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. There was no functioning safety committee Medical and retirement benefits were minimal and unreliable. Blair. No. . The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". 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. It was settled in 1819 by Virginians led by Samuel Howard and was known as Mount Pleasant until renamed in 1912 for Major Silas Harlan, who was killed during the American Revolution at the Battle of Blue Licks (August 19, 1782). In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. [6] Nearly four thousand miners working and living in Harlan County, Kentucky lost their jobs in the Great Depression. Get a Demo. 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.". We look back on the film, which screens this Sunday, February . "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. 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 Seco Train Accident September 20, 1917, New Bank in the Coal Country Installed in 1911, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/new-deal/national-industrial-recovery-act-of-1933/, https://pipiwiki.com/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War, https://labornotes.org/blogs/2019/08/brief-history-harlan-county-usa, https://www.thebalancecareers.com/the-wagner-act-of-1935-national-labor-relations-act-2060509#:~:text=%20The%20Wagner%20Act%20defines%20and%20prohibits%20five,or%20administration%20of%20a%20labor%20organization.%20More%20, https://www.nytimes.com/1935/09/05/archives/bomb-in-auto-kills-kentucky-official-harlan-county-attorney.html#:~:text=HARLAN%2C%20Ky.%2C%20Sept.%204%20%28AP%29.%20%20The%20death,his%20automobile.%20View%20Full%20Article%20in%20Timesmachine%20%C2%BB, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70804679/elmon-clay-middleton, https://www.nytimes.com/1935/09/06/archives/kentucky-holds-four-in-auto-bomb-killing-harlan-prosecutors-death.html, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/?fbclid=IwAR21nYphw4Dul-_EwuAmSWgzsvPLNwsMM0FtV75j0y-mGUHq-lCZjJxZot8, The Flatwoods Monster: Weird Appalachia Cases, Rotherwood Mansion: Weird Appalachia Cases, The Brown Mountain Ghostly Lights: Weird Appalachia Cases. 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 could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. (There is such a provision in the standard UMW contract.). ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. Their General Secretary recently released some facts which help to illustrate the reason for much of the unemployment in the county. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . Mine operators viciously opposed miners' efforts to unionize, particularly in Harlan County. Past that, the other undulating ridges are blue and hazy. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. Si has signed on as head of the staff for the Citizens Inquiry, which is funded with a five-thousanddollar grant from the Field Foundation. Battle of Evartshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/new-deal/national-industrial-recovery-act-of-1933/, Battle of Evartshttps://pipiwiki.com/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, Battle of Evartshttps://wiki2.org/en/Battle_of_Evarts, Harlan County Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War, A Brief History of Harlan County, USAhttps://labornotes.org/blogs/2019/08/brief-history-harlan-county-usa, Harlan County Warhttps://everipedia.org/Harlan_County_War, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/background-coal-strike, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/local-elite, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/new-york-writers, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/national-miners-union-and-other-radical-groups, The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act)https://www.thebalancecareers.com/the-wagner-act-of-1935-national-labor-relations-act-2060509#:~:text=%20The%20Wagner%20Act%20defines%20and%20prohibits%20five,or%20administration%20of%20a%20labor%20organization.%20More%20, BOMB IN AUTO KILLS KENTUCKY OFFICIAL; Harlan County Attorney Predicted Assassination for Backing Troops in Election.https://www.nytimes.com/1935/09/05/archives/bomb-in-auto-kills-kentucky-official-harlan-county-attorney.html#:~:text=HARLAN%2C%20Ky.%2C%20Sept.%204%20%28AP%29.%20%20The%20death,his%20automobile.%20View%20Full%20Article%20in%20Timesmachine%20%C2%BB, Elmon Clay Middleton https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70804679/elmon-clay-middleton, KENTUCKY HOLDS FOUR IN AUTO BOMB KILLING; Harlan Prosecutors Death Is Laid to His Fight Against Slot Machines.https://www.nytimes.com/1935/09/06/archives/kentucky-holds-four-in-auto-bomb-killing-harlan-prosecutors-death.html, Blackjewel Bankruptcy Leaves Damaged Lands and Miners Compensation in Limbo, https://ohiovalleyresource.org/2021/03/22/blackjewel-bankruptcy-finalized/, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/?fbclid=IwAR21nYphw4Dul-_EwuAmSWgzsvPLNwsMM0FtV75j0y-mGUHq-lCZjJxZot8, For more about us, you can visit our Facebook at:https://www.facebook.com/kytnliving, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs0oV5gFzIS2JdMJ3HvTOgA, When we forget our past and who we are as a people, then we become who they say we are. There is one ostentatious feature about him, though: a large, multi-diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to . "They sent me to 'Waterhole No. "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. We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! 