harlan county coal operators association

He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. Barbara says that she was reacting spontaneously to the spirit and determination exhibited by the women, that their testimony was the highlight of our hearings. 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. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. I've talked to Norman Yarborough, and you ain't bringing no union down here. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. 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. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. the meeting room. There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. As discussed in a previous video. The men and women were released on good behavior. "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. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. My man was mashed up in the mines. "If we could monitor these inspections, perhaps we could cut down on the fatalities," he says. He said that when the coal industry was at its height in 1928, the peak of . Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. From July 30, 2019, through September 28, 2019, coal miners and their families have blocked roads and railways demanding their payment. Rev. The median family income is $4600 a year. One of the better houses is already being demolished. On May 24, 1931, Sheriff Blair rescinded the miners right to assemble and tear-gassed a union rally. Our drive takes us upstream along the yellow-brown Clear Fork River. Afterwards, they gathered near the picket line at the Eastover property in Brookside. The latest unrest in Harlan County came when in July of 2019, Black jewel LLC filed for bankruptcy and liquidation. Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. Wanted to be able to spend their money at a store of their choice besides the Black Mountain Coal Company store. The distance a miner had to walk and how time was looked at was in 15-minute increments. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on 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. There is a suit still in litigation. 4 . But you must remember I am an immoral man. 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". Don Dalton, UMW Safety Director for Region Six, explains this. He fined the UMW $20,000. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Name Entry; Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. Perched atop Inspiration Mountain is the modern Mount Aire Motel. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! Mostly, the miners were fighting for improved working conditions, higher wages, and better housing options for their families. Nannie Rainey says, "I told him if he got my children, he was gonna haveta take me too." Here at Kentucky Tennessee Living we fully support the coal miners and their families. The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act or NLRA) guaranteed the rights of workers to choose to organize. They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. Expand. As in Germany, the AFSC used need alone to determine who got fed. Others say they intend to speak and write about what they have heard. He speaks of "my people" and "my men." They say no action has been taken on this report. Yarborough is tough and unyielding. ", We break for lunch, prepared by the women of the Evarts Community Center. Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. We look back on the film, which screens this Sunday, February . This series of skirmishes and strikes, lasting from early 1931 into 1939, began because of the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association's (HCCOA) decision to cut miners' wages by 10%. They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. 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. I have an Associates Degree from Hazard Community College and Technical School. 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." Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. A historical marker says we are near the Little Shepherd Trail, the setting for the novel Shepherd of the Hills. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. 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. All too many Americans are under the naive belief that, while unions may have been necessary in the 30's, they are no longer needed in the United States today. 2012: $1,552,717. . We are handed copies of court records concerning a certain Claude Beach, who has been hired by Eastover during the strike as a "security guard." Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. It is too early for dolor. After nearly 40 years of working in coalmines, David . We come into Harlan County at dusk. We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. . 1931, only $13.5 million. 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. "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." There is no water in the house. Willard Wirtz says he senses that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is a major factor in the dispute, that it doesn't want a settlement with higher wages and benefits and tough safety provisions to be made by Eastover, because it fears the domino effect of such a settlement on the rest of the companies in the county. Mine operators viciously opposed miners' efforts to unionize, particularly in Harlan County. The miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. Overturned car bodies everywhere. There is one ostentatious feature about him, though: a large, multi-diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand. You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." Drift mines back into the mountains follow the seam of coal wherever it goes." Dalton points out that there were 132 mine fatalities in the United States in 1973, only seventeen of them in UMW mines. The strikebreakers were under the protection of private mine guards. Strikebreakers were often beaten. The most memorable of those are 1964, 1966, 1969 (The West Virginia Black Lung strike that the miners won) 1971, and the 1974 Strikes. So we lay down in the road." Genders. I have also attended the University of Pikeville. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. "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. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. HARLAN COUNTY COAL OPERATORS ASSOCIATION. 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. 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. Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. They're trapped. Available for both RF and RM licensing. She speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. He says that, standing. Find the perfect harlan county coal stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. He discusses the formation and activities of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association . Listen to "Harlan County Coal" from Pistol Annies' album, 'Hell of a Holiday,' out now: https://pa.lnk.to/HOAHAY Chorus:Making decorations out of shotgun she. With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. Eastover agreed to sign the 1971 wage pact of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association which is in force at 1,200 mines. 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. There were ten lodges that were chartered for the National Miners Union. The coal miners, lean and tough from Kentucky mountain life, knew how to fight back. They range in age from about twenty-one to seventy. The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. Captain James Cromer of the state police later tells news reporters, "The women are a problem. The women say they then organized a "sunrise worship service" to begin at 4:30 on the morning of October 23, on the railroad tracks across the highway from the picket line. Interment at Resthaven Cemetery, Keith, Ky. Visitation 6-9 p.m. at the Grays Knob Bible Church. 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. We hope that you have enjoyed our stop in Bloody Harlan and the history of the longest and still ongoing coal struggles of the United States. the foreman would just say, "We gotta run coal. 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." (This . 25 (N.L.R.B. At first, heading northwest on modern Route 23, through Kingsport, Tennessee, Weber City, Virginia, and Gate City, Virginia, the sights are the same as almost everywhere else in America today. Whitfield recalls working in his father's coal mines during the first years of commercial mining in Harlan County, and he describes the conditions. Prior to Miller's election, the union had become corrupt, dictatorial, and a frequent collaborator with the mine owners. ", Bill McQueen says that when the shuttle's lights and brakes were not working and the inspector was coming, the foreman would say, "Park it." 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. National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions Jul 5, 1938. The miners say that, somehow, management always knows when the government inspectors are coming. 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. 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 we're burning up people to make electricity. 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. At Washington's National Airport, I board Piedmont Airline's fat little silver jet on a Sunday afternoon in early March. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. America in the Harlan County Mine Wars, 1931-1939 Carletta A. Bush 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 of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association (HCCOA) and secondly at During the Great Depression of the 1930s coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, struck against the coal operators for better pay and better working conditio. Since the county began mining, over one billion tons of coal have Past that, the other undulating ridges are blue and hazy. Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared . ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. 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. 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. It does not store any personal data. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. More than twenty-four babies out of a thousand die before they are one year old, and the expenditure per child in the public schools is one-half the national average. When fuses blow, they are not immediately replaced; the cable is spliced or "hot-wired" around the fuse. The next morning the toothpicks were still in place, it was said. The sign man for R C Cola has worked this territory well. I have two children and four grandchildren from a previous marriage. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. Crossing the Clinch River, we turn onto Highway 421 and leave the modern world. ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. A rural county of 27,000, Harlan County's average household income is about $29,000. "Boss walks up and says, 'We've got to make this mine look good now, boys; the inspector's comin','" Jerry Johnson says. Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. Some of the women say they haven't had a drink of water since moving to the Brookside camp. In the year of "the energy crisis," Coal is King again at $30 a ton. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. The women spent the night. There's water in the mine because the pumps often won't work. Even pop culture cannot ignore its impact with such shows as Justified. I've got five living children and four dead. She's been picketing with the other women. Their General Secretary recently released some facts which help to illustrate the reason for much of the unemployment in the county. Tuesday morning: Norman Yarborough has agreed to meet some of our group. Most of the land is owned by the mining companies. Some seventy-five state policemen were on hand as the crowd gathered. Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. 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. Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. And you wondr why I keep running my mouth . Enforcing the operators' political will, both within and outside the law, was the Harlan County Coal Operators Association. An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. We're all involved. Now, along a cloudy green stream, or through deep cuts in the mountains, or high atop a timbered ridge, looking down on green quilt-patch valleys, we wind our way toward Harlan. It read: RE-ELECT GAW, JAILER. Harlan County to unionize miners. I look at the government statistics once more. There are very few vacant houses in the county. It was Miller who defeated W. A. "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. But negotiations for a contract with Eastover soon broke down, and on July 30 the miners at Brookside began the strike that now, as we arrive, is in its eighth month. Mr. Nolan, a resident of Cawood, is survived by his wife, Mrs. Stella Nolan . 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. Based on this new Act, from October 27, 1933, to March 31, 1935, the mines ran as open shops. The Harlan Daily Enterprise story of September 16, 1943 is serious and straightforward: 17 miners are trapped a mile underground and help is on the way.. Much of the story is about help. 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 miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. (That is a tough point.) [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . 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. When McQueen was hurt, his foreman drove him to the hospital and left him there, and he was two hours hitchhiking home. 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. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. Yarborough comes out of a staff meeting and ushers us hack to a large, paneled meeting room with folding tables and chairs. The miners speak of other dissatisfactions with Eastover and the old Southern Labor Union contract. However, the battle continues to this day. 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. Source Citation [ }] Descriptive Note Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". It is unclear who fired that shot but both sides claim that the other side did it. 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 . 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. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. ", What about the Southern Labor Union? 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. Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators Association decided to cut all wages by ten percent. Norman Yarborough, head of Eastover Mining Company, is not coming either. Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. "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 Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Before this war was over it is not known exactly how many miners, coal operators, deputies, and bosses would be killed. I have been married to David W. Sergent since May 4, 2013. "Not at all," Yarborough says. Project Summary. Now, forty-three years later, Harlan County is again gripped in a UMW strike, this time at the Brookside mine of the Eastover Mining Company, and another citizens' group has been formed. 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. 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. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . 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. Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. B.W. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. 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. Apparently, this is one of Eastover's major objections. 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 . James Willard Pope officiating. . Middleton died on the scene. After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. However, after the dust was clear, the anti-labor coal country would end up being represented by unions. Looking for protection by the Kentucky National Guard, many were surprised to find that they broke the picket lines instead. The name comes from a series of United Mine Workers strikes and labor-management battles which ended in a gunfight between deputized mine guards and miners on May 4, 1931, in the tiny community of Evarts. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. Is that the only objection that is holding up a settlement? by Ron Soodalter. Funeral Wednesday March 1 at 11 a.m. at Grays Knob Bible Church.