Battle of Evartshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/new-deal/national-industrial-recovery-act-of-1933/, Battle of Evartshttps://pipiwiki.com/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, Battle of Evartshttps://wiki2.org/en/Battle_of_Evarts, Harlan County Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War, A Brief History of Harlan County, USAhttps://labornotes.org/blogs/2019/08/brief-history-harlan-county-usa, Harlan County Warhttps://everipedia.org/Harlan_County_War, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/background-coal-strike, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/local-elite, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/new-york-writers, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/national-miners-union-and-other-radical-groups, The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act)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, BOMB IN AUTO KILLS KENTUCKY OFFICIAL; Harlan County Attorney Predicted Assassination for Backing Troops in Election.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, Elmon Clay Middleton https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70804679/elmon-clay-middleton, KENTUCKY HOLDS FOUR IN AUTO BOMB KILLING; Harlan Prosecutors Death Is Laid to His Fight Against Slot Machines.https://www.nytimes.com/1935/09/06/archives/kentucky-holds-four-in-auto-bomb-killing-harlan-prosecutors-death.html, Blackjewel Bankruptcy Leaves Damaged Lands and Miners Compensation in Limbo, https://ohiovalleyresource.org/2021/03/22/blackjewel-bankruptcy-finalized/, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/?fbclid=IwAR21nYphw4Dul-_EwuAmSWgzsvPLNwsMM0FtV75j0y-mGUHq-lCZjJxZot8, For more about us, you can visit our Facebook at:https://www.facebook.com/kytnliving, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs0oV5gFzIS2JdMJ3HvTOgA, When we forget our past and who we are as a people, then we become who they say we are. How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? 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 . But negotiations for a contract with Eastover soon broke down, and on July 30 the miners at Brookside began the strike that now, as we arrive, is in its eighth month. Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. 2012: $1,552,717. On September 4, 1935, Harlan County Attorney Elmon Clay Middleton, age 31, was assassinated by a car bomb containing eighteen sticks of dynamite. (That is a tough point.) It doesn't seem like enough. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. 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. Unlike the previous Coal Wars that took place in West Virginia with the Paint-Creek Strike of 1912 and Matewan that lasted for a year or two. 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. USBM Final Investigation Report (1.7 Mb) Successful Rescue . Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. 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. We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. 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." There are very few vacant houses in the county. A Brief History of Harlan County, USA. Our driver points out Norman Yarborough's two-story frame house, across the highway from the camp and up out of the river bottom. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. In response to the violence, the Kentucky National Guard was called upon and arrived for the first time in the county to try to stem the violence. In Harlan County, Kentucky, are some of our country's richest natural resourcesand some of its poorest people. The National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) was of the American Communist Party. 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 . They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. He can't never walk again." In 1973 the 13-month Brookside Strike brought almost 200 workers to battle Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant, a company owned by Duke Power. Burger Chef. Strike benefits are $100 weekly for a family, $90 for a couple, and $80 for a single man. Barbara says that she was reacting spontaneously to the spirit and determination exhibited by the women, that their testimony was the highlight of our hearings. While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. I've talked to Norman Yarborough, and you ain't bringing no union down here. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. The strikebreakers were under the protection of private mine guards. "The way I figured it, they done that because it was just a faster, way of getting coal." In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. 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. And I can't get you off of that couch. Though the union had made substantial inroads into the Central Appalachian coalfields by 1930, when miners in Bell and Harlan Counties went out on strike in early May, 1931, the UMWA removed its support. 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 latest unrest in Harlan County came when in July of 2019, Black jewel LLC filed for bankruptcy and liquidation. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." He tells me that the miners plan to picket on Wall Street, hoping to give Duke problems with its stock. These guards were legally able to protect these men during their off duty time. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. He says that, standing. Abstract. 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. 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. Nobody knows how long the UMW can keep paying strike benefits. Garbage along the roadside. 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. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. There is a suit still in litigation. 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. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. The roof is approximately forty-eight inches high in the mine. I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. "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. 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. Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. Chicago citation style: Harris & Ewing, photographer. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. Breaks in the cable, they say, are often just wrapped with mask-ing tape and exposed again to the water. 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. . Project Summary. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. by Ron Soodalter. ", 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." We are picked up at the airport by Si (for Simon) Kahn, a Pennsylvania rabbi's son who graduated from Harvard, came to the Southern mountains as a Vista worker, and remained here, working for local community groups. They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. 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. We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. One of the better houses is already being demolished. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? The miners say that they want their own safety committee, elected by the miners, as the standard UMW contract provides, with the right to walk out, losing their pay, when there is eminent danger in the mine. An organic shape, small and shiny and pinkish white, sits . "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." That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. United States Washington D.C. District of Columbia Washington D.C . 25 (N.L.R.B. What did the foremen say on those occasions? The Harlan County Coal Wars lasted from 1931-1939. I have taken several classes in Journalism as well as in the Appalachian History, Literature, and Sociology during my time at those schools. She says that the women decided that they couldn't fight guns with switches and that they had taken sticks with them the next time. But relatives did come and take the children. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. "Then he'd come out looking like a sheep-killing dog and get in his truck and run. It was two o'clock on a Monday morning when the accident occurred, and he'd been in the mine., more than twelve hours. 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. 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. 