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. "But if they call me and ask if a man works for me, I simply say yes or no.". ", 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. Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. Unemployment in 2017 was 9.4 percent, far above the national average. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. ", What about the Southern Labor Union? Nobody knows how long the UMW can keep paying strike benefits. This active organization is made up of those who represent the leader in the mining industry. 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 miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. Harlan County. ~~ David Sergent. Wanted to be able to spend their money at a store of their choice besides the Black Mountain Coal Company store. Horn's letter questions the fair-mindedness of the inquiry members. 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. On the way back to the Mount Aire at the end of the day, we pass back through Brookside with its deteriorating mining-camp houses along the stinking Clear Fork River. Available for both RF and RM licensing. A Committee was formed and conducted by Activist Theodore Dreiser under the auspices of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP). Battle of Evarts - Wikipedia The transcript will be published as a book. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? Three Point Accident | Harlan Coal Scrip 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. I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." Overturned car bodies everywhere. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. 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. These disputes were still brewing when on December 8, 1934, the United Mine Workers Union was threatened by deputies and mine bosses. Strikebreakers were often beaten. I can see twenty-five miles to the southeast, five ridges. Mine operators formed the 1 Harlan County Coal Operators Association and through this organization made collective decisions concerning the mines. She talks about the women being armed with sticks, mace . In Harlan County, Kentucky, are some of our country's richest natural resourcesand some of its poorest people. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. He speaks of "my people" and "my men." June 17th of that same year, the first strike was over as the last miner had returned to work. As the motorcade approached a single shot rang out in the air. They are merely a service organization, Yarborough says. Inside the Harlan County Coal Miner Protest - Rolling Stone He'd worked seventy-eight hours straight the preceding week. The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. These interviews with major coal operators document their personal histories and the history of the coal industry in eastern Kentucky during the twentieth century. We come into Harlan County at dusk. "I've got so many duns from the hospital that I just quit lookin' at them. 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. Abstract. 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. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . 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." 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. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. He hopes the other side will do the same. Only 23 percent of those in the county over the age of twenty-five have completed high school. 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. So we lay down in the road." 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. 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. In the bloody 1930s coal wars, miners known to be union members were fired and evicted from company-owned homes. All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. 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. 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. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. 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. Featuring a haunting soundtrack-with legendary country . 4 . If you wouldn't do it, they'd just say, 'Get your bucket.' Harlan county coal hi-res stock photography and images - Alamy It is also women's day before the Citizens In-quiry. 1931, only $13.5 million. "Roof falls are a constant hazard, but the bosses just keep on rushin'.". 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 motorcade stopped and the deputies got out of their cars to return fire. Mrs. Herschel Gaw, wife of the ailing jailer, locked them all up. Visit us and take a step back in time to learn more about how Harlan County helped build a nation at Portal 31 Exhibition Mine tour or come experience the delight of . Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. Grace Elizabeth Hale. Hell in Harlan - front page COMING THE BOYS OF HARLAN - The Washington Post The company will probably demand a new election. HARLAN COUNTYHarlan County, Kentucky, is a rural county located in a major coal-mining region in the Appalachian Mountains. 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. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. Harlan County, Kentucky in a Post-Coal America: A Case Study They have probably helped keep their own men from exploding too. Cite. California labor activist Caroline Decker also raised money for the relief of the striking miner efforts. . Miners also wanted the right to organize and have a union. The three houses with baths rent for $24 a month, plus $14 a month for electricity. The women spent the night. Others say they intend to speak and write about what they have heard. