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.". Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. Garbage along the roadside. We huddle before breaking up. Three of our Inquiry members plan to talk with the president of Duke Power Company. "My daddy's a retired coal miner, and he's got the black lung. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." Based on this new Act, from October 27, 1933, to March 31, 1935, the mines ran as open shops. "If we could monitor these inspections, perhaps we could cut down on the fatalities," he says. 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 next morning the toothpicks were still in place, it was said. There were only nine hundred miners working and 5,800 miners were idle and striking during the first strike. "Then he'd come out looking like a sheep-killing dog and get in his truck and run. 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 . 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. This caused the clergy to denounce the union. It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." 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.". When drafting these articles, I found that many things have not been taught to the future generations about the struggles for coal miner rights have been in the Appalachian Mountains. Did she find the stick on the ground? The roof is approximately forty-eight inches high in the mine. He'd worked seventy-eight hours straight the preceding week. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. It is the second coal mining fatality in . Unemployment in 2017 was 9.4 percent, far above the national average. Get a Demo. 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. Burger Chef. It read: RE-ELECT GAW, JAILER. The Brookside labor dispute erupted spontaneously soon after Miller's election. 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. We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. 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. There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. They are merely a service organization, Yarborough says. "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. 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. They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. Cite. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. 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. the meeting room. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Which Side are You on? In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. 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. Killed - 12. 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. (That is a tough point.) "I've had the foreman to tell me to set timbers or something until the inspector got gone. The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. Crossing the Clinch River, we turn onto Highway 421 and leave the modern world. 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. Dalton points out that there were 132 mine fatalities in the United States in 1973, only seventeen of them in UMW mines. They file with us copies of specific federal safety violation reports, and they say that nothing was ever done to correct these violations. 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. I've talked to Norman Yarborough, and you ain't bringing no union down here. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." 8 N.L.R.B. . James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' Sudie Crusenberg, a plain woman in a cotton dress, gives us some idea of what life is like for a coal-mining family. Perched atop Inspiration Mountain is the modern Mount Aire Motel. 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. The National Industrial Recovery Act only partially succeeded in accomplishing its stated goals when it was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on May 27, 1935, which was three weeks before the Act was set to expire. 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. A reporter asks us again how we can expect to make an unbiased report when we've heard only one side. The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act or NLRA) guaranteed the rights of workers to choose to organize. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. "But if they call me and ask if a man works for me, I simply say yes or no.". Interment at Resthaven Cemetery, Keith, Ky. Visitation 6-9 p.m. at the Grays Knob Bible Church. 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." I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". What a marvelous view! Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. Project Summary. 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. Up at seven on a Monday morning, I walk out onto the balcony of my motel room. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. 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. The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. Kentucky communities discussed include Artemus, Burdine, Jenkins, Jellico, Van Lear, and Wheelwright; and Kentucky counties include Bell, Clay, Floyd, Harlan . He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." 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. Grover Jennings says that six months ago he applied for a job at the Mary Helen mine and was apparently accepted, but that when he went back for his physical, Clyde Goitis, an official at the mine, said, "Buddy, there just ain't no way I can do anything for you. We come into Harlan County at dusk. Done. 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 miners say that, somehow, management always knows when the government inspectors are coming. Duke went into the coal business directly in 1970 when it organized Eastover Mining Company as a wholly owned subsidiary and, through it, bought several mines in eastern Kentucky, including the one at Brookside. Jacqueline Brophy asks why public services have broken down. The women furnish the panel with a copy of a report from the Harlan County Health Department, dated October 12, 1973, which states that the drinking water in the Eastover mining camp, where approximately thirty of the striking Brookside families live, is "highly contaminated" with fecal bacteria. "The danger's just the same," they say. Two hundred people crowd. The officials were listed were the "veteran safety director of the Harlan Coal Operators Association, and Rufus Bailey and H. Hamlin, state . There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and Evarts. An organic shape, small and shiny and pinkish white, sits . 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. 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. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. (This . 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. Find the perfect harlan county coal stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. One of the better houses is already being demolished. But is it really hurting? Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. Lois Scott says that the women organized the Brookside Women's Club and got involved in the strike "because we knew that if the women didn't come in there would be violence." Source for information on Harlan County: Encyclopedia of the Great Depression dictionary. 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. (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.) Breaks in the cable, they say, are often just wrapped with mask-ing tape and exposed again to the water. 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. The main problem, he says, is that the company wants a "no-strike" clause, so that the union cannot strike during the contract period. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. The miners charge that Eastover has hired what they call "gun thugs." He discusses the formation and activities of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association . The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. The warrant was never served. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? 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 . On the plane with me, it turns out, is another member of the Citizens Inquiry, Jacqueline Brophy, who is the director of the Labor-Liberal Arts Program of Cornell University's School of Industrial Labor Relations in New York. 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. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. After nearly 40 years of working in coalmines, David . 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. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. Figure 2: Harlan County Coal Mine Employment, 2000-2016, (KYEEC, 2017) In 1942, shortly after Harlan County experienced record high coal mine employment, the county experienced is highest production levels with 15.6 million tons of coal being produced in this year (KYEEC, 2017). National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions Jul 5, 1938. Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. 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. One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. But you must remember I am an immoral man. Lois Scott, a woman of about forty-five, begins to speak first. Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. I can see twenty-five miles to the southeast, five ridges. 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. Yarborough is tough and unyielding. "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. Overturned car bodies everywhere. 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. That year, annual wages dropped from $1,235 to $749. Each of us makes a statement. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. McDonald's. There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. But what of the people of Harlan County? Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. For a time after the hearing, he says, it appeared that Duke had softened. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. My brother died at the age of forty. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. B.W. ", What about the Southern Labor Union? Afterwards, they gathered near the picket line at the Eastover property in Brookside. Mostly, the miners were fighting for improved working conditions, higher wages, and better housing options for their families. Some seventy-five state policemen were on hand as the crowd gathered. And, all around, there are the rolling mountains, covered with second-growth timber. The judge's fines and sentences were appealed. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. I have also attended the University of Pikeville. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . I currently live in Tennessee but my hope is to one day come back home to live in the beautiful mountains once more. Capitalizing on the general . Coal companies refused to back down while the Red Cross refused to give aid . A thousand feet below me lies a small, green valley, partly shrouded by the morning mist. A rural county of 27,000, Harlan County's average household income is about $29,000. 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. "Roof falls are a constant hazard, but the bosses just keep on rushin'.". Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. Another press member criticizes Barbara Bode for having raised a clenched fist during the women's testimony. You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." 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 . 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 . It is thought that Middleton was assassinated for backing troops who were present in the County to protect the miners. 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%. 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. While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. 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. The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. Yarborough's affidavit stated that "the group swarmed out into the roads, stopped cars, and forced company employees into coercive conversations and indulged in generally raucous name-calling and abuse." We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. The prospects for settlement do not look good unless Duke begins to feel public pressure. 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. Some of the women say they haven't had a drink of water since moving to the Brookside camp. So we lay down in the road." We hope that our hearings will help hold down violence. No. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. Abstract. On one excuse or another, such as not having personnel readily available to accompany the inspector into the mine, the company can delay the inspection. "Try walking out of there, carrying a man with a broken back," one of the miners says. (The union has told us that they are quite willing to limit the contract to the Brookside mine.) The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. They tell of two night incidents when rifle shots were fired at the picketers by unidentified persons. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. They point out that most of the big coal companies, such as U.S. Steel and others, have signed UMW contracts, but that the smaller companies of eastern Kentucky have held out. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 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 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. Source Citation [ }] Descriptive Note Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest. Funeral Wednesday March 1 at 11 a.m. at Grays Knob Bible Church. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. Harlan County to unionize miners. "They sent me to 'Waterhole No. Featuring a haunting soundtrack-with legendary country . Outlining the legal framework for labor unions and management relations to improve the working conditions for workers. Harlan County sits in the sweet spot of coal mining in southeastern Kentucky.