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. ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. by Ron Soodalter. 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. That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. 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. 1 mine in Evarts, in Harlan County, Kentucky. 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. But relatives did come and take the children. When a miner complains, Jerry Johnson says, the foreman says, "If you don't like it, you can always get your bucket," meaning pick up your lunch bucket and get out. "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. An open shop is where union membership is allowed but not mandated to work at that location. I have taken several classes in Journalism as well as in the Appalachian History, Literature, and Sociology during my time at those schools. The officials were listed were the "veteran safety director of the Harlan Coal Operators Association, and Rufus Bailey and H. Hamlin, state . 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. Duke Power Company appears to be the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiations. Eastover agreed to sign the 1971 wage pact of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association which is in force at 1,200 mines. Exist Dates. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. Even pop culture cannot ignore its impact with such shows as Justified. There is no water in the house. They have done this only since the Brookside strike. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. A historical marker says we are near the Little Shepherd Trail, the setting for the novel Shepherd of the Hills. (There is such a provision in the standard UMW contract.). There were shots exchanged and all three deputies and one striker were killed. The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared . He says that wages are no longer a problem and that the amount of the royalty to be paid into the UMW Welfare & Retirement Fund is not crucially important. 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. (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.) We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. On Friday, October 3, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt called a precedent-shattering meeting at the temporary White House at 22 Lafayette Place, Washington, D.C. A . But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." He does say, I think primarily for the record, that he would like to see negotiations begin again. I've read that in its heyday, the Blackjoe coal camp consisted of 60 or so houses. Isolated trailer houses. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. We huddle before breaking up. Neither will Dr. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and author of Children of Crisis. The strikebreakers were under the protection of private mine guards. Norman Yarborough, head of Eastover Mining Company, is not coming either. USBM Final Investigation Report (1.7 Mb) Successful Rescue . KCA's constitution and by-laws were adopted on April 28, 1947, "to promote the best interest of the coal mining industry in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and all those engaged therein". Since the county began mining, over one billion tons of coal have "I've seen some hurt and some killed. It is not all Duke's fault by any means. There is one ostentatious feature about him, though: a large, multi-diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand. And, all around, there are the rolling mountains, covered with second-growth timber. There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. 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. During the big coal boom in the early 1900s, Harlan County was amongst the largest contributors. Word precedes him. Copy as parenthetical citation. In Harlan County on July 7, 1935, during a celebration of the Wagner Act, a group of disgruntled deputies severely beat up several miners and dispersed the crowd. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. Partial Transcript: August 27, '86. We're all involved. Middleton died on the scene. 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. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. That year, annual wages dropped from $1,235 to $749. The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. It is too early for dolor. The main problem, he says, is that the company wants a "no-strike" clause, so that the union cannot strike during the contract period. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Which Side are You on? The Federal Government, with the Commissioner of Labor in a fact finding role, acted as a 'neutral' for the first time in contributing to settlement of the bitter coal strike. Sudie Crusenberg, a plain woman in a cotton dress, gives us some idea of what life is like for a coal-mining family. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. On top of that, we learn later, the union is spending $108,000 a year for medical and hospital coverage for the striking miners and their families. The Brookside mine is capable of producing only about a half-million tons of the 15 million tons of coal Duke uses each year. I've got five living children and four dead. 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. There were only three cars in the motorcade each of which contained a sheriffs deputy. 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. 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. 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. Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. It was Miller who defeated W. A. The miners charge that Eastover has hired what they call "gun thugs." At first, there were little battles with gunshots being exchanged between the strikers and the private guards, and the local law enforcement agents. . We come into Harlan County at dusk. The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! Why wasn't the fuse replaced at once? Nonunion workers were attempting to leave the mine. 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. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. The Sheriff reportedly got rich on payoffs from the companies, and he used 181 mine company gunmen as special deputies. She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. Is that the only objection that is holding up a settlement? It is also women's day before the Citizens In-quiry. (Brookside) were the only two mines of the Harlan County owner/operators association who rejected a 10% pay increase in 1933. The money was . If any attractive woman became interested in me, I'd think it was a very lovely thing. 2012: $1,552,717. Garbage along the roadside. It does not store any personal data. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. . Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. "Yarborough says he just don't want nobody tellin' him how to run his mine," Deaton says. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . Biographical History . 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. Harlan County to unionize miners. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. He then answers a question he wasn't asked. Available for both RF and RM licensing. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. 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. It was [and still is] used to signify that what happened in the realm of politics, a field largely controlled by men, affect women's everyday lives. 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. 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. 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. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. She talks about the women being armed with sticks, mace . "We took the sticks with us," she says. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. The prospects for settlement do not look good unless Duke begins to feel public pressure. 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.". What did the foremen say on those occasions? McDonald's. Our delegation arrives on time at the Eastover office in Brookside. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. Harlan County sits in the sweet spot of coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. 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. The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. 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. If you wouldn't do it, they'd just say, 'Get your bucket.' But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. 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. Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. No. 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. In the bloody 1930s coal wars, miners known to be union members were fired and evicted from company-owned homes. "Roof falls are a constant hazard, but the bosses just keep on rushin'.". The UMW had made written proposals for compromising these issues a little. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Daniels was one of the most hated deputies in the county due to his anti-union views. They are neatly and attractively dressed. With the added protection for workers and the addition of collective bargaining between the workers and their employers. Our drive takes us upstream along the yellow-brown Clear Fork River.

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