harlan county coal operators association

The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. 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. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . If any attractive woman became interested in me, I'd think it was a very lovely thing. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. If those under them behave in an approved manner then they receive housing, work, food, and other perks of their position. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. 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 transcript will be published as a book. In the year of "the energy crisis," Coal is King again at $30 a ton. 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. I can see twenty-five miles to the southeast, five ridges. Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. Almost immediately after the explosion became known rescue teams, under the direction of J. F. Bryson, safety director of the Harlan County Coal Operators association, started into the entry. The miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. She speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. On May 24, 1931, Sheriff Blair rescinded the miners right to assemble and tear-gassed a union rally. After this, the first strike occurred, in which only about 13% of strikers showed up to work. We come into Harlan County at dusk. "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. Their activities began with a demonstration and march in Harlan on September 27, 1973. Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. "We could lay down, fight the police, or let them scabs go to work. Conflict broke out again the 1970s in what was known as the Brookside strike. The Price of Coal, Part II. In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931 Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. Soon enough, most miners had gone on strike out of solidarity. Captain James Cromer of the state police later tells news reporters, "The women are a problem. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. 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. USBM Final Investigation Report (1.7 Mb) Successful Rescue . Here at Kentucky Tennessee Living we fully support the coal miners and their families. "Then he'd come out looking like a sheep-killing dog and get in his truck and run. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . Kentucky communities discussed include Artemus, Burdine, Jenkins, Jellico, Van Lear, and Wheelwright; and Kentucky counties include Bell, Clay, Floyd, Harlan . 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). But you must remember I am an immoral man. Three Harlan County incorporated towns were not owned by the coal mines, they became a sanctuary for the evicted and starving miners. Harlan Fuel Co. Download PDF. I have attended the University of Kentucky. How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? Seen 'em carried out on a stretcher," she says. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. I have two children and four grandchildren from a previous marriage. Interviews with residents of Hazard who discuss the coal miners' union, the harassment union miners faced from large mining companies, and the unofficial strikes that are being organized in Hazard County. 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. 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. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. 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%. He tells me that the miners plan to picket on Wall Street, hoping to give Duke problems with its stock. My man was mashed up in the mines. HARLAN COUNTY COAL OPERATORS ASSOCIATION. 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. At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". It is home to lawyers, doctors and coal operators; it has a hospital, several banks and a few fast-food . While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . Depression-era Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of one of the most bitter and protracted labor disputes in American history. They fed strikers' children as well as the employed, blacks as well as whites. On Jan. 25, 1890, a new union, the United Mine Workers of America, was formed, and in 1903 its young president, John Mitchell, led the union on a successful 24-week strike. As discussed in a previous video. Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. We drive to the Evarts Community Center and report to the other members of the Citizens Inquiry. James Willard Pope officiating. Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. Interment at Resthaven Cemetery, Keith, Ky. Visitation 6-9 p.m. at the Grays Knob Bible Church. Interview Summary. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. Coal employment in Harlan county dropped 53.7% in the second quarter of this year compared with last year, driven by Blackjewel's bankruptcy. They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. It is the second coal mining fatality in . 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. There were ten lodges that were chartered for the National Miners Union. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. 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 Biographical History . I've read that in its heyday, the Blackjoe coal camp consisted of 60 or so houses. The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. I look at the government statistics once more. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. There were only three cars in the motorcade each of which contained a sheriffs deputy. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. Steeped in Appalachian culture and surrounded by the influence of coal, Harlan County has amassed an interesting reputation and national attention with rest of the world. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Exist Dates. 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. We're all involved. 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. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . These interviews with major coal operators document their personal histories and the history of the coal industry in eastern Kentucky during the twentieth century. The committee has invited owners as well as workers to participate in the hearings, but the impression we get is that management will not appear. "I've got so many duns from the hospital that I just quit lookin' at them. 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. 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. Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! Miners die, and last year was the deadliest in American coal mines in more than a decade. Middleton died on the scene. The warrant was never served. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. the meeting room. We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. A historical marker says we are near the Little Shepherd Trail, the setting for the novel Shepherd of the Hills. They made several attempts at holding strikes against the coal companies, but these failed in Harlan County. We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. 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. 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. 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. With the passage of these acts, there was unrest in Harlan County. But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. However, they did make a greater effort than the United Mine Workers with relief as they opened soup kitchens around the county. 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.