That commitment has never waivered, and has grown . ", 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. As in Germany, the AFSC used need alone to determine who got fed. 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. Don Dalton, UMW Safety Director for Region Six, explains this. Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. He hopes the other side will do the same. Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. 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. Harlan County, KY, coal miners win affiliation with UMWA union, United What did the foremen say on those occasions? It is clear that these women have been a main factor in keeping the mine shut down. 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. This active organization is made up of those who represent the leader in the mining industry. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. 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. 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. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." Three Harlan County incorporated towns were not owned by the coal mines, they became a sanctuary for the evicted and starving miners. My man was mashed up in the mines. There's water in the mine because the pumps often won't work. Capitalizing on the general . If you wouldn't do it, they'd just say, 'Get your bucket.' Its profits in 1973 were $90 million, up 14 percent from the year before. When filmmaker Barbara Kopple traveled to Harlan County, Kentucky, the resulting Academy award-winning documentary, Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) captured a historic story. Funeral Wednesday March 1 at 11 a.m. at Grays Knob Bible Church. Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. (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.) I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. Throughout 1931, violence sprouted between miners The Coal Strike of 1902: Turning Point in U.S. Policy These disputes were still brewing when on December 8, 1934, the United Mine Workers Union was threatened by deputies and mine bosses. Miners also wanted the right to organize and have a union. 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. Biographical History . "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. "Not at all," Yarborough says. 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." Domesticity and Depression: Kentucky Coal Mining, Song, and Organizing A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. A rural county of 27,000, Harlan County's average household income is about $29,000. In one of these, the septic tank has been out of order for several months. . 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. Freda Armes says, "I run him off. 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. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. "We've took about all we can take," he says. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. 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. 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. (Brookside) were the only two mines of the Harlan County owner/operators association who rejected a 10% pay increase in 1933. 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. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. We hope that you have enjoyed our stop in Bloody Harlan and the history of the longest and still ongoing coal struggles of the United States. Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? Why couldn't Eastover live with the same national UMW contract that so many other companies have accepted? Which Side are You On? : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. ~~ David Sergent. We come into Harlan County at dusk. A Brief History of Harlan County, USA | Labor Notes When they went to jail, they say, some of the women took their children with them. It is the second coal mining fatality in . 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. Harlan County War - Wikipedia Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. 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. Pricing; Switch; Big firm; After this, the first strike occurred, in which only about 13% of strikers showed up to work. 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. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." Rev. Daniels was one of the most hated deputies in the county due to his anti-union views. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. Each contract varied from mine to mine. Appalachia: Coal Operators Oral History Project SPOKEdb The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. 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. I have an Associates Degree from Hazard Community College and Technical School. 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.". : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! No Neutrals: The Harlan County Miner's Strike of 1931 The main problem, he says, is that the company wants a "no-strike" clause, so that the union cannot strike during the contract period. We are handed copies of court records concerning a certain Claude Beach, who has been hired by Eastover during the strike as a "security guard." "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. Three Point Mine Explosion 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. Mine operators formed the 1 Harlan County Coal Operators Association and through this organization made collective decisions concerning the mines. Jacqueline Brophy asks why public services have broken down. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . Free shipping for many products! In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. The median family income is $4600 a year. 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.". Coal companies refused to back down while the Red Cross refused to give aid . Quakers and Bloody Harlan - Appalachian History Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. The union abandoned its efforts after less than a year. The airline magazine contains an article on southern skiing, a feature on hot, winter drinks for the "Piedmont palate," an article on how tough it is to be thirty-three and middle-class today, and a success story about an Atlanta bra, sleepwear, girdle, and pantie company. The Harlan County Coal Wars 1931-1939 - Kentucky Tennessee Living Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. That year, annual wages dropped from $1,235 to $749. Pistol Annies - Harlan County Coal Lyrics | Genius Lyrics Printing - Angelfire 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. Former Director of Harlan County Coal Operators Association. Overturned car bodies everywhere. And lastly, the Harlan Fox Mining Co - presumably derived from the Harlan Fox Coal Co - was in operation from 1925-1932. Duke Power Company appears to be the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiations. 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. Soon enough, most miners had gone on strike out of solidarity. We look back on the film, which screens this Sunday, February . A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? Attempts to organize led to the dismissal of employees who were suspected of having leanings toward the organization and having them evicted from their family homes. Pay ranged from $17 to $32 day, the average being $25. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. (That is a tough point.) 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. Harlan County sits in the sweet spot of coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. 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. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association, were run as open shops from October 27, 1933 - March 31, 1935. 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. Grace Elizabeth Hale. He sentenced nine men and seven women to six months in jail and fined them $500 each. The miners speak of other dissatisfactions with Eastover and the old Southern Labor Union contract. There was no functioning safety committee Medical and retirement benefits were minimal and unreliable. We huddle before breaking up. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. Toilets are built out over the river, and the water has obviously been much higher in the recent past. Unemployment in 2017 was 9.4 percent, far above the national average. There were only nine hundred miners working and 5,800 miners were idle and striking during the first strike. Genders. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. "Try walking out of there, carrying a man with a broken back," one of the miners says. 1940-49 Harlan Co Miners Deaths - USGenWeb sites But is it really hurting? An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. 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. Depression-era Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of one of the most bitter and protracted labor disputes in American history. During the rest of the afternoon, the miners talk about what has happened on the picket line and in the local court. They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. 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. . 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. 5355 after Local Union 4495 at Black Mountain folded up. "Then he'd come out looking like a sheep-killing dog and get in his truck and run. 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.
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