Mostly, the miners were fighting for improved working conditions, higher wages, and better housing options for their families. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." 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." He fined the UMW $20,000. Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. 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 Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. Harlan County in eastern Kentucky, which has been brought out into the spotlight this summer by the violence with which the local Coal Operators' Association has carried on this attack, is, as far as I can find out, a pretty good medium exhibit of the entire industry: living conditions are better than in Alabama and perhaps a little worse . Dixon and union leaders worry that the union's disappearance in Kentucky has opened the door for coal operators to . "Try walking out of there, carrying a man with a broken back," one of the miners says. It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. The bosses wouldn't go in, but I've. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. Soon enough, most miners had gone on strike out of solidarity. After the railroad arrived in 1911 . 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. "They sent me to 'Waterhole No. Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. 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 meeting room. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . The UMW had made written proposals for compromising these issues a little. Filmed during the coal strike of 1974-1975, this documentary does much to capture the tension brought on by the injustice of the coal operators to the coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. But relatives did come and take the children. Dateline Newport News, Virginia, November 12, 1931: Dreiser denies the charge and says he wants people to concentrate on the facts of the labor dispute and "get the American mind off sex for a moment." We soon get into a discussion about Dreiser's 1931 inquiry. The union abandoned its efforts after less than a year. They say no action has been taken on this report. Mine operators viciously opposed miners' efforts to unionize, particularly in Harlan County. It was Miller who defeated W. A. Miners die, and last year was the deadliest in American coal mines in more than a decade. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." 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. We look back on the film, which screens this Sunday, February . Depression-era Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of one of the most bitter and protracted labor disputes in American history. I say that the issue is whether or not the men will be allowed to have their own union to protect their safety and secure and maintain decent wages and benefits, that if enough pressure is put on Duke Power Company, maybe something will give. It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. Duke Power Company appears to be the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiations. There is no water in the house. 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. 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. ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. the foreman would just say, "We gotta run coal. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. I'm standing at 2800 feet above sea level. 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." Duke Power Company of North Carolina, he says, is the sixth largest utility company in the world. June 17th of that same year, the first strike was over as the last miner had returned to work. They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. Arnold Miller, who was an active coal miner until three years ago and is now the reform-minded president of the United Mine Workers, has asked me to serve as a member of a "Citizens Public Inquiry into the Brookside Strike.". It is the second coal mining fatality in . Big Boy. "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. Wanted to be able to spend their money at a store of their choice besides the Black Mountain Coal Company store. ", We break for lunch, prepared by the women of the Evarts Community Center. Mr. Nolan, a resident of Cawood, is survived by his wife, Mrs. Stella Nolan . The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. 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. 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.". The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. 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. How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? This action did not go unnoticed by the labor unions and the United Mine Workers union decided to attempt to organize the already-impoverished labor force of the area. The Act was an attempt to restructure the industrial sector of the economy and to alleviate unemployment with a public works program. Office files covering topics such as "accounts receivable," "baseball club," "coal production," "garnishment orders," "Harlan Coal Operator's Association," "labor conditions," "medical conditions . We hope that our hearings will help hold down violence. The radical ideology of the union began gaining some ground in the mountains. The final straw was when the Harlan County Coal Operators Association cut miners' wages by 10%. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Which Side are You on? The SLU was largely seen as serving the interests of the mine owners rather than the workers. 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. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. 25 (N.L.R.B. 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 . It will be a two-hour, winding drive through the Cumberland Mountains to the town of Harlan. Conflict broke out again the 1970s in what was known as the Brookside strike. 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. Four men were arrested in connection with this murder. 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. They have probably helped keep their own men from exploding too. Nannie Rainey says, "I told him if he got my children, he was gonna haveta take me too." B.W. Up at seven on a Monday morning, I walk out onto the balcony of my motel room. Seen 'em carried out on a stretcher," she says. Free shipping for many products! Horn's letter questions the fair-mindedness of the inquiry members. 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. I glance at the new Piedmont magazine, Pace. . 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. Our driver points out Norman Yarborough's two-story frame house, across the highway from the camp and up out of the river bottom. