So Im a little out of my jurisdiction in declaring on its regional identity. Eastover refused to sign the contract, so the Brookside miners went on strike. How could I tell? Hearing those words made me feel like Henry had bitten the rattle off the snake and handed it back as some sort of peace offering. A calendar from that year still hung on the wall. Then they leave and were left with all this animosity., The news media wants to push us down and thats why I hate the news media; they write very few good things about Harlan County., Id give anything to go back down there in those mines.. The countys median household income is $25,186, less than half the national median ($53,482). Try again later. In fact, he was born out of wedlock in Harlan in 1946, raised by his grandmother until he was about seven or eight years old. I was thrilled by its real-life drama and intimate portrayal of the miners lives. That was a lot of money back then.. Your Scrapbook is currently empty. We didnt have no rights. Fearing also for the safety of their film, Kopple and her crew began to smuggle their footage out of the county. They also liked to gamble. Greene quoted a New York Times story published in 1938: A Harlan County camp is no weekend resort for sissies.. She came to the door to greet me. In 2008, though, the industry began collapsing. Then his stepfather, a preacher who handled snakes, said, Maybe Ill let him come, he looks old enough to work. If Johnson didnt dig enough house coal as a child, which he collected out of abandoned mines, his stepfather beat him with a coal shovel. COPYRIGHT 2016 IN THESE TIMES AND THE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS. Or that lament No one ever gets Harlan right, the one I had dubbed The Ballad of Harlan County. The lost songs I imagined were altogether different. More than 75 witnesses have been called and about 800 photographs, reports . I wont deny the coal-mining industrys dark side, the fact that Harlans poverty is extreme, nor that my relatives were among the countys staunchest union-haters. Because the strike continues to inspire so much tension in Harlan, he asked that I not use his real name. Glad you enjoyed it! They went around and showed the most dilapidated houses you could find. Later, he considered his family fortunate because neither he nor his seven siblings died from the cold that engulfed the house. After the strike, Lewis married Jerry Johnson, one of the striking coal miners depicted in the film. Blair talked him out of it. He was unmoved. Nolan, age seventy-one, is a retired miner. In the meantime, Im posting a short riff from the latest edition of Oxford American, the annual Southern movie issue. You could make good money. Most of the men are rail-thin, gray cadavers, too polite to push their pamphlets across the divide. Try again later. She went on to live in the region for twenty-five years, making films focused on social and environmental issues with the renowned regional media and arts center Appalshop. Danny Stewart, 30, is a fifth-generation miner who began working in the industry shortly after graduating from high school in 2004. At the time of the strike, Yarborough, Eastovers president, was living in the house where my mother grew up. Just another site. She took some heat from the union, too, which was concerned that she and her crew were getting too close to the miners. The strike is settled soon after, but the UMWA contract quickly expires. I know every weed in the mountains, even here. Miners went down there and got him and drug him out of his office and put a tin bucket around his neck like a drum. Which side are you on? Usery Jr. summoned Eastover president Norman Yarborough and Duke Powers board chairman to Washington, D.C., where they signed the UMWA contract at last. Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code. When they arrived, the first thing my grandfathers cousin Jack asked was, Are you all union? When they answered yes, he said, Then git the hell offa my property!) I stand with the filmmakers on their message about Duke Powers corporate greed. In September 1973, Judge Byrd Hogg, a coal operator in neighboring Letcher County, limited pickets to three per mine entrance, which enabled Duke to reopen Brookside with strikebreakers it imported from Virginia. I don't think we'd have won it without the film crew. Save to an Ancestry Tree, a virtual cemetery, your clipboard for pasting or Print. Learn more about merges. Whatever the reason, new industry has been painfully slow to materialize. A little while ago I was in Southwest Virginia at a political meeting. Some people hold grudges their whole life, said one of the scabs. When she made this movie, Kopple was one of the bravest filmmakers working. Born in 29 Mar 1929 and died in 30 May 2012 , Tennessee Basil Collins Much of the landscape now bears the scars of mountaintop removal mining, a last-gasp effort by coal companies to revive the industry. costco rotisserie chicken nutrition without skin; i am malala quotes and analysis; what does do you send mean in text; bold venture simmental bull; father neil magnus obituary Things are good for the moment, says Judy, 52, who recently moved from part- to full-time status at Walmart. A former VISTA volunteer, she had worked on other documentaries, especially as an advocate of workers' rights. Its a shorthand. Coal mining once provided a middle-class living. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune declared that there have been few better movies about labor struggles before or since.. Oral History Interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, April 17, 1991. In 1973, he moved into camp housing at Brookside. You can always change this later in your Account settings. (On the ground in Harlan, people largely referred to the company by its local affiliate, Eastover.) I dont think they got dental. My question: any thoughts on how to serve this without a bartender? We do them no favor when we dont show them where the trends are going, he said. Here is an edited version of that conversation. Elizabeth later wrote to me: I think today we use the expression blood, sweat, and tears metaphorically, but for the family it was literal. The main skill youll need for any cocktail that uses fresh herbs is called muddling. He sent money home to his family. There were close to one hundred mines back then. It contains a famous scene where guns are fired at the strikers in the darkness before dawn, and Kopple and her cameraman are knocked down and beaten. I have to host something for about 50 in 10 days and I wanted to offer 2 cocktails and 2 mocktails. That was more than coal miners was making., The family lived without running water or electricity because Johnsons stepfather didnt want to pay any rent. Its Appalachian. Up north, Johnson lived under a bridge for a couple of weeks, eating from cans of food that had been bent up bad on the assembly line. Johnson hightailed it out of Harlan and moved to Ohio to work at North American Coal. A year after losing his Highsplint job, Johnson was hired back at Brooksidethen owned by Eastover. Miners wives are dragged off the line and thrown into jail. He officially went to work in the coal mines when he was thirteen years old because his stepfather couldnt dig enough coal to feed the family.. Please ensure you have given Find a Grave permission to access your location in your browser settings. Alex Murdaugh's family long dominated the legal scene in his small South Carolina county but for the past six weeks, Murdaugh has been on the other side of the courtroom, standing trial on murder charges in the shootings of his wife and son. I couldnt see it yet myself. We have set your language to Get more of what the mainstream media leaves out. Johnson hightailed it out of Harlan and moved to Ohio to work at North American Coal. The email does not appear to be a valid email address. Yablonski had challenged W.A. This distinction doesnt matter to most viewers, of courseit never mattered to mebecause we are not attuned to the hyper-local sensibility that is so strong in a place such as Harlan. The same holds true for the hurts that can run through a family. (Elizabeth told a story of when Hollywood producers came to the Kitts Creek mine in the late 1970s, scouting locations for the film, During part of the filming, Kopple and her crew stayed with the Ferguson family until they got wupped, Billy said, describing the scene when the filmmakers were attacked. There are less than a handful of unionized mines left in Virginia, and this wasnt technically a union meeting, but when the man at the front of the room asked for this committee or that one to stand and be recognized, it was miners who rose, every time. Its due to the loose handling of facts that frame the strike at the beginning of the film. Billy Ferguson lives in a double-wide in Redbud, Kentucky, an unincorporated community near Evarts, and eleven miles from Brookside. Someday, years from now therell be a bunch of miners who never even heard of a union, and theyll in vent one. Please check your email and click on the link to activate your account. Before that, he lived in various places around the mountain Southeast, working as a coal miner, an underground union organizer, and a filmmaker. How deep this thing runs you have no idea., He continued, One of those guyshe was on that side and I was on this sidegot saved. At their best Kopple and photographer Hart Perry bear unassuming, expressive witness to the experiences, aspirations and abiding grievances of the Brookside miners and their wives, who organized auxiliary strike actions. Then he still didnt join the union. Brooksides rate of disabling injuries was nearly