Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, and elsewhere. or don't show this againI am good at figuring things out. The phone book listing my grandparents number at Brookside, a long-distance call at that time, dangled from a cord by the telephone. Its all too clear that the Harlan County Wars could reignite at any minute. Please report any issues toinfo.crmnyu@gmail.com. We said, Dont quit. Theres no telling how many guns were out there. People on the picket lines were not allowed to have them, but guns abounded on both sides. But for each gain the union made, the owner-operators worked harder to drive them out. Jones was well liked, young, and had a 16-year-old wife, and a baby. Shake for 15 seconds until cold. Much of the landscape now bears the scars of mountaintop removal mining, a last-gasp effort by coal companies to revive the industry. Billy Ferguson had the thick build of a man who has worked hard his entire life but whose energy has been sapped by illness and age. We was done dirty and done wrong.. The people that was on strikethe people that was on the picket linesdidnt work at Brookside. GREAT NEWS! For nearly a century, Harlan County, K.Y., has occupied an outsized place in the American consciousness. An early scene depicts workers descending into a mine, followed by the title and shots of the Brookside camp and office front porch. I know every weed in the mountains, even here. All the same, Im positive that theyre not Southern. For Harlanites on the company side, this undermines the documentarys integrity and leads them to question its larger takeaway. A system error has occurred. Bobbys wife, Becky, who died in 2013, was a lifelong advocate for the people of Harlan County. They also liked to gamble. Greene quoted a, This year also marks the fortieth anniversary of the release of, There was no truth in that movie, Henry said over the phone, reacting as though I had passed a rattlesnake through the line when I said I was a fan of, At the restaurant, I sat quietly to listen and learn; I hadnt come all this way to argue or seek validation for my beliefs. One of the issues is water. It was just ragged and rough and they didnt care what went on.. The scabs discussed the strike and Harlan County, USA interchangeablyand registered plenty of complaints about the film. Find Basil Collins's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading people search directory for contact information and public records. Jordan Smith, who grew up singing in Harlan County churches, gave the country a taste of Harlans wholesome side during the 2015 season of The Voice. Harlan County is a symbol, said Greene. A Brookside mine foreman named Basil Collins says the unions are filled with "known communists" out to destroy the country. Kopple also alleges that Basil Collins threatened to kill her. Im definitely not in New York City anymore, I said. Ferguson is a pro-UMWA miner who appeared in Harlan County, USA. The story surrounds the Brookside miners efforts to have Duke Power sign the UMWA national contract, as well as the group Miners for Democracys attempt to clean up the union after decades of corrupt leadership under president Tony Boyle. 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. It exposed the politics of that county. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune declared that there have been few better movies about labor struggles before or since.. Get recipes worth repeating and more from A Couple Cooks, straight to your inbox. "[2], When the film was re-released in 2006, critic Roger Ebert praised the film, writing "The film retains all of its power, in the story of a miners' strike in Kentucky where the company employed armed goons to escort scabs into the mines, and the most effective picketers were the miners' wives -- articulate, indomitable, courageous. Share this memorial using social media sites or email. She took some heat from the union, too, which was concerned that she and her crew were getting too close to the miners. cemeteries found within miles of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. Latest on Kentucky Wildcats forward Daimion Collins including news, stats, videos, highlights and more on ESPN When people need to trot out poverty, labor violence, or feudalism, they use Harlan County, and thats part of our problem here. Of course, in coming back to follow the trail of this strike and film, Im yet another outsider mining the very history that the town would like to escape. I thought you might like to see a memorial for Basil Collins I found on Findagrave.com. Its due to the loose handling of facts that frame the strike at the beginning of the film. I thought of the ribbons gathered by Johnsons grandmother, ribbons that were very likely tied around arrangements made by the hands of my own grandmother, who owned the flower shop in town. Thats what I call a ghost story. Verify and try again. Kopple also alleges that Basil Collins threatened to kill her. To visit him, I drove into the mountains up the Clover Fork valley, where fog smoldered across the hills in ghostly wisps. The UMWA spent more than $1.5 million on the Brookside strike, the equivalent of $8.6 million in todays dollars. They also inspired a series of vengeance killings, creating a nearly biblical succession of murders in what was already a violent place. Blair talked him out of it. This pastime led to the discovery