They had no safety committee, the miners say, and the federal reports bear them out. We never would find out what happened. I've talked to Norman Yarborough, and you ain't bringing no union down here. Finally, in 1939, the coal companies agreed to allow unions in their coal mine operations. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". 25 (N.L.R.B. Here and there, we also see white-blossoming pear and dogwood trees. 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. 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. The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. Three Harlan County incorporated towns were not owned by the coal mines, they became a sanctuary for the evicted and starving miners. Interment at Resthaven Cemetery, Keith, Ky. Visitation 6-9 p.m. at the Grays Knob Bible Church. Darrell Deaton says there is a direct telephone line to Washington for safety complaints, "but if you identify yourself; you're gonna be out of a job.". 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. Neither will Dr. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and author of Children of Crisis. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators . The final straw was when the Harlan County Coal Operators Association cut miners' wages by 10%. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. 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. 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. . She says that the women decided that they couldn't fight guns with switches and that they had taken sticks with them the next time. Mine operators viciously opposed miners' efforts to unionize, particularly in Harlan County. "We've took about all we can take," he says. 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 . The miners say that, somehow, management always knows when the government inspectors are coming. While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . They are neatly and attractively dressed. Bobby's wife, Becky, who died in 2013, was a lifelong advocate for the people of Harlan County. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. 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. The miners, impoverished due to their already low pay (this coming in the form of company scrip, room, and board), decided enough was enough, and some of them . Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and Evarts. We're all involved. Featuring a haunting soundtrack-with legendary country . The miners say that all of the strikers have been blacklisted by the Association. In June of 1973, in a National Labor Relations Board election, the miners at Brookside voted 113 to 55 to affiliate with the United Mine Workers. Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. We drive through the streets of the town of Harlan, past the stores and houses, past the Harlan Baptist Church with a sign out front which reads: "If you are unkind, you are the wrong kind." "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. 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.". Our driver points out Norman Yarborough's two-story frame house, across the highway from the camp and up out of the river bottom. Nonunion workers were attempting to leave the mine. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . 2012: $1,552,717. The mining company had ordered a motorcade to deliver food and supplies to the strikebreakers known as Scabs. Now, along a cloudy green stream, or through deep cuts in the mountains, or high atop a timbered ridge, looking down on green quilt-patch valleys, we wind our way toward Harlan. Source for information on Harlan County: Encyclopedia of the Great Depression dictionary. ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. They have probably helped keep their own men from exploding too. Is that the only objection that is holding up a settlement? 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. There is no water in the house. Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. The letter states that Eastover has now raised the wages in their other mines to the UMW scale and is paying the miners for time spent with the mine moving to and from the face of the coal. Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. A thousand feet below me lies a small, green valley, partly shrouded by the morning mist. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". Pierce mentions the "toothpick incident." Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. 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. There were ten lodges that were chartered for the National Miners Union. At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. On February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association reduced wages for miners in that part of eastern Kentucky by 10 percent. Among coal miners, Harlan County, Kentucky, is known as "Bloody Harlan." The decade-long conflict between miners and the coal operators who adamantly resisted unionization has been immortalized in folksong by Florence Reece and Aunt Molly Jackson, contemplated in prose by Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson, and long been obscured by . With the added protection for workers and the addition of collective bargaining between the workers and their employers. . 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. Done. When Barbara finishes her answer, Wirtz raises a clenched fist and says, "Right on!" And, even so, it usually takes forty-five minutes to an hour for the inspector to get from mine entrance to the face of the coal. Blair. The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. The aftermath of this battle led to wider strikes in the Harlan County area. There had been several clashes with the "scabs," the mine guards, and the state police, Kahn says. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. There were constant beatings of the miners by the Sheriffs deputies. And you wondr why I keep running my mouth . However, the battle continues to this day. Exist Dates. James Willard Pope officiating. 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. USBM Final Investigation Report (1.7 Mb) Successful Rescue . 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. Isolated trailer houses. This was thirteen percent of the workers showing up for their scheduled work times. The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. When they went to jail, they say, some of the women took their children with them. 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. Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. Based on this new Act, from October 27, 1933, to March 31, 1935, the mines ran as open shops. But will Norman Yarborough ever agree to recognize the UMW? Those with running water rent for around $20 a month, plus electricity. 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. Some seventy-five state policemen were on hand as the crowd gathered. In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. She says that she and some of the other women hid out last night to avoid being served with a contempt citation from Judge Hogg's court. That commitment has never waivered, and has grown . Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. It is also women's day before the Citizens In-quiry. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. Five miles north of Harlan, we drive up Inspiration Mountain. A historical marker says we are near the Little Shepherd Trail, the setting for the novel Shepherd of the Hills. (This . When McQueen was hurt, his foreman drove him to the hospital and left him there, and he was two hours hitchhiking home. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The radical ideology of the union began gaining some ground in the mountains. No one knows who fired the first shot but when it was over four were . One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. 1931, only $13.5 million. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. Other clippings detail the earlier bloodshed and misery in Harlan County. If any attractive woman became interested in me, I'd think it was a very lovely thing. Breaks in the cable, they say, are often just wrapped with mask-ing tape and exposed again to the water. The accident was investigated by Rufus Bailey, Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. "Dreiser, Woman Indicted," one headline reads. ", Bill McQueen says that when the shuttle's lights and brakes were not working and the inspector was coming, the foreman would say, "Park it." McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. CBS is represented by a camera crew, and there are a number of national reporters. It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." Nobody knows how long the UMW can keep paying strike benefits. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. "Try walking out of there, carrying a man with a broken back," one of the miners says. Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. It is unclear who fired that shot but both sides claim that the other side did it. 1 mine in Evarts, in Harlan County, Kentucky. 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. I glance at the new Piedmont magazine, Pace. 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. . It read: RE-ELECT GAW, JAILER. Don Dalton, UMW Safety Director for Region Six, explains this. 