three times the national rate in 1971. The nearest interstates were about sixty-five miles away in opposite directions, adding to the mines aura of isolation. Scott, whose husband worked at a Harlan UMWA coal mine, located on the other side of the county, lived at least twenty miles from Brookside. They didnt want to make a lot of enemies because you might have to marry into their families., The real story is people coming in here and stirring up controversy. When images of the Brookside camp are cut with ones from a welfare camp that is in far worse shape, their distrust of the film is solidified. This mine is Cranks Creek, not Brookside, a point over which Ive heard my share of fuming. That is, if the family patriarch should survive long enough to come up from underground and die slow and awful of coal miners disease. Are you sure that you want to report this flower to administrators as offensive or abusive? You couldnt starve me to death., The Brookside strike and the union changed Johnsons life for the betterbut so did Kopple and Lewis. We had a lot to eat, but we didnt have enough. The details of his life were things that could combust inside a person one day. Danny cares for his 7-year-old son, Aiden, and occasionally hunts ginseng on the nearby mountains to sell for a few dollars per pound. I had to get on to college. An email has been sent to the person who requested the photo informing them that you have fulfilled their request, There is an open photo request for this memorial. This memorial has been copied to your clipboard. All this turmoil happened in Harlan County in the early seventies, and right now theres some people who are just beginning to speak to me, he said. After Kopple screened the 1954 film. I am proud of my Harlan heritage, in spite of the history I have struggled to accept, and I am proud of Harlan County, USA. My father, the only college graduate among his nine siblings (as I am the only one among my parents four children), had eventually grown tired of being poor and left the church to go into business as a roofing contractor. The scabs discussed the strike and Harlan County, USA interchangeablyand registered plenty of complaints about the film. That strike was about Brookside, but most of the movie was filmed at Highsplint and over in West Virginia, said one man. One day, the scabs pulled out guns and placed them on the table. cemeteries found within kilometers of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. It was enough to feed the Fergusons and their four kids, ages two to thirteen, until a van concealing a machine gun pulled up to his brother Tommys house and opened fire, shooting sixteen holes into the slide of a swing-set Tommy and his wife had just purchased for their children; nine holes into the house; and one into the babys swing. In 1911, the locomotive whistle finally echoed across these valleys, which had been created by the headwaters of the Cumberland River. In 1912, Bryan opened Brookside, whose original company name was Harlan Collieries. Joseph Yablonski was a passionate, populistic union representative who was loved by many of the miners. The film also has a segment on the use of breaker boys, or child laborers who picked slate from coal. That chill didnt leave me after I said goodbye to Johnson. My father was born into a life of backbreaking farm work raising and picking cotton and grew up wearing clothes made from feed sacks. Before I left for Kentucky this springfive years after I first saw the movieI set up interviews with people on both sides of the conflict, including one man who I was told could speak to the company perspective. Shortly thereafter, I got proof that she didnt approve of me, as I had always suspected; in the early 1990s, I had become increasingly outspoken about environmental and liberal causes, and had cut off all my hair, striving to be Sinad OConnorchic. Pretty soon all the guns are out, in broad daylight, and no help is coming, not for the union men (and union women; there never were more fearless soldiers than these mine wives), and not for the gun thugs, either. William Floyd Collins was born on July 20, 1887 , on the Collins family farm, located approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Mammoth Cave near the Green River in Kentucky.He was the third child of Leonidas "Lee" Collins and Martha Jane Burnett, who gave birth to eight children: Elizabeth (died at three months of age), James "Jim", Floyd, Annie, Andy Lee, Marshall, Nellie, and Homer. ), Thank God they signed that contract or Id probably still be in prison, Johnson said, speaking again of the strike documented in Harlan County, USA. Priscilla Stephens ticks off a list of companies that have come and gone: a furniture factory, a long-time furniture store, a sock factory. The hurts that people put on each other during a strike dont heal