The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . The men and women were released on good behavior. Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . 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. Exist Dates. We soon get into a discussion about Dreiser's 1931 inquiry. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. ", What about the Southern Labor Union? 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. Dixon and union leaders worry that the union's disappearance in Kentucky has opened the door for coal operators to . 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. 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. If those under them behave in an approved manner then they receive housing, work, food, and other perks of their position. Available for both RF and RM licensing. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. Chicago citation style: Harris & Ewing, photographer. 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 judge's fines and sentences were appealed. The median family income is $4600 a year. 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. And, all around, there are the rolling mountains, covered with second-growth timber. Don Dalton, UMW Safety Director for Region Six, explains this. The miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. Depression-era Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of one of the most bitter and protracted labor disputes in American history. Betty Eldridge is a mildmannered, well-dressed woman of about forty. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. 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. They have done this only since the Brookside strike. I glance at the new Piedmont magazine, Pace. The miners speak of other dissatisfactions with Eastover and the old Southern Labor Union contract. Steeped in Appalachian culture and surrounded by the influence of coal, Harlan County has amassed an interesting reputation and national attention with rest of the world. 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. After this, the first strike occurred, in which only about 13% of strikers showed up to work. Our drive takes us upstream along the yellow-brown Clear Fork River. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. It is clear that these women have been a main factor in keeping the mine shut down. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". Done. The warrant was never served. The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. We're all involved. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. Another press member criticizes Barbara Bode for having raised a clenched fist during the women's testimony. 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. 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. 25 (N.L.R.B. These battles will end the Coal Wars proper. The prospects for settlement do not look good unless Duke begins to feel public pressure. She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. No. 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. I am the only man in the United States who would do that sort of thing.". The coal miners, lean and tough from Kentucky mountain life, knew how to fight back. I have taken several classes in Journalism as well as in the Appalachian History, Literature, and Sociology during my time at those schools. Nobody knows how long the UMW can keep paying strike benefits. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. There were ten lodges that were chartered for the National Miners Union. There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' Toilets are built out over the river, and the water has obviously been much higher in the recent past. 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. Genders. There are nearly 40,000 people in the county, a drop of 36 percent since 1960. There were shots exchanged and all three deputies and one striker were killed. Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931 Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. Strike benefits are $100 weekly for a family, $90 for a couple, and $80 for a single man. 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. Biographical History . KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. In the bloody 1930s coal wars, miners known to be union members were fired and evicted from company-owned homes. 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. 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. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. 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. . Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. 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. The Federal Government, with the Commissioner of Labor in a fact finding role, acted as a 'neutral' for the first time in contributing to settlement of the bitter coal strike. 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. With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. Even though things were doing better for the unions in Harlan County, there was still civil unrest. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? Outlining the legal framework for labor unions and management relations to improve the working conditions for workers. But negotiations for a contract with Eastover soon broke down, and on July 30 the miners at Brookside began the strike that now, as we arrive, is in its eighth month. Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. Prior to Miller's election, the union had become corrupt, dictatorial, and a frequent collaborator with the mine owners. There is no water in the house. . Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . . Miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, have drawn national attention with their direct action occupying a railroad track to halt a coal train . The motorcade stopped and the deputies got out of their cars to return fire. Office files covering topics such as "accounts receivable," "baseball club," "coal production," "garnishment orders," "Harlan Coal Operator's Association," "labor conditions," "medical conditions . Free shipping for many products! It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. "Why couldn't the original thirteen colonies live with the same British policy that applied to all other British colonies?" The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. When Barbara finishes her answer, Wirtz raises a clenched fist and says, "Right on!" 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 . They are merely a service organization, Yarborough says. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. It is too early for dolor. My brother died at the age of forty. (This . Finally, in 1939, the coal companies agreed to allow unions in their coal mine operations. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. I have an Associates Degree from Hazard Community College and Technical School. Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. Crossing the Clinch River, we turn onto Highway 421 and leave the modern world. Before the first meeting of the Citizens Inquiry, we sit around and talk with the Inquiry chairman, Daniel Pollitt, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina. ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. It is not all Duke's fault by any means. Soon after the "Battle of Evarts," novelist Theodore Dreiser led a citizens' group to Harlan County to find and publicize the bloody facts. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. The Kentucky Coal Association is an IRS designated 501 (c) (6) nonprofit organization that aims to educate its members and the public of coal production and safety in the state of Kentucky. The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. She talks about hiding behind cars on the picket line for protection from the "gun thugs." She talks about a standoff against Basil Collins and the scabs and gun thugs. It was [and still is] used to signify that what happened in the realm of politics, a field largely controlled by men, affect women's everyday lives. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. The Brookside mine is capable of producing only about a half-million tons of the 15 million tons of coal Duke uses each year. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. There was no standard contract for the miners. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. We huddle before breaking up. There's water in the mine because the pumps often won't work. 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. Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. He fined the UMW $20,000. An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. The Act also made a provision for a National Labor-Relations Board to designate a legal structure for the workers to conduct fair and legal elections of their officers and representatives. Harlan, city, seat of Harlan county, southeastern Kentucky, U.S., in the Cumberland Mountains, on the Clover Fork Cumberland River. 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. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. What a marvelous view! ", What about federal inspection? 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. On Jan. 25, 1890, a new union, the United Mine Workers of America, was formed, and in 1903 its young president, John Mitchell, led the union on a successful 24-week strike. Pricing; Switch; Big firm; A Brief History of Harlan County, USA. "My daddy's a retired coal miner, and he's got the black lung.
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