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. ~~ David Sergent. It was Miller who defeated W. A. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. 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. Others claim that his death was caused by an election concerning slot machines into the county. "We took the sticks with us," she says. Leroy Helton says he still owes a lot of bills that should have been paid by SLU. We come into Harlan County at dusk. The median family income is $4600 a year. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. 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. Harlan County to unionize miners. They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. Filmed during the coal strike of 1974-1975, this documentary does much to capture the tension brought on by the injustice of the coal operators to the coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. If for example, they did not behave in the way the companies wanted them to, they could lose all their benefits up to and including their jobs. Bill Doan says, "When I got hurt, I couldn't find Jim Miller, the man who had charge of the sick fund." If you protested this safety violation, he says, "the boss would just say, 'Run it.'" They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. 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 group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. She's been picketing with the other women. 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. 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. "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." The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. The miners charge that Eastover has hired what they call "gun thugs." She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. 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. Garbage along the roadside. Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. Killed - 12. Make your practice more effective and efficient with Casetext's legal research suite. Most of the land is owned by the mining companies. You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." A reporter asks us again how we can expect to make an unbiased report when we've heard only one side. 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. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' There were only nine hundred miners working and 5,800 miners were idle and striking during the first strike. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The main problem, he says, is that the company wants a "no-strike" clause, so that the union cannot strike during the contract period. This caused the clergy to denounce the union. Dalton points out that there were 132 mine fatalities in the United States in 1973, only seventeen of them in UMW mines. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". In the face of what promised to be a lengthy struggle for the Harlan County coal miners of 1931, their wildcat strike had left thousands jobless and many homeless as well. He can't never walk again." These guards were legally able to protect these men during their off duty time. 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. The Citizens Inquiry meets in the attractive, river-rock Evarts Community Center, directly across the Clear Fork from the site of the 1931 "Battle of Evarts." Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. by Ron Soodalter. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. There was no standard contract for the miners. ", 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. The accident was the second worst mine fatality in the history of Harlan County coal mining, the worst being Harlan Fuel Company . Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association, were run as open shops from October 27, 1933 - March 31, 1935. Pricing; Switch; Big firm; "I've got so many duns from the hospital that I just quit lookin' at them. Yellow-dog contracts (Contracts where the employees agreed to never organize into a union before they were employed with a coal company), company unions, blacklists, all tactics that were employed by the companies to bust up unions, and discrimination-based on union activity were all outlawed under this act. Depression-era Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of one of the most bitter and protracted labor disputes in American history. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. The company will probably demand a new election. Harlan County. After nearly 40 years of working in coalmines, David . The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. Burger Chef. Midway in the trial, Judge Hogg dismissed the jury and directed a verdict of guilty. Cite. Before this war was over it is not known exactly how many miners, coal operators, deputies, and bosses would be killed. 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. They file with us copies of specific federal safety violation reports, and they say that nothing was ever done to correct these violations. Paternalism is the practice of people who have a business or other authority to restrict the freedoms of those who are subordinate to them. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! So we lay down in the road." But, Aaronson says, Norman Yarborough had then called back to say, simply, that there was nothing of further interest to them in the negotiations More public pressure on Duke is needed, he says. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Our delegation arrives on time at the Eastover office in Brookside. The Sheriff reportedly got rich on payoffs from the companies, and he used 181 mine company gunmen as special deputies. 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. Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. McDonald's. 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. Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. We are told that Eastover has announced its intention to tear down the mining-camp houses and move the striking miners out. 5355, atEvarts . 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. B.W. "The way I figured it, they done that because it was just a faster, way of getting coal." Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. (Eastover offered fifty cents a ton.) Lois Scott, a woman of about forty-five, begins to speak first. Mine operators formed the 1 Harlan County Coal Operators Association and through this organization made collective decisions concerning the mines. The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. 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 . The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act or NLRA) guaranteed the rights of workers to choose to organize. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? I have an Associates Degree from Hazard Community College and Technical School. Their General Secretary recently released some facts which help to illustrate the reason for much of the unemployment in the county. 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. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. It doesn't seem like enough. There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. or smaller. All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. Harlan, city, seat of Harlan county, southeastern Kentucky, U.S., in the Cumberland Mountains, on the Clover Fork Cumberland River. 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. One of the towns that were a refuge was Evarts, Kentucky. There is a suit still in litigation. He tells me that the miners plan to picket on Wall Street, hoping to give Duke problems with its stock. This active organization is made up of those who represent the leader in the mining industry. 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. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. Each contract varied from mine to mine. 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. 9:03 PM. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. Coal employment in Harlan county dropped 53.7% in the second quarter of this year compared with last year, driven by Blackjewel's bankruptcy. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. [Verse 2] I got 27 peopl coming over to this house. 3.' Pierce has brought the actual Courier-Journal clippings about the Dreiser inquiry and shares them with us. It is clear that these women have been a main factor in keeping the mine shut down. I've read that in its heyday, the Blackjoe coal camp consisted of 60 or so houses. After this, the first strike occurred, in which only about 13% of strikers showed up to work. KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. And lastly, the Harlan Fox Mining Co - presumably derived from the Harlan Fox Coal Co - was in operation from 1925-1932. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. The miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. The women spent the night. 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. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators Association decided to cut all wages by ten percent. [6] Nearly four thousand miners working and living in Harlan County, Kentucky lost their jobs in the Great Depression. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." 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.
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