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. Lifelong resident of Harlan. The name comes from a series of United Mine Workers strikes and labor-management battles which ended in a gunfight between deputized mine guards and miners on May 4, 1931, in the tiny community of Evarts. The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. Their activities began with a demonstration and march in Harlan on September 27, 1973. Those with running water rent for around $20 a month, plus electricity. Our drive takes us upstream along the yellow-brown Clear Fork River. The final straw was when the Harlan County Coal Operators Association cut miners' wages by 10%. 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. Harlan County. Pierce mentions the "toothpick incident." Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. 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. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association decided to cut all wages by ten . 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. These disputes were still brewing when on December 8, 1934, the United Mine Workers Union was threatened by deputies and mine bosses. It was settled in 1819 by Virginians led by Samuel Howard and was known as Mount Pleasant until renamed in 1912 for Major Silas Harlan, who was killed during the American Revolution at the Battle of Blue Licks (August 19, 1782). Si says Harlan is a dry countyno legal liquor and no beer. A month later, back in Washington, I meet with Bernie Aaronson at UMW headquarters. Yarborough replies. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. (Eastover offered fifty cents a ton.) "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". (Brookside) were the only two mines of the Harlan County owner/operators association who rejected a 10% pay increase in 1933. The judge's fines and sentences were appealed. While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . He'd worked seventy-eight hours straight the preceding week. The officials were listed were the "veteran safety director of the Harlan Coal Operators Association, and Rufus Bailey and H. Hamlin, state . "Boss walks up and says, 'We've got to make this mine look good now, boys; the inspector's comin','" Jerry Johnson says. Yarborough comes out of a staff meeting and ushers us hack to a large, paneled meeting room with folding tables and chairs. In the year of "the energy crisis," Coal is King again at $30 a ton. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. There was no functioning safety committee Medical and retirement benefits were minimal and unreliable. 1938) Copy Citation . 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.". "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. She speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators Association decided to cut all wages by ten percent. The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. "In Harlan County, U.S.A., sound anchors, explains, and makes 'authentic' visual imagery compromised by the long history of documentary work in Appalachia.". It is also women's day before the Citizens In-quiry. Even pop culture cannot ignore its impact with such shows as Justified. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. 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. But will Norman Yarborough ever agree to recognize the UMW? 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. They have done this only since the Brookside strike. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. the foreman would just say, "We gotta run coal. Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. This law was enacted to try to reverse the hardships to those who were out of a job because of the economic collapse of the Great Depression. He said that when the coal industry was at its height in 1928, the peak of . 1931, only $13.5 million. Pay ranged from $17 to $32 day, the average being $25. The company will probably demand a new election. "We've took about all we can take," he says. "We took the sticks with us," she says. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. 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. 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. During the rest of the afternoon, the miners talk about what has happened on the picket line and in the local court. My brother died at the age of forty. Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? 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. "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' The Brookside labor dispute erupted spontaneously soon after Miller's election. When they went to jail, they say, some of the women took their children with them. It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. 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. (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.) 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. 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. It is thought that Middleton was assassinated for backing troops who were present in the County to protect the miners. Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. 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. Our delegation arrives on time at the Eastover office in Brookside. 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. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. Jacqueline Brophy asks why public services have broken down. Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. They had no safety committee, the miners say, and the federal reports bear them out. We come into Harlan County at dusk. 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. Before this war was over it is not known exactly how many miners, coal operators, deputies, and bosses would be killed. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. The warrant was never served. Drift mines back into the mountains follow the seam of coal wherever it goes." 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. Get a Demo. Prior to Miller's election, the union had become corrupt, dictatorial, and a frequent collaborator with the mine owners. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. Five miles north of Harlan, we drive up Inspiration Mountain. During the big coal boom in the early 1900s, Harlan County was amongst the largest contributors. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." Up at seven on a Monday morning, I walk out onto the balcony of my motel room. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. On Friday, March 25, a continuous mining machine operator was killed by a wall collapse at the Huff Creek No. Along the way, we pass through the community of Brookside, its mine-camp houses dominated by the brooding tin presence of the Eastover mine building on the hill. The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. These charities began to give aid to blacklisted miners who were unable to find employment as the soup kitchens had closed once the NMU had closed its doors. Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. 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. Yarborough is tough and unyielding. Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. Finally, in 1939, the coal companies agreed to allow unions in their coal mine operations. What a marvelous view! The miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. If you protested this safety violation, he says, "the boss would just say, 'Run it.'" "They sent me to 'Waterhole No. The miners charge that Eastover has hired what they call "gun thugs." 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. Over one thousand shots were exchanged during those fifteen minutes. This active organization is made up of those who represent the leader in the mining industry. CBS is represented by a camera crew, and there are a number of national reporters. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. When fuses blow, they are not immediately replaced; the cable is spliced or "hot-wired" around the fuse. 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. 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. They are neatly and attractively dressed. Available for both RF and RM licensing. Former Director of Harlan County Coal Operators Association. 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. In June of 1973, in a National Labor Relations Board election, the miners at Brookside voted 113 to 55 to affiliate with the United Mine Workers. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. A Committee was formed and conducted by Activist Theodore Dreiser under the auspices of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP).