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. 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. Garbage along the roadside. This was not just a flashy slogan, and the truth of it is . Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. Big Boy. Did she find the stick on the ground? 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. They have probably helped keep their own men from exploding too. 4 . Harlan County to unionize miners. "If we could monitor these inspections, perhaps we could cut down on the fatalities," he says. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. It is too early for dolor. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. James Willard Pope officiating. Evarts welcomed the miners because it was filled with spurned politicians and business owners who wished to see the company stores and company men in political positions vanish. "We've took about all we can take," he says. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. Harlan, city, seat of Harlan county, southeastern Kentucky, U.S., in the Cumberland Mountains, on the Clover Fork Cumberland River. Others claim that his death was caused by an election concerning slot machines into the county. Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. Sudie Crusenberg, a plain woman in a cotton dress, gives us some idea of what life is like for a coal-mining family. Darrell Deaton, president of the Brookside UMW local, says he was caught in a belt line last year because he had to work alone, without a helper. Rev. Harlan County sits in the sweet spot of coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. Seen 'em carried out on a stretcher," she says. The unrest continues in Harlan and surrounding counties as there have been many strikes. We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. And lastly, the Harlan Fox Mining Co - presumably derived from the Harlan Fox Coal Co - was in operation from 1925-1932. Paternalism is the practice of people who have a business or other authority to restrict the freedoms of those who are subordinate to them. The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. There is a suit still in litigation. "Not at all," Yarborough says. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. That year, annual wages dropped from $1,235 to $749. "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. No. The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. The prospects for settlement do not look good unless Duke begins to feel public pressure. A month later, back in Washington, I meet with Bernie Aaronson at UMW headquarters. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. 8 N.L.R.B. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. 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." He fined the UMW $20,000. The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. I have attended the University of Kentucky. Former Director of Harlan County Coal Operators Association. 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. KCA's constitution and by-laws were adopted on April 28, 1947, "to promote the best interest of the coal mining industry in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and all those engaged therein". "But if they call me and ask if a man works for me, I simply say yes or no.". Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. They say no action has been taken on this report. As discussed in a previous video. It doesn't seem like enough. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. United States Washington D.C. District of Columbia Washington D.C . The bosses wouldn't go in, but I've. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. The most memorable of those are 1964, 1966, 1969 (The West Virginia Black Lung strike that the miners won) 1971, and the 1974 Strikes. The miners say that all of the strikers have been blacklisted by the Association. They had no safety committee, the miners say, and the federal reports bear them out. 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. The aftermath of this battle led to wider strikes in the Harlan County area. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. They also plan to join with a North Carolina group in protesting Duke's requested rate increase, and they are going to attend the meeting of Duke's stockholders on May 30. Enforcing the operators' political will, both within and outside the law, was the Harlan County Coal Operators Association. ", 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." The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! We're all involved. In the throes of the Great Depression, Harlan County coal owners and operators, in an effort to expand national dependency on their fuel, chose to sell below cost. At Washington's National Airport, I board Piedmont Airline's fat little silver jet on a Sunday afternoon in early March. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association, were run as open shops from October 27, 1933 - March 31, 1935. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. 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. . 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. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' Their activities began with a demonstration and march in Harlan on September 27, 1973. The Harlan County Coal Wars lasted from 1931-1939. And you wondr why I keep running my mouth . Why haven't the car bodies been removed from the highway and the streets? With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. 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. She speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. . Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. 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. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". With the added protection for workers and the addition of collective bargaining between the workers and their employers. (Eastover offered fifty cents a ton.) "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. Soon enough, most miners had gone on strike out of solidarity. I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." Only 23 percent of those in the county over the age of twenty-five have completed high school. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. Some of the women say they haven't had a drink of water since moving to the Brookside camp. My man was mashed up in the mines. Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Pay ranged from $17 to $32 day, the average being $25. While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . Harlan Fuel Co. Download PDF. How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. With the passage of these acts, there was unrest in Harlan County. Where will the families go? The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. He discusses the formation and activities of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association . The distance a miner had to walk and how time was looked at was in 15-minute increments. The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. And I can't get you off of that couch. After this, the first strike occurred, in which only about 13% of strikers showed up to work. The decrease in wages, unemployment, and irregular employment caused "poverty, hunger, and disease.". Unemployment in 2017 was 9.4 percent, far above the national average. It is home to lawyers, doctors and coal operators; it has a hospital, several banks and a few fast-food . The three houses with baths rent for $24 a month, plus $14 a month for electricity. "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. 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 . There were constant beatings of the miners by the Sheriffs deputies. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". 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.". Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. There were shots exchanged and all three deputies and one striker were killed. The company will probably demand a new election. "Boss walks up and says, 'We've got to make this mine look good now, boys; the inspector's comin','" Jerry Johnson says. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) Throughout 1931, violence sprouted between miners "In Harlan County, U.S.A., sound anchors, explains, and makes 'authentic' visual imagery compromised by the long history of documentary work in Appalachia.". Yarborough replies. "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. 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. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. I can see twenty-five miles to the southeast, five ridges. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. But what of the people of Harlan County? In the year of "the energy crisis," Coal is King again at $30 a ton. 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.