a Holiday,' out now: https://pa.lnk.to/HOAHAY Chorus:Making decorations out of shotgun she. The union abandoned its efforts after less than a year. The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. Here and there, we also see white-blossoming pear and dogwood trees. Now, forty-three years later, Harlan County is again gripped in a UMW strike, this time at the Brookside mine of the Eastover Mining Company, and another citizens' group has been formed. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. Our History - Kentucky Coal Association "I've seen some hurt and some killed. And, all around, there are the rolling mountains, covered with second-growth timber. (Eastover, to repeat, now pays portal-to-portal wages for inside workers in its other mines and has raised the wages of nonstrikers to the UMW level.) However, they did make a greater effort than the United Mine Workers with relief as they opened soup kitchens around the county. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. There was a scuffle when a state police captain tried to remove one of the women, she says, adding, "Captain Cromer did get hit several times; I hit him with a stick myself." 1931, only $13.5 million. They say no action has been taken on this report. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. But, I say, even without further investigation of each of the complaints, it is possible to conclude that fear is an everyday part of the miners' lives. America in the Harlan County Mine Wars, 1931-1939 Carletta A. Bush Early accounts of the Harlan County mine wars place the inability of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to establish a permanent foothold in the county, first at the feet of of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association (HCCOA) and secondly at KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. These charities began to give aid to blacklisted miners who were unable to find employment as the soup kitchens had closed once the NMU had closed its doors. Each contract varied from mine to mine. safety director for the Harlan County Coal Operators Association; Moss Paterson, chief of the State Bureau of Mines and Minerals, and State and Federal mine inspectors. The Benham Coal Company records (151 cubic feet, 302 Boxes; dated 1911-1973) focus primarily on the early years of Benham Coal through the 1940s. Available for both RF and RM licensing. Why haven't the car bodies been removed from the highway and the streets? That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. Strike benefits are $100 weekly for a family, $90 for a couple, and $80 for a single man. The AFSC fed almost 1500 children in Harlan by the end of the 1931-2 schoolyear, as well as about a hundred nursing and expectant mothers. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. Find the perfect harlan county coal stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. The local grand jury returned an indictment against Dreiser for adultery, but by that time Dreiser had finished his work and had left the county on the train. I'm standing at 2800 feet above sea level. The Price of Coal, Part I - kentuckymonthly.com At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. The miners say that they want their own safety committee, elected by the miners, as the standard UMW contract provides, with the right to walk out, losing their pay, when there is eminent danger in the mine. On September 4, 1935, Harlan County Attorney Elmon Clay Middleton, age 31, was assassinated by a car bomb containing eighteen sticks of dynamite. Before the first meeting of the Citizens Inquiry, we sit around and talk with the Inquiry chairman, Daniel Pollitt, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina. National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions Jul 5, 1938. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. They fed strikers' children as well as the employed, blacks as well as whites. 8 N.L.R.B. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. It doesn't seem like enough. Herndon J. Evans, the editor of the Pineville Sun, argued, The troubles of the coal industry had their inception in war times. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. "Yarborough says he just don't want nobody tellin' him how to run his mine," Deaton says. ", What about federal inspection? Where will the families go? How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. Bill Doan says that the roof bolts often didn't have enough torque on them, sometimes causing roof falls as high as thirty-five feet above the regular ceiling, and that once he complained about this to the visiting inspector in the presence of his foreman. the foreman would just say, "We gotta run coal. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. Harlan, Kentucky coal miner killed - World Socialist Web Site - wsws.org Tuesday morning: Norman Yarborough has agreed to meet some of our group. It was the most violent attack of the Harlan County Coal wars and the most violence would only last fifteen minutes in total but would forever change the name to Bloody Harlan. I remind her of what Bill Doan has said: "You work with one eye on the roof, one eye on your job, and your mind's outside.". We huddle before breaking up. "Roof falls are a constant hazard, but the bosses just keep on rushin'.". They lobby in Frankfort and Washington and sponsor an annual "Coal Miners Day" to try to get more high school students interested in mining engineering. Harlan County, KY, coal miners win affiliation with UMWA union, United Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. It was Miller who defeated W. A. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. We stop for fish and chips at a chain-operated Long John Silver's Sea Food Shoppe, as out of place in the Cumberlands as a clam in a spruce tree. Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". . Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." Harlan Fuel Co. Download PDF. "But if they call me and ask if a man works for me, I simply say yes or no.". Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". Harlan County: Working in the Coal Mines - kygs.org "Bloody Harlan" Revisited: Blackjewel Miners Draw On Labor History The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. "We took the sticks with us," she says. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. What did the foremen say on those occasions? [ citation needed ] On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' Burning Up People to Make Electricity - The Atlantic Dateline Newport News, Virginia, November 12, 1931: Dreiser denies the charge and says he wants people to concentrate on the facts of the labor dispute and "get the American mind off sex for a moment." I glance at the new Piedmont magazine, Pace. