"It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. We agree that most of us lean toward the miners, but we think we can be fair in trying to learn the facts. Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' 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. Dateline New York City, November 13, 1931: Dreiser again denies the charge and adds, "Even if it were true, I wouldn't give a damn. The warrant was never served. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. They had no safety committee, the miners say, and the federal reports bear them out. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. 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. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. It is the second coal mining fatality in . 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. Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. 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. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. We come into Harlan County at dusk. On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. No concessions or deals were made between the two factions and the membership of the United Mine Workers union plummeted. Miners die, and last year was the deadliest in American coal mines in more than a decade. (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.) Genders. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. The accident was the second worst mine fatality in the history of Harlan County coal mining, the worst being Harlan Fuel Company . Biographical History . 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. 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. Harlan County to unionize miners. Kahn says that the miners were encouraged by Eastover's management, headed by Norman Yarborough, to join a small "company union," the Southern Labor Union. Bill McQueen says that the shuttle car into the mine usually has no brakes, and that it can only be stopped by putting it in reverse. 8 N.L.R.B. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." "A gun thug pulled a gun on us, and I broke a switch over his head, and the little gun thug pulled out," Lois Scott says matter-of-factly. Coal employment in Harlan county dropped 53.7% in the second quarter of this year compared with last year, driven by Blackjewel's bankruptcy. Abstract. 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. The money was . With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." "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 . They are neatly and attractively dressed. Where will the families go? Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions Jul 5, 1938. It was two o'clock on a Monday morning when the accident occurred, and he'd been in the mine., more than twelve hours. And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. "The way I figured it, they done that because it was just a faster, way of getting coal." The next morning the toothpicks were still in place, it was said. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! 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. They point out that most of the big coal companies, such as U.S. Steel and others, have signed UMW contracts, but that the smaller companies of eastern Kentucky have held out. 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." ", What about the Southern Labor Union? These interviews with major coal operators document their personal histories and the history of the coal industry in eastern Kentucky during the twentieth century. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931 Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. The Act was an attempt to restructure the industrial sector of the economy and to alleviate unemployment with a public works program. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . Kentucky communities discussed include Artemus, Burdine, Jenkins, Jellico, Van Lear, and Wheelwright; and Kentucky counties include Bell, Clay, Floyd, Harlan . It does not store any personal data. At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. We are told that Eastover has announced its intention to tear down the mining-camp houses and move the striking miners out. 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." 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. ", We break for lunch, prepared by the women of the Evarts Community Center. But you must remember I am an immoral man. 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. From July 30, 2019, through September 28, 2019, coal miners and their families have blocked roads and railways demanding their payment. HARLAN COUNTYHarlan County, Kentucky, is a rural county located in a major coal-mining region in the Appalachian Mountains. Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. One of the better houses is already being demolished. 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 Sheriff reportedly got rich on payoffs from the companies, and he used 181 mine company gunmen as special deputies. It was settled in 1819 by Virginians led by Samuel Howard and was known as Mount Pleasant until renamed in 1912 for Major Silas Harlan, who was killed during the American Revolution at the Battle of Blue Licks (August 19, 1782). There was a scuffle when a state police captain tried to remove one of the women, she says, adding, "Captain Cromer did get hit several times; I hit him with a stick myself." Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. Si says Harlan is a dry countyno legal liquor and no beer. The roof is approximately forty-eight inches high in the mine. "Not at all," Yarborough says. 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 seems that unfriendly local law enforcement officials kept a constant surveillance on Dreiser, hoping to catch him in something that would justify a criminal charge against him. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. 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 . They fed strikers' children as well as the employed, blacks as well as whites. Killed - 12. Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. We are joined by Bernie Aaronson, the young public relations director of the UMW, and John Ed Pierce, a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal. On Friday, March 25, a continuous mining machine operator was killed by a wall collapse at the Huff Creek No.
Claudia Procula Biography,
Richard Prescott Obituary,
Brisbane Mum Influencers,
Articles H