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. 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. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. Captain James Cromer of the state police later tells news reporters, "The women are a problem. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. Overturned car bodies everywhere. The Brookside labor dispute erupted spontaneously soon after Miller's election. 1938) Copy Citation . Biographical History . "We've took about all we can take," he says. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? They file with us copies of specific federal safety violation reports, and they say that nothing was ever done to correct these violations. Kahn says that the miners were encouraged by Eastover's management, headed by Norman Yarborough, to join a small "company union," the Southern Labor Union. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . All too many Americans are under the naive belief that, while unions may have been necessary in the 30's, they are no longer needed in the United States today. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. Here at Kentucky Tennessee Living we fully support the coal miners and their families. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The Price of Coal, Part II. "Not at all," Yarborough says. Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. 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. He does say, I think primarily for the record, that he would like to see negotiations begin again. Soon after the "Battle of Evarts," novelist Theodore Dreiser led a citizens' group to Harlan County to find and publicize the bloody facts. Interviews with residents of Hazard who discuss the coal miners' union, the harassment union miners faced from large mining companies, and the unofficial strikes that are being organized in Hazard County. 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.". While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. Isolated trailer houses. With the passage of these acts, there was unrest in Harlan County. "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. However, they did make a greater effort than the United Mine Workers with relief as they opened soup kitchens around the county. The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. As discussed in a previous video. [Verse 2] I got 27 peopl coming over to this house. 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. Funeral Wednesday March 1 at 11 a.m. at Grays Knob Bible Church. However, after the dust was clear, the anti-labor coal country would end up being represented by unions. The members of the Inquiry panel leave the Community Center to visit the coal camp at Brookside-rows of delapidated frame houses, identical except for their weathering gray, green, red, and beige paint. Unemployment in 2017 was 9.4 percent, far above the national average. Leroy Helton says he still owes a lot of bills that should have been paid by SLU. The unrest continues in Harlan and surrounding counties as there have been many strikes. There had been several clashes with the "scabs," the mine guards, and the state police, Kahn says. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. He says that, standing. It is too early for dolor. Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. There were shots exchanged and all three deputies and one striker were killed. 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. Where will the families go? Here and there, we also see white-blossoming pear and dogwood trees. Dalton points out that there were 132 mine fatalities in the United States in 1973, only seventeen of them in UMW mines. 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 the Harlan County Coal Operators Association (HCCOA) and secondly at the worn work boots of miners who, when work was plentiful, saw little or no need for a union. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . California labor activist Caroline Decker also raised money for the relief of the striking miner efforts. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? 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%. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. A month later, back in Washington, I meet with Bernie Aaronson at UMW headquarters. 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. Other clippings detail the earlier bloodshed and misery in Harlan County. 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). . 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. That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. When fuses blow, they are not immediately replaced; the cable is spliced or "hot-wired" around the fuse. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. Source Citation [ }] Descriptive Note Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. 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. If you wouldn't do it, they'd just say, 'Get your bucket.' On February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association reduced wages for miners in that part of eastern Kentucky by 10 percent. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. Capitalizing on the general . "We took the sticks with us," she says. 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. "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. A thousand feet below me lies a small, green valley, partly shrouded by the morning mist. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. Perched atop Inspiration Mountain is the modern Mount Aire Motel. Burger Chef. Another press member criticizes Barbara Bode for having raised a clenched fist during the women's testimony. 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. (The union has told us that they are quite willing to limit the contract to the Brookside mine.) Only to be escorted to the county line and told not to return. With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. Midway in the trial, Judge Hogg dismissed the jury and directed a verdict of guilty. 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. Why are people allowed to dump raw sewage in the streams? Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. There were only nine hundred miners working and 5,800 miners were idle and striking during the first strike. During the Great Depression of the 1930s coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, struck against the coal operators for better pay and better working conditio. There are very few vacant houses in the county. 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. 5355 after Local Union 4495 at Black Mountain folded up. And you wondr why I keep running my mouth .