Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. When fuses blow, they are not immediately replaced; the cable is spliced or "hot-wired" around the fuse. Paternalism is the practice of people who have a business or other authority to restrict the freedoms of those who are subordinate to them. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. The UMW had made written proposals for compromising these issues a little. The median family income is $4600 a year. The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. They range in age from about twenty-one to seventy. Even pop culture cannot ignore its impact with such shows as Justified. We come into Harlan County at dusk. An organic shape, small and shiny and pinkish white, sits . Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." He was transferred to a worse section, he says. Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. Strikebreakers were often beaten. Daniels was one of the most hated deputies in the county due to his anti-union views. Available for both RF and RM licensing. Duke Power Company of North Carolina, he says, is the sixth largest utility company in the world. If those under them behave in an approved manner then they receive housing, work, food, and other perks of their position. It is not all Duke's fault by any means. Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. (The union has told us that they are quite willing to limit the contract to the Brookside mine.) Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. But is it really hurting? No. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association decided to cut all wages by ten . Lifelong resident of Harlan. HARLAN COUNTY COAL OPERATORS ASSOCIATION. CBS is represented by a camera crew, and there are a number of national reporters. : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! We huddle before breaking up. The women say they then organized a "sunrise worship service" to begin at 4:30 on the morning of October 23, on the railroad tracks across the highway from the picket line. 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. We hope that you have enjoyed our stop in Bloody Harlan and the history of the longest and still ongoing coal struggles of the United States. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. Kentucky communities discussed include Artemus, Burdine, Jenkins, Jellico, Van Lear, and Wheelwright; and Kentucky counties include Bell, Clay, Floyd, Harlan . You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. Expand. After this, the first strike occurred, in which only about 13% of strikers showed up to work. Each contract varied from mine to mine. 9:03 PM. Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. 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. Si Kahn says that Eastover tried for a time to operate the mine with "scabs," but that the mine was shut down when the coal miners' wives and other women joined the men on the picket line. The unrest continues in Harlan and surrounding counties as there have been many strikes. 4 . In 1981, he traded coal mining for gold mining as one of the founders of the current . The prospects for settlement do not look good unless Duke begins to feel public pressure. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. The county became nationally famous in 1931 and 1932 when it was the site of one of the earliest and bloodiest labor battles of the decade. We look back on the film, which screens this Sunday, February . "Here at Brookside, if you called someone from SLU, he might come in a week, he might come in two weeks, but when he did come, he'd go into Eastover's office and talk for an hour," Bill Doan says. Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. It is an area of Kentucky that you only go to if you are intentionally going to the county. That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. No concessions or deals were made between the two factions and the membership of the United Mine Workers union plummeted. 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. He is dressed more like a miner than a mining executive. On Friday, October 3, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt called a precedent-shattering meeting at the temporary White House at 22 Lafayette Place, Washington, D.C. A . 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. They had no safety committee, the miners say, and the federal reports bear them out. "I've been juiced a lot, and I've had to just set down thirty-five minutes because it just takes the pep out of you." With the passage of these acts, there was unrest in Harlan County. 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. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. The radical ideology of the union began gaining some ground in the mountains. Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. I have two children and four grandchildren from a previous marriage. All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. Among coal miners, Harlan County, Kentucky, is known as "Bloody Harlan." Leroy Helton says he still owes a lot of bills that should have been paid by SLU. A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. The bosses wouldn't go in, but I've. "A gun thug pulled a gun on us, and I broke a switch over his head, and the little gun thug pulled out," Lois Scott says matter-of-factly. You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. The miners speak of other dissatisfactions with Eastover and the old Southern Labor Union contract. Afterwards, they gathered near the picket line at the Eastover property in Brookside. Why wasn't the fuse replaced at once? Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. "I've got so many duns from the hospital that I just quit lookin' at them. As in Germany, the AFSC used need alone to determine who got fed. Darrell Deaton, president of the Brookside UMW local, says he was caught in a belt line last year because he had to work alone, without a helper. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. Back in my motel room, a gathering place, Bernie Aaronson of UMW says that the union is paying strike benefits and medical bills for the 160 strikers. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! When this strike was broken in1924, none of the non-union mines in Harlan County, all of which were members ofthe Harlan County Coal Operators Association, would employ a man from BlackMountain."Many of the men who worked at Black Mountain transferred to LocalUnion No. 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 February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association reduced wages for miners in that part of eastern Kentucky by 10 percent. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. A historical marker says we are near the Little Shepherd Trail, the setting for the novel Shepherd of the Hills. Those with running water rent for around $20 a month, plus electricity. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators . One of the towns that were a refuge was Evarts, Kentucky. 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." McDonald's. But will Norman Yarborough ever agree to recognize the UMW? . Duke went into the coal business directly in 1970 when it organized Eastover Mining Company as a wholly owned subsidiary and, through it, bought several mines in eastern Kentucky, including the one at Brookside. 