PDF "I Am a Union Woman": Gender, Class, and Folk Music in The Harlan The warrant was never served. There was no standard contract for the miners. Only to be escorted to the county line and told not to return. 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. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. We huddle before breaking up. However, they did make a greater effort than the United Mine Workers with relief as they opened soup kitchens around the county. HARLAN COUNTY: Women - The Cinessential And we're burning up people to make electricity. 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." The median family income is $4600 a year. Jacqueline Brophy asks why public services have broken down. He then answers a question he wasn't asked. Interview Summary. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. We look back on the film, which screens this Sunday, February . ", 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. Members of The Harlan County Medical Society 1932 Our History - Kentucky Coal Association Details for: Harlan County. Marywood University catalog Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. Dixon and union leaders worry that the union's disappearance in Kentucky has opened the door for coal operators to . The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. During the rest of the afternoon, the miners talk about what has happened on the picket line and in the local court. The next morning the toothpicks were still in place, it was said. Conflict broke out again the 1970s in what was known as the Brookside strike. Harlan County Revisited - Memory of a Miner The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. Mine operators formed the 1 Harlan County Coal Operators Association and through this organization made collective decisions concerning the mines. Yarborough comes out of a staff meeting and ushers us hack to a large, paneled meeting room with folding tables and chairs. Harlan County War History, Impact, The Free Encyclopedia Now, Tony Boyle is among those who have been convicted of complicity in the murders, and Arnold Miller is the head of the revamped union. Even pop culture cannot ignore its impact with such shows as Justified. Two hundred people crowd. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. "In Harlan County, U.S.A., sound anchors, explains, and makes 'authentic' visual imagery compromised by the long history of documentary work in Appalachia.". The strikebreakers were under the protection of private mine guards. safety director for the Harlan County Coal Operators Association; Moss Paterson, chief of the State Bureau of Mines and Minerals, and State and Federal mine inspectors. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. "I've got so many duns from the hospital that I just quit lookin' at them. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. When McQueen was hurt, his foreman drove him to the hospital and left him there, and he was two hours hitchhiking home. While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . 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. "But if they call me and ask if a man works for me, I simply say yes or no.". The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. 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. Don Dalton, UMW Safety Director for Region Six, explains this. 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 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. 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. Life After Coal in Harlan County, U.S.A. - In These Times 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. Harlan County: Working in the Coal Mines - kygs.org The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview. The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. Harlan, city, seat of Harlan county, southeastern Kentucky, U.S., in the Cumberland Mountains, on the Clover Fork Cumberland River. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". I have taken several classes in Journalism as well as in the Appalachian History, Literature, and Sociology during my time at those schools. Pricing; Switch; Big firm; 5355, atEvarts . The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . Mine operators viciously opposed miners' efforts to unionize, particularly in Harlan County. . The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. Whitfield recalls working in his father's coal mines during the first years of commercial mining in Harlan County, and he describes the conditions. 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. Harlan Fuel Co, 8 N.L.R.B. 25 | Casetext Copy with citation. 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. "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. The officials were listed were the "veteran safety director of the Harlan Coal Operators Association, and Rufus Bailey and H. Hamlin, state . "Here at Brookside, if you called someone from SLU, he might come in a week, he might come in two weeks, but when he did come, he'd go into Eastover's office and talk for an hour," Bill Doan says. Harlan County U.S.A. (1976) - Plot - IMDb 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. Herndon J. Evans, the editor of the Pineville Sun, argued, The troubles of the coal industry had their inception in war times. Cite. A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. No. 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. I currently live in Tennessee but my hope is to one day come back home to live in the beautiful mountains once more. Appalachia: Coal Operators Oral History Project SPOKEdb Hazard County documentary / produced by H. Sinclair. - Internet Archive 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. United States Washington D.C. District of Columbia Washington D.C . Other clippings detail the earlier bloodshed and misery in Harlan County. It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." What a marvelous view! One of the better houses is already being demolished. Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. We never would find out what happened. Blair made it clear that he was on the side of the mine operators and the people of the county lost any illusion that the law enforcement would be impartial in this strike. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? "The way I figured it, they done that because it was just a faster, way of getting coal." 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. Harlan County. A rural county of 27,000, Harlan County's average household income is about $29,000. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". 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." Available for both RF and RM licensing. Pierce has brought the actual Courier-Journal clippings about the Dreiser inquiry and shares them with us. Past that, the other undulating ridges are blue and hazy. Here at Kentucky Tennessee Living we fully support the coal miners and their families. Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. My brother died at the age of forty. Some seventy-five state policemen were on hand as the crowd gathered. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. Freda Armes says, "I run him off. Find the perfect harlan county coal stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. An essay on The Harlan County War : r/history The issues had been narrowed down to Eastover's demand for a "no-strike clause" and a limit on the power of the safety committee. She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. 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. One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. Its profits in 1973 were $90 million, up 14 percent from the year before. 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.