By comparison to Harlan, the Pittston strike in 1989-1990 shut down almost 70% of that company's production (and completely halted production during the Moss 3 refining plant occupation) and won back the health care benefits of around 1500 miners and their families, as well as the Coal Act of 1992 that requires all coal operators in the U . He can't never walk again." These interviews with major coal operators document their personal histories and the history of the coal industry in eastern Kentucky during the twentieth century. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. Strikebreakers were often beaten. Our delegation arrives on time at the Eastover office in Brookside. He does say, I think primarily for the record, that he would like to see negotiations begin again. Only to be escorted to the county line and told not to return. It is too early for dolor. 5355 after Local Union 4495 at Black Mountain folded up. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. 3.' It seems to me that for a great many people in Harlan County-for poor people and a lot of coal miners the whole county is a jail. It was Miller who defeated W. A. Harlan County in eastern Kentucky, which has been brought out into the spotlight this summer by the violence with which the local Coal Operators' Association has carried on this attack, is, as far as I can find out, a pretty good medium exhibit of the entire industry: living conditions are better than in Alabama and perhaps a little worse . 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. Based on this new Act, from October 27, 1933, to March 31, 1935, the mines ran as open shops. Freda Armes says, "I run him off. The National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) was of the American Communist Party. 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. Some seventy-five state policemen were on hand as the crowd gathered. After the Battle of Evarts, the Red Cross and the United Mine Workers Union refused to help the striking men on the basis that it was now an industrial conflict that needed to be resolved internally. But what of the people of Harlan County? Mrs. Herschel Gaw, wife of the ailing jailer, locked them all up. Interment at Resthaven Cemetery, Keith, Ky. Visitation 6-9 p.m. at the Grays Knob Bible Church. There had been several clashes with the "scabs," the mine guards, and the state police, Kahn says. Their foothold there ultimately ended because the local clergy who were the labor organizers found out that the union was communist in nature and held animosity toward religion. Jacqueline Brophy is the daughter of Pat Brophy, who went into the mines when he was twelve, and who, in 1926, ran against John L. Lewis and lost. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. McDonald's. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. Rev. Source for information on Harlan County: Encyclopedia of the Great Depression dictionary. The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. It doesn't seem like enough. Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. Office files covering topics such as "accounts receivable," "baseball club," "coal production," "garnishment orders," "Harlan Coal Operator's Association," "labor conditions," "medical conditions . Each contract varied from mine to mine. All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. A third generation coal operator, he served as President of the Harlan County Coal Operators and the Harlan Mining Institute, as Vice President of the Kentucky Coal Association and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Associated Industries of Kentucky. And, all around, there are the rolling mountains, covered with second-growth timber. Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. Some of the women say they haven't had a drink of water since moving to the Brookside camp. No, Yarborough says; it just serves as a central clearing house, so that job applicants won't have to go around and apply at each of the mines separately. "We've took about all we can take," he says. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. 8 N.L.R.B. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. "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." By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. He said that when the coal industry was at its height in 1928, the peak of . Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. "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. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. When the smoke had cleared, the bodies of three guards and one miner were found, and an undetermined number of other dead and dying had been carried away into the mountains. There are very few vacant houses in the county. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. In Harlan County on July 7, 1935, during a celebration of the Wagner Act, a group of disgruntled deputies severely beat up several miners and dispersed the crowd. June 17th of that same year, the first strike was over as the last miner had returned to work. Bill McQueen says that the shuttle car into the mine usually has no brakes, and that it can only be stopped by putting it in reverse. The airline magazine contains an article on southern skiing, a feature on hot, winter drinks for the "Piedmont palate," an article on how tough it is to be thirty-three and middle-class today, and a success story about an Atlanta bra, sleepwear, girdle, and pantie company. Bobby's wife, Becky, who died in 2013, was a lifelong advocate for the people of Harlan County. As discussed in a previous video. 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. Mine operators viciously opposed miners' efforts to unionize, particularly in Harlan County. In 1973 the 13-month Brookside Strike brought almost 200 workers to battle Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant, a company owned by Duke Power. The distance a miner had to walk and how time was looked at was in 15-minute increments. The unrest continues in Harlan and surrounding counties as there have been many strikes. 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 . On September 9, 1935, for the first time since the beginning of the war, troops were dispatched to Harlan County on behalf of the miners by the Governor of the State of Kentucky. Unlike the previous Coal Wars that took place in West Virginia with the Paint-Creek Strike of 1912 and Matewan that lasted for a year or two. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to . Yarborough is tough and unyielding. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. [Verse 2] I got 27 peopl coming over to this house. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. Before this war was over it is not known exactly how many miners, coal operators, deputies, and bosses would be killed. Barbara says that she was reacting spontaneously to the spirit and determination exhibited by the women, that their testimony was the highlight of our hearings. No. We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. . Duke Power Company appears to be the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiations. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. Other clippings detail the earlier bloodshed and misery in Harlan County. "In Harlan County, U.S.A., sound anchors, explains, and makes 'authentic' visual imagery compromised by the long history of documentary work in Appalachia.". There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. There is a suit still in litigation. It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? 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. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . For a time after the hearing, he says, it appeared that Duke had softened. Eastover agreed to sign the 1971 wage pact of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association which is in force at 1,200 mines. How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? Three Harlan County incorporated towns were not owned by the coal mines, they became a sanctuary for the evicted and starving miners. In the throes of the Great Depression, Harlan County coal owners and operators, in an effort to expand national dependency on their fuel, chose to sell below cost. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. The strikebreakers were under the protection of private mine guards. Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. They are demanding the standard UMW provision requiring the company to pay a royalty of seventy-five cents a ton on mined coal into the UMW Welfare & Retirement Fund. We agree that most of us lean toward the miners, but we think we can be fair in trying to learn the facts. But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. Get a Demo. : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! 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. Finally, in 1939, the coal companies agreed to allow unions in their coal mine operations. Duke Power Company of North Carolina, he says, is the sixth largest utility company in the world. The unemployment rate in the county is 7 percent; that doesn't count those who have long since given up looking for the scarce or nonexistent jobs. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. The aftermath of this battle led to wider strikes in the Harlan County area. From July 30, 2019, through September 28, 2019, coal miners and their families have blocked roads and railways demanding their payment. He tells me that the miners plan to picket on Wall Street, hoping to give Duke problems with its stock. "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. 1938) Copy Citation . It seems that unfriendly local law enforcement officials kept a constant surveillance on Dreiser, hoping to catch him in something that would justify a criminal charge against him. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Lois Scott, a woman of about forty-five, begins to speak first. In the bloody 1930s coal wars, miners known to be union members were fired and evicted from company-owned homes. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association, were run as open shops from October 27, 1933 - March 31, 1935. They range in age from about twenty-one to seventy. And lastly, the Harlan Fox Mining Co - presumably derived from the Harlan Fox Coal Co - was in operation from 1925-1932. Don Dalton, UMW Safety Director for Region Six, explains this. The women spent the night. Here and there, we also see white-blossoming pear and dogwood trees. 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. After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. It will be a two-hour, winding drive through the Cumberland Mountains to the town of Harlan. They're trapped. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. 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. "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. When filmmaker Barbara Kopple traveled to Harlan County, Kentucky, the resulting Academy award-winning documentary, Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) captured a historic story. There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. A historical marker says we are near the Little Shepherd Trail, the setting for the novel Shepherd of the Hills. 1931, only $13.5 million. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. October 31, 2016. "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. (There is such a provision in the standard UMW contract.). The UMW had made written proposals for compromising these issues a little. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Faith Primitive Baptist Church. The main problem, he says, is that the company wants a "no-strike" clause, so that the union cannot strike during the contract period. Harlan County. They fed strikers' children as well as the employed, blacks as well as whites. But you must remember I am an immoral man. 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. Capitalizing on the general . One of the better houses is already being demolished. With the passage of these acts, there was unrest in Harlan County. In the throes of the Great Depression, Harlan County coal owners and operators, in an effort to expand national dependency on their fuel, chose to sell below cost. In 1981, he traded coal mining for gold mining as one of the founders of the current . 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. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. (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.) Find the perfect harlan county coal stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. Two hundred people crowd. As the motorcade approached a single shot rang out in the air. He speaks of "my people" and "my men." 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. 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. