He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. One night, they saw a secretary for the Dreiser group enter Dreiser's hotel room, and they placed toothpicks against the door to determine whether she ever came back out during the night. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. Get a Demo. Done. Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. But relatives did come and take the children. Garbage along the roadside. Partial Transcript: August 27, '86. Betty Eldridge is a mildmannered, well-dressed woman of about forty. At Washington's National Airport, I board Piedmont Airline's fat little silver jet on a Sunday afternoon in early March. But what of the people of Harlan County? Daniels was one of the most hated deputies in the county due to his anti-union views. "We run because we wanted to testify, and if we hadn't run, he woulda had us in jail." Duke Power Company appears to be the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiations. On May 5, 1931 the pot boiled over; in Harlan County Kentucky, heavily armed deputies and company men, called "gun thugs" by miners, confronted disgruntled union men on a road near Evarts. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. 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. Tuesday morning: Norman Yarborough has agreed to meet some of our group. One of the towns that were a refuge was Evarts, Kentucky. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. The Price of Coal, Part II. Mr. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. (That is a tough point.) Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. We stop for fish and chips at a chain-operated Long John Silver's Sea Food Shoppe, as out of place in the Cumberlands as a clam in a spruce tree. And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. 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 miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. McDonald's. Duke Power Company of North Carolina, he says, is the sixth largest utility company in the world. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." (The union has told us that they are quite willing to limit the contract to the Brookside mine.) With the passage of these acts, there was unrest in Harlan County. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." Afterwards, they gathered near the picket line at the Eastover property in Brookside. 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. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. 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. "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. On May 24, 1931, Sheriff Blair rescinded the miners right to assemble and tear-gassed a union rally. Faith Primitive Baptist Church. Done Citation. 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. 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 had no safety committee, the miners say, and the federal reports bear them out. Middleton died on the scene. 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. 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 . The Act was an attempt to restructure the industrial sector of the economy and to alleviate unemployment with a public works program. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. They have probably helped keep their own men from exploding too. Among coal miners, Harlan County, Kentucky, is known as "Bloody Harlan." Their General Secretary recently released some facts which help to illustrate the reason for much of the unemployment in the county. Horn's letter questions the fair-mindedness of the inquiry members. 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. The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. 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. No concessions or deals were made between the two factions and the membership of the United Mine Workers union plummeted. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. The National Industrial Recovery Act only partially succeeded in accomplishing its stated goals when it was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on May 27, 1935, which was three weeks before the Act was set to expire. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to . He fined the UMW $20,000. ", What about the Southern Labor Union? It is home to lawyers, doctors and coal operators; it has a hospital, several banks and a few fast-food . Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. 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 . If you protested this safety violation, he says, "the boss would just say, 'Run it.'" 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. The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. Based on this new Act, from October 27, 1933, to March 31, 1935, the mines ran as open shops. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. "The way I figured it, they done that because it was just a faster, way of getting coal." Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. 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. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' June 17th of that same year, the first strike was over as the last miner had returned to work. We soon get into a discussion about Dreiser's 1931 inquiry. Unemployment in 2017 was 9.4 percent, far above the national average. 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. Its profits in 1973 were $90 million, up 14 percent from the year before. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . by Ron Soodalter. Up at seven on a Monday morning, I walk out onto the balcony of my motel room. Miners also wanted the right to organize and have a union. Si says Harlan is a dry countyno legal liquor and no beer. Conflict broke out again the 1970s in what was known as the Brookside strike. 8 N.L.R.B. There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. Captain James Cromer of the state police later tells news reporters, "The women are a problem. Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. He does say, I think primarily for the record, that he would like to see negotiations begin again. 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. 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. What did the foremen say on those occasions? No. 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. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. It is thought that Middleton was assassinated for backing troops who were present in the County to protect the miners. The judge's fines and sentences were appealed. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Which Side are You on? Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Done. 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 . While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. Name Entry; Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. I have taken several classes in Journalism as well as in the Appalachian History, Literature, and Sociology during my time at those schools. Si Kahn says that Eastover tried for a time to operate the mine with "scabs," but that the mine was shut down when the coal miners' wives and other women joined the men on the picket line. 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. 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. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. Pierce mentions the "toothpick incident." 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. 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.
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