of Crystal . What drink to make with basil? Environmental groups say other factors, such as the abundance of cheap natural gas, are behind coals slump. To compare it to a museum would be inaccurate. You can call us scabs. They had no problem with the term whatsoever. terms and conditions. It had seemed like an ordinary cemetery to me until my mother showed me the family mausoleum, a large and elaborate marble structure. That was just to razz me in good fun, a show of Harlan Countys enduring frontier spirit. Things are good for the moment, says Judy, 52, who recently moved from part- to full-time status at Walmart. (To cite but one example: Boyle had ordered the murder of his 1969 challenger Jock Yablonski, along with his wife and daughter.) I hope its a true one. Next came a scene of a wizened old man singing and talking about how his bosspresumably the prior owners of the Brookside minesaid his mule was worth more than him. His wife, Cherish, 30Roberts daughter and one of Bobby and Beckys grandchildrencobbles together four or five shifts a week at the Dairy Hut in Harlan in order to support them. 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. I grew up far from the world of Harlan, Kentucky, and far from the wealth of my coal-operating Whitfield kin. What you see is the reason why I moved here, said Johnson, who recently left Liberty, Kentucky, where he still owns property. To startwith, lets get at least one thing straight: Harlan County, Kentucky, the location of Barbara Kopples 1976 documentaryHarlan County, U.S.A., isnt really the South, is it? What happens in the movie is this: The men of the Brookside Mine in Harlan go on strike because the Duke Power Company refuses to recognize their right to join the United Mine Workers of America. In 1973, Ferguson was working the roof bolt machine at Highsplint, which helps to stabilize the mine roof. Ive got a spring up there thats out of this world and I dont have to own it. I felt privileged getting to touch something so wild and fearsome, and I was reminded of that feeling after Henrys declaration. It just so happened that this particular side was our family. This shocked and horrified me. She talks about incidents of violence during the standoff. Failed to report flower. Please try again later. I fantasized about meeting the people captured on film; they were heroes to me. My great-grandfather Howard, who was president of a mining rights company, was run off a snowy mountain road in 1947, his car later found at the bottom of a hollow, his body stripped of his wallet and watch. All agree on the regions bleak present and dim future. . Are you sure that you want to delete this memorial? Unemployment has hovered at 13.5 percent, one of the highest rates in the state, steadily forcing people out. You can customize the cemeteries you volunteer for by selecting or deselecting below. In 1973, he moved into camp housing at Brookside. Ferguson was blacklisted at other mines. Your new password must contain one or more uppercase and lowercase letters, and one or more numbers or special characters. She came to the door to greet me. Suggest an edit or add missing content. He sent money home to his family. Perhaps thats why Johnsons story about Jack haunted me. A year after losing his Highsplint job, Johnson was hired back at Brooksidethen owned by Eastover. Failed to delete memorial. When we greeted each other, he knocked on his very nice teeth, an exaggerated gesture to show me theyre real. Because the strike continues to inspire so much tension in Harlan, he asked that I not use his real name. The community is not only suffering, says Chester Napier, 75, a former mining company driver. I met many people who were on the Brookside picket line, and they would swear on a Bible to the films accuracythough some do note how the sequencing of certain events was changed, which allowed for the creation of a story arc. That kind of shows you where works at, Nolan said. Runoff flowed around my feet, gentle but quick. That is, until one night, away from the picket line, when a pro-company manalso known as a scabmurders twenty-three-year-old Lawrence Jones, leaving behind his sixteen-year-old wife, four-month-old daughter, and elderly mother, who collapses with grief at the funeral. 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. Back when I was eighteen, you could go any direction you wanted to and get you a job, but now youre lucky to find one. Coal mining was Americas most dangerous occupation by the 1970s. Are you sure that you want to report this flower to administrators as offensive or abusive? 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 Related news. It was time for Elizabeth to leave for work at her familys firewood-packing business, which they started to help improve Harlans economy after coals collapse. You have to forgive, but a lot of people dont forgive. Right there, the film loses some Harlan people. Weve updated the security on the site. You could make a batch of the main ingredients in a pitcher and have people do equal parts mix and soda water (it would be slightly more watered down but still taste great). Try again later. I later learned that his scene was filmed in West Virginia, where he lived and worked. When I first saw Harlan County, USA, I was deeply moved by Workman, whom I had assumed was talking about my family. You have chosen this person to be their own family member. In Episode 2 of the The Drunk Projectionist, producer and host Todd Melby interviewed Barbara Kopple about Harlan County USA, her impressive first film.The 1976 documentary won an Academy Award. 