terms and conditions. How could I tell? Trivia. Once they killed Lawrence Jones they knew we was gonna kill all of them. The Miners for Democracy leadership negotiates a new contract with a no-strike clause, but few people in the film are happy with this outcome. The phone book listing my grandparents number at Brookside, a long-distance call at that time, dangled from a cord by the telephone. The countys median household income is $25,186, less than half the national median ($53,482). 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. There are gun thugs in Harlan County, U.S.A., in particular a mean, squinty-eyed, jackal named Basil Collins, his pistol sticking out of his Dickies like a goofy cap gun. Were either recovering, in the evolution to something else, or going to near nothing. I have heard similar dirges in other single-industry towns where the economy collapsed, in upstate New York and in Maine, at the northern end of this same mountain chain. tina childress dillon. There was a problem getting your location. Family members linked to this person will appear here. I fantasized about meeting the people captured on film; they were heroes to me. It did feel as though the town had gone from Technicolor to black and white since the last time I visited, in 2004. I had heard that the coal miners memorials in downtown Harlan listed twice as many names as all of the towns war memorial statues combined, and I wanted to see for myself. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary at the 49th Academy Awards. Your account has been locked for 30 minutes due to too many failed sign in attempts. Fergusons wife, Mary Louwhose long brown hair and bangs gave her an elderly girlishnesshad stood on the picket line with him. A lot of the miners dont have it. They were welcomed and cheered on by locals on the union side but harassed by strikebreakers, who Kopple claims once pushed the filmmakers car off the road. Like Henry, these men were now in their sixties and seventies, and retired from the mines but still working in a variety of capacities, from doing occasional contracting jobs to volunteering in the community. I had security. Then he still didnt join the union. But that doesnt quite get at it, either. Meanwhile, the striking miners, many of whom are living in squalid conditions without utilities or running water, were offered a 4% pay increase, at a time when the estimated cost of living increase was 7% for that same year. Lifelong Harlan County resident Priscilla Stephens, 66, recalls the death of her father, Charlie Simpson, from black lung disease in 1966. Its time for us to get just as violent as they are, she says to the Brookside Womens Club, the group of miners wives she began to lead. A little while ago I was in Southwest Virginia at a political meeting. Learn how your comment data is processed. Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code. These boys had uniforms! Get more of what the mainstream media leaves out. 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. Though I did meet a miner who labored in Harlans mines as a child, Henry was adamant that children never worked in the Whitfield mines. We will review the memorials and decide if they should be merged. Almost a full year into the strike, miner Lawrence Jones was fatally shot during a scuffle. 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.. We said, Dont quit. See, everything in the mountains has always been kept silent about child labor and mine safety., Even after the strikes successful completion, Johnson felt that the system was stacked against him and his fellow picketers. A calendar from that year still hung on the wall. In the 1970s, a strip-mining company asserted its ownership over the mineral rights for property he owned and forced him to sell the land. Henry had arranged for me to meet a group of men who grew up in coal camps and worked at Brookside, Highsplint, and other mines in the 1970smen who were all on the company side of the strike. Many of his friends have faced similar challenges and left the area, but Danny says he has no plans to move because he has a lot of family nearby. (Most people who stood on the Brookside picket line are no longer alive.) If you have questions, please contact [emailprotected]. Coal mining once provided a middle-class living. His pain began in 1983 after a rib rolla mine roof support collapsesent a big old rock into his back, forcing him into early retirement. I dont think they got dental. Thats not to suggest that the mood was tense or unfriendly; it felt like changing shifts. But a different storyline and song emerged. Early in the film Boyle is shown in good health. More to explore. Bobby has continued the work since Beckys death, but the number of volunteers (like those photographed here with Bobby) has dwindled. I asked him how he felt about the UMWA. (On the ground in Harlan, people largely referred to the company by its local affiliate, Eastover.) I was intensely aware that if someone came upon the place with violent intentions, Elizabeth and I would have been trapped. Meanwhile, coal continues to fade from the energy landscape. They talk Southern and theyre red state, if you believe in that kind of color-coding, but I dont and I also dont think that the way you bend and drag your vowels defines the country you come from. I couldnt see it yet myself. Joseph Yablonski was a passionate, populistic union representative who was loved by many of the miners. I had imagined someone far more hard-edged than the clean-cut preppyish man who sported a V-neck sweater and button-down shirt, appearing like a suburban, golf-loving grandfather. Found more than one record for entered Email, You need to confirm this account before you can sign in. Flowers added to the memorial appear on the bottom of the memorial or here on the Flowers tab. Are you sure that you want to delete this photo? He agreed to take my call because he worked for and loved my grandfather. . 