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Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. 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. Almost immediately after the explosion became known rescue teams, under the direction of J. F. Bryson, safety director of the Harlan County Coal Operators association, started into the entry. The mining company had ordered a motorcade to deliver food and supplies to the strikebreakers known as Scabs. Most of the land is owned by the mining companies. 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. 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. On Friday, March 25, a continuous mining machine operator was killed by a wall collapse at the Huff Creek No. We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. Abstract. That commitment has never waivered, and has grown . Their General Secretary recently released some facts which help to illustrate the reason for much of the unemployment in the county. Even though things were doing better for the unions in Harlan County, there was still civil unrest. The three houses with baths rent for $24 a month, plus $14 a month for electricity. 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. or smaller. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. Big Boy. "If we could monitor these inspections, perhaps we could cut down on the fatalities," he says. What did the foremen say on those occasions? "My daddy's a retired coal miner, and he's got the black lung. Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. Copy as parenthetical citation. KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. But you must remember I am an immoral man. Their activities began with a demonstration and march in Harlan on September 27, 1973. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. At Washington's National Airport, I board Piedmont Airline's fat little silver jet on a Sunday afternoon in early March. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association, were run as open shops from October 27, 1933 - March 31, 1935. They fed strikers' children as well as the employed, blacks as well as whites. America in the Harlan County Mine Wars, 1931-1939 Carletta A. Bush Early accounts of the Harlan County mine wars place the inability of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to establish a permanent foothold in the county, first at the feet of of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association (HCCOA) and secondly at Two hundred people crowd. We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. When a miner complains, Jerry Johnson says, the foreman says, "If you don't like it, you can always get your bucket," meaning pick up your lunch bucket and get out. These guards were legally able to protect these men during their off duty time. There had been several clashes with the "scabs," the mine guards, and the state police, Kahn says. This was not just a flashy slogan, and the truth of it is . Word precedes him. 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". Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. 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 . 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." 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. "Why couldn't the original thirteen colonies live with the same British policy that applied to all other British colonies?" Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. 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. "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. 5355, atEvarts . 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. 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.". 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. But relatives did come and take the children. 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. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. 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. With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. Why are people allowed to dump raw sewage in the streams? He is dressed more like a miner than a mining executive. Did she find the stick on the ground? HARLAN COUNTYHarlan County, Kentucky, is a rural county located in a major coal-mining region in the Appalachian Mountains. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". By 1908 the union had . 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. The decrease in wages, unemployment, and irregular employment caused "poverty, hunger, and disease.". During the day, a man came and said that if their children weren't out of the jail by night, the welfare people would take them. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. Some of the women say they haven't had a drink of water since moving to the Brookside camp. The transcript will be published as a book. 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. 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. Strike benefits are $100 weekly for a family, $90 for a couple, and $80 for a single man. The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. Featuring a haunting soundtrack-with legendary country . The Price of Coal, Part II. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. 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." In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. 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. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . 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. Under this Act, the right to organize in ones workplace was granted as well as it outlawed any discrimination whether employed or seeking employment based on union membership. In June of 1973, workers at the Brookside coal mine in Harlan County, Kentucky voted 113-55 to replace their membership in the Southern Labor Union (SLU) and join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) union. The miners say that all of the strikers have been blacklisted by the Association. She talks about the women being armed with sticks, mace . "We've took about all we can take," he says. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931 Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. It is the second coal mining fatality in . In 1970, Joseph Yablonski had led a rank-and-file revolt against Boyle, and Yablonski and his wife and daughter had been brutally murdered by killers hired with union funds. CBS is represented by a camera crew, and there are a number of national reporters. No one knows who fired the first shot but when it was over four were . (Eastover offered fifty cents a ton.) As in Germany, the AFSC used need alone to determine who got fed. 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. 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. 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. June 17th of that same year, the first strike was over as the last miner had returned to work. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. Mine operators formed the 1 Harlan County Coal Operators Association and through this organization made collective decisions concerning the mines. They made several attempts at holding strikes against the coal companies, but these failed in Harlan County. Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. My man was mashed up in the mines. The judge's fines and sentences were appealed. There are very few vacant houses in the county. B.W. When McQueen was hurt, his foreman drove him to the hospital and left him there, and he was two hours hitchhiking home. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. At first, there were little battles with gunshots being exchanged between the strikers and the private guards, and the local law enforcement agents. They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. "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. Lois Scott, a woman of about forty-five, begins to speak first. I look at the government statistics once more. 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. As the motorcade approached a single shot rang out in the air. Done. Copy with citation. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. Crossing the Clinch River, we turn onto Highway 421 and leave the modern world. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. . 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. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. 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 sign man for R C Cola has worked this territory well. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. "We run because we wanted to testify, and if we hadn't run, he woulda had us in jail." 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. Yarborough is tough and unyielding. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. 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. Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. 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. While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. 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. Since the county began mining, over one billion tons of coal have "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. 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. Two more Inquiry panel members join us, Willard Wirtz, who was Secretary of Labor under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and the Reverend Max Glenn, executive director of the Commission on Religion in Appalachia. I'm standing at 2800 feet above sea level. No. Each contract varied from mine to mine. J. D. Skidmore says that, back in the mines, the phones are always out of order, there is no transportation out until the end of the shift, and it's a one-hour walk to daylight. Dixon and union leaders worry that the union's disappearance in Kentucky has opened the door for coal operators to . The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. 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. . At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." Perched atop Inspiration Mountain is the modern Mount Aire Motel. And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. 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 . 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." An organic shape, small and shiny and pinkish white, sits . That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. Other clippings detail the earlier bloodshed and misery in Harlan County. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? They have done this only since the Brookside strike. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. 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 coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. 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. In one of these, the septic tank has been out of order for several months. "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. [Verse 2] I got 27 peopl coming over to this house. What a marvelous view! Before this war was over it is not known exactly how many miners, coal operators, deputies, and bosses would be killed. I am the only man in the United States who would do that sort of thing.". The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. He says that, standing. 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. There is one ostentatious feature about him, though: a large, multi-diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. These battles will end the Coal Wars proper. They're trapped. Done Citation. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? 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. It is clear that these women have been a main factor in keeping the mine shut down. 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. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. The Harlan Daily Enterprise story of September 16, 1943 is serious and straightforward: 17 miners are trapped a mile underground and help is on the way.. Much of the story is about help. The miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. Our driver points out Norman Yarborough's two-story frame house, across the highway from the camp and up out of the river bottom. Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared . We are joined by Bernie Aaronson, the young public relations director of the UMW, and John Ed Pierce, a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal. "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." 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. (There is such a provision in the standard UMW contract.). 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. But will Norman Yarborough ever agree to recognize the UMW? Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. The strikebreakers were under the protection of private mine guards. 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 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. Throughout 1931, violence sprouted between miners The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." "We took the sticks with us," she says. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation.