harlan county coal operators association

", What about federal inspection? The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. 5355 after Local Union 4495 at Black Mountain folded up. Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. 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." Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview. He sentenced nine men and seven women to six months in jail and fined them $500 each. 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. An organic shape, small and shiny and pinkish white, sits . The three houses with baths rent for $24 a month, plus $14 a month for electricity. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? The accident was investigated by Rufus Bailey, Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. Enforcing the operators' political will, both within and outside the law, was the Harlan County Coal Operators Association. 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. This active organization is made up of those who represent the leader in the mining industry. It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. Prior to Miller's election, the union had become corrupt, dictatorial, and a frequent collaborator with the mine owners. Big Boy. In one of these, the septic tank has been out of order for several months. 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. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. 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. The SLU was largely seen as serving the interests of the mine owners rather than the workers. Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. Why haven't the car bodies been removed from the highway and the streets? 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. This caused the clergy to denounce the union. Freda Armes says, "I run him off. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. Funeral Wednesday March 1 at 11 a.m. at Grays Knob Bible Church. Paternalism is the practice of people who have a business or other authority to restrict the freedoms of those who are subordinate to them. Betty Eldridge is a mildmannered, well-dressed woman of about forty. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . Harlan County to unionize miners. 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. Blair. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. He says that negotiations were broken off on November 28, 1973, because of the miners' insistence on the full terms of the standard UMW contract. Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. 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 miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. "We took the sticks with us," she says. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) Darrell Deaton says there is a direct telephone line to Washington for safety complaints, "but if you identify yourself; you're gonna be out of a job.". 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. Darrell Deaton, president of the Brookside UMW local, says he was caught in a belt line last year because he had to work alone, without a helper. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' Each of us makes a statement. He discusses the formation and activities of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association . The latest unrest in Harlan County came when in July of 2019, Black jewel LLC filed for bankruptcy and liquidation. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. 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. 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. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. I say that the issue is whether or not the men will be allowed to have their own union to protect their safety and secure and maintain decent wages and benefits, that if enough pressure is put on Duke Power Company, maybe something will give. In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. 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. It is an area of Kentucky that you only go to if you are intentionally going to the county. Interview Summary. Its initial land holdings were in the Irwin gas coal basin in Westmoreland County, but as these were exhausted the company purchased 14,000 acres of undeveloped coal land along the border of Boone and Logan Counties in West Virginia in 1923-28. . Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. It was the most violent attack of the Harlan County Coal wars and the most violence would only last fifteen minutes in total but would forever change the name to Bloody Harlan. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." There were only nine hundred miners working and 5,800 miners were idle and striking during the first strike. We are told that Eastover has announced its intention to tear down the mining-camp houses and move the striking miners out. 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. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. . At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. There is one ostentatious feature about him, though: a large, multi-diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand. Si says Harlan is a dry countyno legal liquor and no beer. There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." Partial Transcript: August 27, '86. Willard Wirtz says that it is important to remember that one side of the dispute felt confident enough about their case to arrange to spread it before the widest possible audience. A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. An open shop is where union membership is allowed but not mandated to work at that location. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. Middleton died on the scene. We never would find out what happened. It is thought that Middleton was assassinated for backing troops who were present in the County to protect the miners. Mr. However, after the dust was clear, the anti-labor coal country would end up being represented by unions. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. This action did not go unnoticed by the labor unions and the United Mine Workers union decided to attempt to organize the already-impoverished labor force of the area. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." "We run because we wanted to testify, and if we hadn't run, he woulda had us in jail." There is a suit still in litigation. Its profits in 1973 were $90 million, up 14 percent from the year before. 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. "Yarborough says he just don't want nobody tellin' him how to run his mine," Deaton says. Three of our Inquiry members plan to talk with the president of Duke Power Company. There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". Make your practice more effective and efficient with Casetext's legal research suite. The Brookside labor dispute erupted spontaneously soon after Miller's election. They are demanding the standard UMW provision requiring the company to pay a royalty of seventy-five cents a ton on mined coal into the UMW Welfare & Retirement Fund. : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! 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. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. Overturned car bodies everywhere. 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. 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. Unlike the previous Coal Wars that took place in West Virginia with the Paint-Creek Strike of 1912 and Matewan that lasted for a year or two. The mining company had ordered a motorcade to deliver food and supplies to the strikebreakers known as Scabs. As in Germany, the AFSC used need alone to determine who got fed. 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. Nannie Rainey says, "I told him if he got my children, he was gonna haveta take me too." They fed strikers' children as well as the employed, blacks as well as whites. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. 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. Some of the women say they haven't had a drink of water since moving to the Brookside camp. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. 1938) Copy Citation . Why couldn't Eastover live with the same national UMW contract that so many other companies have accepted? I can see twenty-five miles to the southeast, five ridges. What a marvelous view! On September 4, 1935, Harlan County Attorney Elmon Clay Middleton, age 31, was assassinated by a car bomb containing eighteen sticks of dynamite. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. 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. 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. 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. Our delegation arrives on time at the Eastover office in Brookside. The Harlan County Coal Wars lasted from 1931-1939. Si has signed on as head of the staff for the Citizens Inquiry, which is funded with a five-thousanddollar grant from the Field Foundation. It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. Lifelong resident of Harlan. How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to . Tuesday morning: Norman Yarborough has agreed to meet some of our group. Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. Visit us and take a step back in time to learn more about how Harlan County helped build a nation at Portal 31 Exhibition Mine tour or come experience the delight of . 25 (N.L.R.B. This was not just a flashy slogan, and the truth of it is . The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. [ citation needed ] On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. 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. Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and Evarts. Wanted to be able to spend their money at a store of their choice besides the Black Mountain Coal Company store. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". or smaller. "We've took about all we can take," he says. We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. On Friday, March 25, a continuous mining machine operator was killed by a wall collapse at the Huff Creek No. When drafting these articles, I found that many things have not been taught to the future generations about the struggles for coal miner rights have been in the Appalachian Mountains. Soon after the "Battle of Evarts," novelist Theodore Dreiser led a citizens' group to Harlan County to find and publicize the bloody facts. In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931 Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . 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%. Destitute miners were in no position to take a 2 wage cut; yet, in February of 1931 the newest in a long series of wage cuts occurred, reducing miners' weekly pay by 10 percent. It is too early for dolor. Others claim that his death was caused by an election concerning slot machines into the county. The money was . There's water in the mine because the pumps often won't work. 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. Mr. Nolan, a resident of Cawood, is survived by his wife, Mrs. Stella Nolan . In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. Duke went into the coal business directly in 1970 when it organized Eastover Mining Company as a wholly owned subsidiary and, through it, bought several mines in eastern Kentucky, including the one at Brookside. Barbara Kopple 's Academy Award-winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. Done Citation. 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. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. Their foothold there ultimately ended because the local clergy who were the labor organizers found out that the union was communist in nature and held animosity toward religion. "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. It is unclear who fired that shot but both sides claim that the other side did it. 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. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". However, the battle continues to this day. KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. And, all around, there are the rolling mountains, covered with second-growth timber. Four men were arrested in connection with this murder. Nobody knows how long the UMW can keep paying strike benefits. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. 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. We come into Harlan County at dusk. Up at seven on a Monday morning, I walk out onto the balcony of my motel room. No concessions or deals were made between the two factions and the membership of the United Mine Workers union plummeted. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association, were run as open shops from October 27, 1933 - March 31, 1935. Others say they intend to speak and write about what they have heard. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." 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. 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. 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. [6] Nearly four thousand miners working and living in Harlan County, Kentucky lost their jobs in the Great Depression. It does not store any personal data. Word precedes him. He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. 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. B.W. But will Norman Yarborough ever agree to recognize the UMW? "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. The miners say that all of the strikers have been blacklisted by the Association. 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. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. At Washington's National Airport, I board Piedmont Airline's fat little silver jet on a Sunday afternoon in early March. 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. Isolated trailer houses. After nearly 40 years of working in coalmines, David . Lois Scott says that the women organized the Brookside Women's Club and got involved in the strike "because we knew that if the women didn't come in there would be violence." 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. 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. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. In the bloody 1930s coal wars, miners known to be union members were fired and evicted from company-owned homes. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. 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. The records show that Beach was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1954 and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary, that he was later charged with carrying a concealed pistol (no disposition shown), and that in 1966 he was tried and acquitted on a murder charge. 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. ~~ David Sergent. They want the terms of the standard UMW contract or better. 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. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. Killed - 12. With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. A month later, back in Washington, I meet with Bernie Aaronson at UMW headquarters. . On the way back to the Mount Aire at the end of the day, we pass back through Brookside with its deteriorating mining-camp houses along the stinking Clear Fork River. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Pricing; Switch; Big firm; It is not all Duke's fault by any means. She says that the women decided that they couldn't fight guns with switches and that they had taken sticks with them the next time. 9:03 PM. That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. A Committee was formed and conducted by Activist Theodore Dreiser under the auspices of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP). I have also attended the University of Pikeville. An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. Only 23 percent of those in the county over the age of twenty-five have completed high school. I've talked to Norman Yarborough, and you ain't bringing no union down here. But what of the people of Harlan County? Yarborough is tough and unyielding. (That is a tough point.) They're trapped. The final straw was when the Harlan County Coal Operators Association cut miners' wages by 10%. 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. Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. Done. Looking for protection by the Kentucky National Guard, many were surprised to find that they broke the picket lines instead. Norman Yarborough, head of Eastover Mining Company, is not coming either. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. There is no water in the house. A reporter asks us again how we can expect to make an unbiased report when we've heard only one side. 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.



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