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. But will Norman Yarborough ever agree to recognize the UMW? "Then he'd come out looking like a sheep-killing dog and get in his truck and run. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. Perched atop Inspiration Mountain is the modern Mount Aire Motel. The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act or NLRA) guaranteed the rights of workers to choose to organize. The miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. Breaks in the cable, they say, are often just wrapped with mask-ing tape and exposed again to the water. Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. . Harlan County USA Revisited - Medium Harlan County War Wiki - Everipedia It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. The latest unrest in Harlan County came when in July of 2019, Black jewel LLC filed for bankruptcy and liquidation. 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. After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. Dalton points out that there were 132 mine fatalities in the United States in 1973, only seventeen of them in UMW mines. The median family income is $4600 a year. Which Side are You on?: The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. October 31, 2016. 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. The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. It was two o'clock on a Monday morning when the accident occurred, and he'd been in the mine., more than twelve hours. Poffitt, Jacqueline Brophy, and I meet the other members of the Citizens Inquiry in a private dining room in the Mount Aire: James David Barber, chairman of the Political Science Department at Duke University and author of The Presidential Character; Monsignor Geno Baroni, president of the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, a Catholic priest whose father is a retired Pennsylvania miner with black lung; Barbara Bode, president of the Children's Foundation in Washington; and Dr. Raymond Wheeler of Charlotte, North Carolina, president of the Southern Regional Council. Along the way, we pass through the community of Brookside, its mine-camp houses dominated by the brooding tin presence of the Eastover mine building on the hill. Funeral Wednesday March 1 at 11 a.m. at Grays Knob Bible Church. (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.) Their activities began with a demonstration and march in Harlan on September 27, 1973. 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. HARLAN COUNTY: Women - The Cinessential The strikebreakers were under the protection of private mine guards. Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. Harlan County Struggle Collection, 1931-1932 - LibraryHost Did she find the stick on the ground? Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview. If you protested this safety violation, he says, "the boss would just say, 'Run it.'" J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." Harlan, Kentucky coal miner killed - World Socialist Web Site - wsws.org We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. 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. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. 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. I have attended the University of Kentucky. Make your practice more effective and efficient with Casetext's legal research suite. Bryan W. Whitfield III (1925-2010) - Find a Grave Memorial During the big coal boom in the early 1900s, Harlan County was amongst the largest contributors. They file with us copies of specific federal safety violation reports, and they say that nothing was ever done to correct these violations. It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. After the railroad arrived in 1911 . Harlan: Working under the Gun - Social Welfare History Project Midway in the trial, Judge Hogg dismissed the jury and directed a verdict of guilty. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . The committee has invited owners as well as workers to participate in the hearings, but the impression we get is that management will not appear. 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. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators Association decided to cut all wages by ten percent. 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. Garbage along the roadside. Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. 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. The records show that Beach was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1954 and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary, that he was later charged with carrying a concealed pistol (no disposition shown), and that in 1966 he was tried and acquitted on a murder charge. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . 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. No concessions or deals were made between the two factions and the membership of the United Mine Workers union plummeted. Our History - Kentucky Coal Association 1 mine in Evarts, in Harlan County, Kentucky. At first, there were little battles with gunshots being exchanged between the strikers and the private guards, and the local law enforcement agents. "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. Willard Wirtz says he senses that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is a major factor in the dispute, that it doesn't want a settlement with higher wages and benefits and tough safety provisions to be made by Eastover, because it fears the domino effect of such a settlement on the rest of the companies in the county.
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