Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. 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. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . There were shots exchanged and all three deputies and one striker were killed. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. "Why couldn't the original thirteen colonies live with the same British policy that applied to all other British colonies?" "We could lay down, fight the police, or let them scabs go to work. 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. Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. HARLAN COUNTY COAL OPERATORS ASSOCIATION. Yellow-dog contracts (Contracts where the employees agreed to never organize into a union before they were employed with a coal company), company unions, blacklists, all tactics that were employed by the companies to bust up unions, and discrimination-based on union activity were all outlawed under this act. Yarborough is tough and unyielding. The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. Available for both RF and RM licensing. When they went to jail, they say, some of the women took their children with them. 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. 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. These interviews with major coal operators document their personal histories and the history of the coal industry in eastern Kentucky during the twentieth century. They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. In the face of what promised to be a lengthy struggle for the Harlan County coal miners of 1931, their wildcat strike had left thousands jobless and many homeless as well. by Ron Soodalter. Dalton points out that there were 132 mine fatalities in the United States in 1973, only seventeen of them in UMW mines. "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. There were only three cars in the motorcade each of which contained a sheriffs deputy. He decided to make Harlan County a test case in the UMW's new, more aggressive organizing efforts. It was two o'clock on a Monday morning when the accident occurred, and he'd been in the mine., more than twelve hours. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. Interment at Resthaven Cemetery, Keith, Ky. Visitation 6-9 p.m. at the Grays Knob Bible Church. You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." (There is such a provision in the standard UMW contract.). With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. 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. Yarborough comes out of a staff meeting and ushers us hack to a large, paneled meeting room with folding tables and chairs. 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. 8 N.L.R.B. I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." The money was . Special Judge F. Byrd Hogg, a neighboring county judge who has been assigned to the case, entered an early order limiting the strikers to three pickets at each of two entrances to the Eastover Mining Company property. She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. "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. 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. 1931, only $13.5 million. These battles will end the Coal Wars proper. Mostly, the miners were fighting for improved working conditions, higher wages, and better housing options for their families. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. If you wouldn't do it, they'd just say, 'Get your bucket.' Conflict broke out again the 1970s in what was known as the Brookside strike. It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." 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. Based on this new Act, from October 27, 1933, to March 31, 1935, the mines ran as open shops. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . 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. 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." In 1981, he traded coal mining for gold mining as one of the founders of the current . They made several attempts at holding strikes against the coal companies, but these failed in Harlan County. There are nearly 40,000 people in the county, a drop of 36 percent since 1960. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. The Act was an attempt to restructure the industrial sector of the economy and to alleviate unemployment with a public works program. 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. 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. 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. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. The distance a miner had to walk and how time was looked at was in 15-minute increments. My brother died at the age of forty. If those under them behave in an approved manner then they receive housing, work, food, and other perks of their position. 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. 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. 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. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. He says that, standing. A month later, back in Washington, I meet with Bernie Aaronson at UMW headquarters. Overturned car bodies everywhere. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. "We took the sticks with us," she says. Lois Scott, a woman of about forty-five, begins to speak first. Tuesday morning: Norman Yarborough has agreed to meet some of our group. 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. Source for information on Harlan County: Encyclopedia of the Great Depression dictionary. Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared . Norman Yarborough, head of Eastover Mining Company, is not coming either. Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. Here and there, we also see white-blossoming pear and dogwood trees. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators . Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. As in Germany, the AFSC used need alone to determine who got fed. The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. Captain James Cromer of the state police later tells news reporters, "The women are a problem. [ citation needed ] On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. The miners say that, somehow, management always knows when the government inspectors are coming. A Brief History of Harlan County, USA. (That is a tough point.) The final straw was when the Harlan County Coal Operators Association cut miners' wages by 10%. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. Wanted to be able to spend their money at a store of their choice besides the Black Mountain Coal Company store. 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. The SLU was largely seen as serving the interests of the mine owners rather than the workers. Over one thousand shots were exchanged during those fifteen minutes. Miners also wanted the right to organize and have a union. Enforcing the operators' political will, both within and outside the law, was the Harlan County Coal Operators Association. This was not just a flashy slogan, and the truth of it is . 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 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. Soon after the "Battle of Evarts," novelist Theodore Dreiser led a citizens' group to Harlan County to find and publicize the bloody facts. Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. Darrell Deaton, president of the Brookside UMW local, says he was caught in a belt line last year because he had to work alone, without a helper. Done Citation. There were ten lodges that were chartered for the National Miners Union. The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. Our delegation arrives on time at the Eastover office in Brookside. And you wondr why I keep running my mouth . Leroy Helton says he still owes a lot of bills that should have been paid by SLU. Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and Evarts. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. It read: RE-ELECT GAW, JAILER. This active organization is made up of those who represent the leader in the mining industry. Si says Harlan is a dry countyno legal liquor and no beer. He is dressed more like a miner than a mining executive. 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). By 1908 the union had . Following this episode, the women say, Norman Yarborough asked Judge Hogg to hold the UMW and a number of miners and women in contempt of the Judge's order limiting the number of picketers to six. 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. It was Miller who defeated W. A. The miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. "I've got so many duns from the hospital that I just quit lookin' at them. In Harlan County, Kentucky, are some of our country's richest natural resourcesand some of its poorest people. 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. knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. 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. They say no action has been taken on this report. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. And, all around, there are the rolling mountains, covered with second-growth timber. 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 . "Boss walks up and says, 'We've got to make this mine look good now, boys; the inspector's comin','" Jerry Johnson says. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. 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. No concessions or deals were made between the two factions and the membership of the United Mine Workers union plummeted. 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. Where will the families go? Miners die, and last year was the deadliest in American coal mines in more than a decade. 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. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. "If we could monitor these inspections, perhaps we could cut down on the fatalities," he says. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." . Here at Kentucky Tennessee Living we fully support the coal miners and their families. The accident was the second worst mine fatality in the history of Harlan County coal mining, the worst being Harlan Fuel Company . Harlan County to unionize miners. June 17th of that same year, the first strike was over as the last miner had returned to work. As discussed in a previous video. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. Abstract. The sign man for R C Cola has worked this territory well. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. 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. Our driver points out Norman Yarborough's two-story frame house, across the highway from the camp and up out of the river bottom. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. The judge's fines and sentences were appealed. 5355 after Local Union 4495 at Black Mountain folded up. 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. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Burger Chef. There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. 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. The warrant was never served. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". [citation needed] On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. 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. 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. A historical marker says we are near the Little Shepherd Trail, the setting for the novel Shepherd of the Hills. Those with running water rent for around $20 a month, plus electricity. The Brookside mine is capable of producing only about a half-million tons of the 15 million tons of coal Duke uses each year. He discusses the formation and activities of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association . We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. Did she find the stick on the ground? 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. 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. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. Featuring a haunting soundtrack-with legendary country . 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." Whitfield recalls working in his father's coal mines during the first years of commercial mining in Harlan County, and he describes the conditions. It was the most violent attack of the Harlan County Coal wars and the most violence would only last fifteen minutes in total but would forever change the name to 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. . We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. But relatives did come and take the children. The miners, impoverished due to their already low pay (this coming in the form of company scrip, room, and board), decided enough was enough, and some of them . Midway in the trial, Judge Hogg dismissed the jury and directed a verdict of guilty. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. It doesn't seem like enough. Word precedes him. Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. The miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. 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. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. 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. A reporter asks us again how we can expect to make an unbiased report when we've heard only one side. Garbage along the roadside. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. He speaks of "my people" and "my men." Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. 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." And, even so, it usually takes forty-five minutes to an hour for the inspector to get from mine entrance to the face of the coal. 9:03 PM. 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. Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. HARLAN COUNTYHarlan County, Kentucky, is a rural county located in a major coal-mining region in the Appalachian Mountains. "Roof falls are a constant hazard, but the bosses just keep on rushin'.". "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 roof is approximately forty-eight inches high in the mine. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. "Then he'd come out looking like a sheep-killing dog and get in his truck and run. Why couldn't Eastover live with the same national UMW contract that so many other companies have accepted? the meeting room. It will be a two-hour, winding drive through the Cumberland Mountains to the town of Harlan. Make your practice more effective and efficient with Casetext's legal research suite. It is also women's day before the Citizens In-quiry. I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. With the passage of these acts, there was unrest in Harlan County. 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. Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. "We've took about all we can take," he says. But is it really hurting? 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."