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. It is unclear who fired that shot but both sides claim that the other side did it. "My daddy's a retired coal miner, and he's got the black lung. We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. The sign man for R C Cola has worked this territory well. Cite. 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. But you must remember I am an immoral man. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". "Why couldn't the original thirteen colonies live with the same British policy that applied to all other British colonies?" Wirtz says that his arbitration experience tells him that if Eastover really wants to negotiate in good faith, the remaining issues, tough as they are, can probably be worked out. One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. "I've had the foreman to tell me to set timbers or something until the inspector got gone. The county was once part of Knox County, only becoming official in 1819. Since the county began mining, over one billion tons of coal have "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. When Barbara finishes her answer, Wirtz raises a clenched fist and says, "Right on!" 8 N.L.R.B. ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. (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.) Jacqueline Brophy asks why public services have broken down. Others say they intend to speak and write about what they have heard. Documents the 1973 Kentucky coal miners' strike against the operators of the Brookside mine and the Duke Power Company, which resulted from the company's refusal to honor the . After nearly 40 years of working in coalmines, David . On September 4, 1935, Harlan County Attorney Elmon Clay Middleton, age 31, was assassinated by a car bomb containing eighteen sticks of dynamite. I have also attended the University of Pikeville. And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. "We could lay down, fight the police, or let them scabs go to work. The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. "We took the sticks with us," she says. Arnold Miller, who was an active coal miner until three years ago and is now the reform-minded president of the United Mine Workers, has asked me to serve as a member of a "Citizens Public Inquiry into the Brookside Strike.". I look at the government statistics once more. Now, Tony Boyle is among those who have been convicted of complicity in the murders, and Arnold Miller is the head of the revamped union. These women have organized a special kind of feminist movement, and the issues to them are life-and-death issues. Mrs. Herschel Gaw, wife of the ailing jailer, locked them all up. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. KCA's constitution and by-laws were adopted on April 28, 1947, "to promote the best interest of the coal mining industry in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and all those engaged therein". The name comes from a series of United Mine Workers strikes and labor-management battles which ended in a gunfight between deputized mine guards and miners on May 4, 1931, in the tiny community of Evarts. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . It has assets worth $2.5 billion. Over one thousand shots were exchanged during those fifteen minutes. 1 mine in Evarts, in Harlan County, Kentucky. Abstract. Most of the land is owned by the mining companies. Three Harlan County incorporated towns were not owned by the coal mines, they became a sanctuary for the evicted and starving miners. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. Source Citation [ }] Descriptive Note Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest. He speaks of "my people" and "my men." The mining company had ordered a motorcade to deliver food and supplies to the strikebreakers known as Scabs. the foreman would just say, "We gotta run coal. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. 3.' Freda Armes says, "I run him off. I have been married to David W. Sergent since May 4, 2013. Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. In the bloody 1930s coal wars, miners known to be union members were fired and evicted from company-owned homes. B.W. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. Toilets are built out over the river, and the water has obviously been much higher in the recent past. ", Bill Doan says that he was hurt in a rockfall at 7:15 one morning and that he didn't get out of the mine until nine o'clock. He does say, I think primarily for the record, that he would like to see negotiations begin again. That year, annual wages dropped from $1,235 to $749. 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. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions Jul 5, 1938. Up at seven on a Monday morning, I walk out onto the balcony of my motel room. If you protested this safety violation, he says, "the boss would just say, 'Run it.'" Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared . Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. ", What about federal inspection? Nonunion workers were attempting to leave the mine. The women furnish the panel with a copy of a report from the Harlan County Health Department, dated October 12, 1973, which states that the drinking water in the Eastover mining camp, where approximately thirty of the striking Brookside families live, is "highly contaminated" with fecal bacteria. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. When a miner complains, Jerry Johnson says, the foreman says, "If you don't like it, you can always get your bucket," meaning pick up your lunch bucket and get out. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . Crossing the Clinch River, we turn onto Highway 421 and leave the modern world. Biographical History . The Brookside labor dispute erupted spontaneously soon after Miller's election. One of the better houses is already being demolished. The most memorable of those are 1964, 1966, 1969 (The West Virginia Black Lung strike that the miners won) 1971, and the 1974 Strikes. In one of these, the septic tank has been out of order for several months. 2012: $1,552,717. The men and women were released on good behavior. I have taken several classes in Journalism as well as in the Appalachian History, Literature, and Sociology during my time at those schools. In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. The Harlan County Wars took on its own epic spin on the ongoing fight between labor disputes and the coal operators and owners lasting almost ten years. 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. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Word precedes him. But what of the people of Harlan County? How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. Past that, the other undulating ridges are blue and hazy. One night, they saw a secretary for the Dreiser group enter Dreiser's hotel room, and they placed toothpicks against the door to determine whether she ever came back out during the night. Coal companies refused to back down while the Red Cross refused to give aid . The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and 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. Four men were arrested in connection with this murder. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Dateline New York City, November 13, 1931: Dreiser again denies the charge and adds, "Even if it were true, I wouldn't give a damn. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. Copy as parenthetical citation.
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