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. Elizabeth and I are the same age and share the same given name. Some of the politicians say theyll bring the coal back, but the coal will never be back., Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. I dont know the miners name. It had seemed like an ordinary cemetery to me until my mother showed me the family mausoleum, a large and elaborate marble structure. But I also see now why the film is so upsetting to my family. My grandfather went into the mines with his men every day and he died of lung cancer, she later wrote. L. Winship Award for Best Work of Nonfiction of 2010. It seemed as though all of Harlan comes to this restaurant, including union men and women. I attempted to capture a panorama with my phone as the light broke through the clouds, Jesus-ray style. Im also resolutely on the side of the films pro-union stanceIm a union member myself, at New York University. Later, after he was convicted of giving $20,000 to another union executive council member to hire the killers of Yablonski and his wife, Boyle appears frail, sickly and using a wheelchair; he was carried up the courthouse steps to face sentencing. When you get up in the morning and you got to take a hammer to make a hole in the water bucket to get you a drink of water, now that aint no good old days, he says. You have to forgive, but a lot of people dont forgive. 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. This account already exists, but the email address still needs to be confirmed. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. There is 1 volunteer for this cemetery. Why must this song chase her to the grave? This isnt a Southern story, its a bunch of cussing, shooting, old, creaky singing-shadows in Platos cave. We mourn with the family of Basil Collins for this great loss. We was done dirty and done wrong.. or don't show this againI am good at figuring things out. This is ours., Johnson sounded as though he had walked straight out of a Woody Guthrie song. Weve updated the security on the site. My visit fell during the week of Super Tuesday, and the men chorused over cups of coffee about the Detroit GOP presidential debate (Ive been at rooster fights that werent as entertaining as last night) and the communitys demise. Things are good for the moment, says Judy, 52, who recently moved from part- to full-time status at Walmart. Were left here trying to figure out what were going to do. Authors of recipes you'll want to make again and again. When miners at the Brookside Mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, went on strike against Duke Power Company in June 1973, Kopple went there to film the strike, which the UMWA had helped to organize. They all hollered If you hadnt of talked me into it I wouldnt of done it. As for his non-striking coworkers, men like Nolan who were wary of getting involved, they said we was trying to push the UMWA down their throats. No animated GIFs, photos with additional graphics (borders, embellishments. 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. Top with soda water and garnish with additional cucumber slices and basil. I was thrilled by its real-life drama and intimate portrayal of the miners lives. How can we be the enemy? There were plenty of reasons why the Whitfields could be the enemya point I knew my cousin also understandsbut Harlans mines were not all the same. Sorry! Though this made me comfortable in an otherwise unfamiliar place, I was all too aware of the fact that my Harlan County identity was as a member of my mothers sidepeople who occupied a very different rank. The couple later founded the Cranks Creek Survival Center, a nonprofit that provided food, clothing and home repairs to area residents for decades. Robert Simpson, 58, mined for about a dozen years in the 1980s and 1990s before becoming a carpenter. Usery Jr. summoned Eastover president Norman Yarborough and Duke Powers board chairman to Washington, D.C., where they signed the UMWA contract at last. Get recipes worth repeating and more from A Couple Cooks, straight to your inbox. 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. Learn more about merges. Get more of what the mainstream media leaves out. At the beginning of my trip, I assumed most of my conversations would fixate on the paston the strikes of the 1930s and the 1970s, and the local repercussions of Kopples film. You got dental?. Your new password must contain one or more uppercase and lowercase letters, and one or more numbers or special characters. Eastern Kentucky has been especially hard-hit: The number of miners employed in Harlan County fell from more than 3,000 in 1988 to fewer than 1,000 in 2014. A year after losing his Highsplint job, Johnson was hired back at Brooksidethen owned by Eastover. Mud sucked on my boots. Youll either be a union man or a thug for J. H. Blair. But what if a person is both of these things at once, or interchangeably? Because the strike continues to inspire so much tension in Harlan, he asked that I not use his real name. Fill the rest of the glass with club soda, and give it a gentle stir with a spoon. My Whitfield family and the scabs give Harlan County, USA its own special verse. Kopple and her crew spent years with the families depicted in the film, documenting the dire straits they encountered while striking for safer working conditions, fair labor practices, and decent wages. Duke Power didnt want that to be filmed, he said. We dont have no money to pay nothing with, Bobby says. All photos appear on this tab and here you can update the sort order of photos on memorials you manage. Oops, some error occurred while uploading your photo(s). The county has lost five percent of its population in the last ten years, as though Aunt Molly Jacksons Kentucky Miners Hungry Ragged Blues and the Seldom Scenes Leaving Harlan are playing in the hollows on repeat. Several times she is seen publicly chastising those she feels have been absent from the picket lines. When I asked him what inspired him to join the cause, he said, I was fighting for myself and everybody else. This restaurant, including union men and women Eastover., straight to your inbox men... 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