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. I currently live in Tennessee but my hope is to one day come back home to live in the beautiful mountains once more. Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. 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. 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.". Willard Wirtz says that it is important to remember that one side of the dispute felt confident enough about their case to arrange to spread it before the widest possible audience. Ky., told the Senate Civil Liberties Committee as it resumed its investigation of alleged terrorism in connection with Harlan County Coal Operators' efforts to resist union organization drives. In "Bloody Harlan" in the 1930s, miners and union organizers faced bayonets and many died fighting the coal bosses, helping to fuel a national wave of organizing. Cite. She's been picketing with the other women. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. Herndon J. Evans, the editor of the Pineville Sun, argued, The troubles of the coal industry had their inception in war times. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Which Side are You on? Why is garbage left on the roadway? No help came to those that were in starving situations due to no money to spend on food and no admittance to the company store unless they were gainfully employed by the coal mine. Attempts to organize led to the dismissal of employees who were suspected of having leanings toward the organization and having them evicted from their family homes. Biographical History . I have taken several classes in Journalism as well as in the Appalachian History, Literature, and Sociology during my time at those schools. Its profits in 1973 were $90 million, up 14 percent from the year before. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. The Brookside mine is capable of producing only about a half-million tons of the 15 million tons of coal Duke uses each year. 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. Those with running water rent for around $20 a month, plus electricity. 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. Burger Chef. 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. Harlan County to unionize miners. Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. by Ron Soodalter. It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. It is home to lawyers, doctors and coal operators; it has a hospital, several banks and a few fast-food . Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. 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. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. The warrant was never served. I glance at the new Piedmont magazine, Pace. This series of skirmishes and strikes, lasting from early 1931 into 1939, began because of the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association's (HCCOA) decision to cut miners' wages by 10%. Copy with citation. 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.". With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. The transcript will be published as a book. He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." "If we could monitor these inspections, perhaps we could cut down on the fatalities," he says. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. During the big coal boom in the early 1900s, Harlan County was amongst the largest contributors. Word precedes him. Garbage along the roadside. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. Looking for protection by the Kentucky National Guard, many were surprised to find that they broke the picket lines instead. There is no water in the house. 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. Why wasn't the fuse replaced at once? Kahn says that the miners were encouraged by Eastover's management, headed by Norman Yarborough, to join a small "company union," the Southern Labor Union. B.W. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. Betty Eldridge is a mildmannered, well-dressed woman of about forty. "Try walking out of there, carrying a man with a broken back," one of the miners says. The mining company had ordered a motorcade to deliver food and supplies to the strikebreakers known as Scabs. I say that the issue is whether or not the men will be allowed to have their own union to protect their safety and secure and maintain decent wages and benefits, that if enough pressure is put on Duke Power Company, maybe something will give. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. . One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. 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 2012: $1,552,717. National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions Jul 5, 1938. The coal miners, lean and tough from Kentucky mountain life, knew how to fight back. The motorcade stopped and the deputies got out of their cars to return fire. They have done this only since the Brookside strike. Its initial land holdings were in the Irwin gas coal basin in Westmoreland County, but as these were exhausted the company purchased 14,000 acres of undeveloped coal land along the border of Boone and Logan Counties in West Virginia in 1923-28. . The men and women were released on good behavior. 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. 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. or smaller. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." 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. He says that negotiations were broken off on November 28, 1973, because of the miners' insistence on the full terms of the standard UMW contract. "This troubles me; I don't sleep," Yarborough says. ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. 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 . Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. Mr. And you wondr why I keep running my mouth . Lois Scott explains that during the first confrontation at the mine, she saw a pistol in the front seat of every "scab" car she looked into and that a company "gun thug" pointed a submachine gun at the women from the porch of the Eastover office. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. I have attended the University of Kentucky. The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. Special Judge F. Byrd Hogg, a neighboring county judge who has been assigned to the case, entered an early order limiting the strikers to three pickets at each of two entrances to the Eastover Mining Company property.
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