too easy, said Brookside UMWA miner Junior Deaton. Collapses, explosions and other accidents killed tens of thousands during the 20th century. Search above to list available cemeteries. Are you sure that you want to delete this memorial? Nine months into the strike, a bunch of miners go up to Wall Street to pass out fliers. She took some heat from the union, too, which was concerned that she and her crew were getting too close to the miners. Take the opening scene, when miners descend into a mine. These boys had uniforms! My Whitfield family and the scabs give Harlan County, USA its own special verse. Trivia. This browser does not support getting your location. But there was some on that picket line that had nice homes and nice cars and nice everything. For nearly a century, Harlan County, K.Y., has occupied an outsized place in the American consciousness. Learn how your comment data is processed. Managed by: Carlton William Greve . But when a friend asked her if shed be willing to join the Brookside women on the picket line, Scott said shed be over the next day. They didnt want to see it published, how people was mistreated. Oops, some error occurred while uploading your photo(s). Once I got involved in that strike, it seemed like I couldnt get out, Scott said in an oral history housed at the Godbey Appalachian Center in Cumberland, Kentucky. Basil Collins Duke Power's Henchman I didn't know it then, but Mr. Blanton was a military man a Master Sargeant awarded two Bronze Stars one for serving in the Battle for Okinawa and . I took a good hard look at this ailing place. Shake for 15 seconds until cold. Nolan, who had a family of four to support, said that he didnt want to get messed up in the thing. But when the Brookside miners moved their picket line up the road to Highsplint, there was no escaping getting messed up in it, which many Highsplint miners resented. The family of eight children had little money, but Chester was happy and didnt think of himself as poor. Menu. Harlan had long been infamous for labor disputes and family feuds, but shortly after the sale, a protracted labor strike was captured in the 1976 Oscar-winning documentary film, Harlan County, USA. I felt privileged getting to touch something so wild and fearsome, and I was reminded of that feeling after Henrys declaration. Today, Kentucky coal industry employment is at an astounding low, on par with the figures from 1898 (before the railroad came in). Its stood the test of time and makes the list of the International Bartender AssociationsIBA official cocktails, meaning it has an official definition. I think [the film] saved a lot of people from getting killed, he said. There are not many takers. Are you sure that you want to delete this photo? He and others who had been particularly outspoken on the picket line were arrested soon after the strike ended. Augustus developed a mining operation called Clover Fork Coal Company at Kitts Creek, one mile outside of Harlan Town, as locals called the county seat. Lewis joined him and took a job in a sewing factory until they moved back to Kentucky to make films together, including, Thank God they signed that contract or Id probably still be in prison, Johnson said, speaking again of the strike documented in. Right there, the film loses some Harlan people. When I first saw Harlan County, USA, I was deeply moved by Workman, whom I had assumed was talking about my family. We will review the memorials and decide if they should be merged. After it was all over with they wouldnt speak to you or nothing, neither. My need to walk this land felt like a hand at my back, pushing me ahead of Nolan and Elizabeth and past the two deer that stood to the side of the rutted road. Pine Mountain stood tall to the north; to the south was Cumberland Gap, across which Daniel Boone led settlers. ). This is a carousel with slides. In another scene, a woman talks about how all her life she has considered the company as the enemy, and how her grandfather suffered from black lung. Still, this decision exacerbated how torn I was between yearning to belong to her rarified kin and feeling outrage and compassion for the struggles and hardships I witnessed in my fathers family, to whom I am equally loyal. As of January 1, 2015, theres not a single union coal mine left in the state of Kentucky. Quickly see who the memorial is for and when they lived and died and where they are buried. Learn more about managing a memorial . It's hard to take Basil seriously until he's shooting. I paced my living room, where images of my family sit atop bookcases, including one of my grandfather as a little boy dressed in a sailor suit and giant straw hat, then managed to shakily jot down the words love and your papaw.. This didnt mean that I share this value, but I did share their blood. 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