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. The three houses with baths rent for $24 a month, plus $14 a month for electricity. Exist Dates. Yarborough tells us that the company does not now object to paying the miners for portal-to-portal time for inside mine work, but that the union wants comparability for outside workers too, in effect requiring the company to pay outside workers overtime for all work in excess of a seven and-a-quarter-hour regular day. We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. When drafting these articles, I found that many things have not been taught to the future generations about the struggles for coal miner rights have been in the Appalachian Mountains. The members of the Inquiry panel leave the Community Center to visit the coal camp at Brookside-rows of delapidated frame houses, identical except for their weathering gray, green, red, and beige paint. These battles will end the Coal Wars proper. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . I have attended the University of Kentucky. These disputes were still brewing when on December 8, 1934, the United Mine Workers Union was threatened by deputies and mine bosses. The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. The miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. He says that wages are no longer a problem and that the amount of the royalty to be paid into the UMW Welfare & Retirement Fund is not crucially important. I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." Is that the only objection that is holding up a settlement? Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. My brother died at the age of forty. During the rest of the afternoon, the miners talk about what has happened on the picket line and in the local court. A month later, back in Washington, I meet with Bernie Aaronson at UMW headquarters. After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. On May 5, 1931 the pot boiled over; in Harlan County Kentucky, heavily armed deputies and company men, called "gun thugs" by miners, confronted disgruntled union men on a road near Evarts. Faith, power, and conflict: Miner preachers and the United Mine Workers Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. Benham Coal Company Records - University of Kentucky Which Side are You On? : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 However, after the dust was clear, the anti-labor coal country would end up being represented by unions. In the year of "the energy crisis," Coal is King again at $30 a ton. It was [and still is] used to signify that what happened in the realm of politics, a field largely controlled by men, affect women's everyday lives. They are neatly and attractively dressed. Our driver points out Norman Yarborough's two-story frame house, across the highway from the camp and up out of the river bottom. Interview with B. W. Whitfield, Jr., February 9, 1989 SPOKEdb Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. Why couldn't Eastover live with the same national UMW contract that so many other companies have accepted? The decrease in wages, unemployment, and irregular employment caused "poverty, hunger, and disease.". You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." Soon enough, most miners had gone on strike out of solidarity. The most memorable of those are 1964, 1966, 1969 (The West Virginia Black Lung strike that the miners won) 1971, and the 1974 Strikes. Destitute miners were in no position to take a 2 wage cut; yet, in February of 1931 the newest in a long series of wage cuts occurred, reducing miners' weekly pay by 10 percent. the meeting room. The officials were listed were the "veteran safety director of the Harlan Coal Operators Association, and Rufus Bailey and H. Hamlin, state . A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. This Day in Labor History: February 16, 1931 "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. An essay on The Harlan County War : r/history The magazine presents a different picture of the people and conditions in the Piedmont region than the one I am to see in Harlan County, Kentucky. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. Word precedes him. Coal Strike May End, But Miners Still Fear Future Si sticks a wad of Red Man chewing tobacco in his cheek and begins to fill us in on the background of the Brookside strike. There's water in the mine because the pumps often won't work. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . "Try walking out of there, carrying a man with a broken back," one of the miners says. Bobby's wife, Becky, who died in 2013, was a lifelong advocate for the people of Harlan County. Miners also wanted the right to organize and have a union. Neither will Dr. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and author of Children of Crisis. Did she find the stick on the ground? Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Blair. "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. In June of 1973, workers at the Brookside coal mine in Harlan County, Kentucky voted 113-55 to replace their membership in the Southern Labor Union (SLU) and join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) union. It is too early for dolor. Others claim that his death was caused by an election concerning slot machines into the county. The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. The motorcade stopped and the deputies got out of their cars to return fire. 1940-49 Harlan Co Miners Deaths - USGenWeb sites "Why couldn't the original thirteen colonies live with the same British policy that applied to all other British colonies?" "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. I currently live in Tennessee but my hope is to one day come back home to live in the beautiful mountains once more. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. The Harlan County Coal Operators Association, still functioning today, spent nearly a half million dollars from 1927 to 1938 to combat unionism, most of it going to pay strongarm men to terrorize the miners and their families. "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. During the Great Depression of the 1930s coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, struck against the coal operators for better pay and better working conditio. Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. In response to the violence, the Kentucky National Guard was called upon and arrived for the first time in the county to try to stem the violence.

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