She's been picketing with the other women. The men and women were released on good behavior. Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. 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. We drive through the streets of the town of Harlan, past the stores and houses, past the Harlan Baptist Church with a sign out front which reads: "If you are unkind, you are the wrong kind." Four men were arrested in connection with this murder. Yarborough tells us that the company does not now object to paying the miners for portal-to-portal time for inside mine work, but that the union wants comparability for outside workers too, in effect requiring the company to pay outside workers overtime for all work in excess of a seven and-a-quarter-hour regular day. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. 4 . They want the terms of the standard UMW contract or better. James Willard Pope officiating. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. 2011: $1,161,330. ", What about federal inspection? The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. My man was mashed up in the mines. The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. And lastly, the Harlan Fox Mining Co - presumably derived from the Harlan Fox Coal Co - was in operation from 1925-1932. McDonald's. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. He hopes the other side will do the same. "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. They have probably helped keep their own men from exploding too. Yarborough replies. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. Freda Armes says, "I run him off. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." 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. We agree that most of us lean toward the miners, but we think we can be fair in trying to learn the facts. 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. 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. At first, there were little battles with gunshots being exchanged between the strikers and the private guards, and the local law enforcement agents. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. 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. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. 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. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. . Over one thousand shots were exchanged during those fifteen minutes. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. Only 23 percent of those in the county over the age of twenty-five have completed high school. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. 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. One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. Their General Secretary recently released some facts which help to illustrate the reason for much of the unemployment in the county. When McQueen was hurt, his foreman drove him to the hospital and left him there, and he was two hours hitchhiking home. Why are people allowed to dump raw sewage in the streams? The roof is approximately forty-eight inches high in the mine. And I can't get you off of that couch. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". Jacqueline Brophy is the daughter of Pat Brophy, who went into the mines when he was twelve, and who, in 1926, ran against John L. Lewis and lost. "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. The county was once part of Knox County, only becoming official in 1819. 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. (The union has told us that they are quite willing to limit the contract to the Brookside mine.) Interview Summary. The SLU was largely seen as serving the interests of the mine owners rather than the workers. 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. 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.". Mr. 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. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. 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. Nobody knows how long the UMW can keep paying strike benefits. The decrease in wages, unemployment, and irregular employment caused "poverty, hunger, and disease.". Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. 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 Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. 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. A third generation coal operator, he served as President of the Harlan County Coal Operators and the Harlan Mining Institute, as Vice President of the Kentucky Coal Association and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Associated Industries of 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. It is clear that these women have been a main factor in keeping the mine shut down. No one knows who fired the first shot but when it was over four were . Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. The sign man for R C Cola has worked this territory well. The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. (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.) The Three Point disaster was the worst suffered in the county since December 9, 1932, when 23 men were killed in an explosion in "Zero" Mine of Harlan Fuel Company, Yancey. 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. There are very few vacant houses in the county. Past that, the other undulating ridges are blue and hazy. 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. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. During the rest of the afternoon, the miners talk about what has happened on the picket line and in the local court. "Roof falls are a constant hazard, but the bosses just keep on rushin'.". I've got five living children and four dead. The median family income is $4600 a year. Documents the 1973 Kentucky coal miners' strike against the operators of the Brookside mine and the Duke Power Company, which resulted from the company's refusal to honor the . Why haven't the car bodies been removed from the highway and the streets? The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. After this, the first strike occurred, in which only about 13% of strikers showed up to work. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . Name Entry; Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. There is a suit still in litigation. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations.

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