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. Purchase a copy ofHarlan County, U.S.A. here. The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that natural gas will replace it as the nations primary source of electricity in 2016. Harlan County, USA is a 1976 American documentary film covering the "Brookside Strike",[1] a 1973 effort of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky. As I drove to the airport to return home, I looked across the hills and mountains toward Kentucky and thought of something else Jerry Johnson told me. Miraculously, only two people got shot. His wife, Annie, died about a decade ago. I had one of these last night at an event and it was lovely. Contribute to this page. Ive walked other empty, nearly desolate downtowns. Their jail sentences lasted just long enough to force them to lose their jobs. Fergusons wife, Mary Louwhose long brown hair and bangs gave her an elderly girlishnesshad stood on the picket line with him. Old men recall being paid six cents an hour for fourteen-hour days inside unsafe mines, and claim that the state government, the Catholic Church and the old union worked with coal officials against the miners. Just another site. Your papaw was a man of the truth and theres not a bit of truth in that film.. Translation on Find a Grave is an ongoing project. Johnson hightailed it out of Harlan and moved to Ohio to work at North American Coal. That was a lot of money back then.. gyles brandreth family tree. My maternal grandmother was the last of my grandparents to die, in 2001. Last year, his administration announced $14.5 million in federal grants for job retraining and other initiatives to help displaced coal and power industry workers. Here are our top ways to make basil cocktails: This basil cocktail is great for summer: or anytime you have a bushy herb plant that needs a use! A calendar from that year still hung on the wall. Hundreds of volunteers came each year to fix porches, hang dry wall and mend roofs. [2], When Kopple and her cameraman Hart Perry showed up on the picket line, the locals were suspicious of their intentions. Flowers added to the memorial appear on the bottom of the memorial or here on the Flowers tab. I could survive in those hills. If the film crew hadn't been sympathetic to our cause, we would've lost. 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. Im home where I want to die at, in these mountains here, he says. Just before this contract ran out in 1973, Brookside miners voted to join the UMWA. Which side are you on? Several times she is seen publicly chastising those she feels have been absent from the picket lines. . They also included the unwritten murder ballads by all the countys vengeance killers, including the one who murdered my great-grandfather Howard. Hazel Dickens's folk song lyrics of 'United we stand, divided we fall' and Florence Reece's lyrics for "Which Side Are You On?" Make sure that the file is a photo. Which side are you on? 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. Blair The countys communities, most of which are former coal camps snuggled into the mountains at elevations as low as 1,191 feet, were obscured by the Clover Fork valleys deep hollers and folds, except for Ages, which was visible just across the way beyond the mines rusted-out tipple. No unionized mines remain in the state. Lois Scott, a leading woman in the mining community, is shown playing a major role in galvanizing the people in support of the strike. When the labor union known as the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) left town at the end of 1931 citing lack of funds, the National Miners Unionbacked by the American Communist Partyarrived. If you look at it from the road, youd think it was booming, says Burkhart, 56, a former coal tipple operator who has also developed black lung. The company men have names, the organizers have names. It could have turned out real bad there, if one shot had been fired. Harlan County, U.S.A. is a ghost story. Whatever the reason, new industry has been painfully slow to materialize. By Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, Photography by Jon Lowenstein. Coal ranks as the largest source of carbon emissions. tina childress dillon. Now the trains arent even running anymore. . "Harlan County, U.S.A. movie review (2006)", "Complete National Film Registry Listing", "Sight and Sound Publishes Top 50 Documentaries List | IndieWire", "The Best Documentaries of All Time | Sight & Sound", "Barbara Kopple Reflects on Joys and Dangers of Filming Harlan County, USA", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harlan_County,_USA&oldid=1129812783, Norman Yarborough - Eastover Mining president, John Corcoran - Consolidation Coal president, John O'Leary - former US Bureau of Mines director, Donald Rasmussen - Black Lung Clinic, West Virginia, "Forty-Two Years", written and sung by Nimrod Workman, instrumental by Kenny Kosek, "Come All You Coal Miners", written and sung by, "Black Lung", written and sung by Hazel Dickens, "Cold Blooded Murder", written and sung by Hazel Dickens, "Miners Life", traditional instrumental performed by David Morris's Band, "Which Side Are You On", written and sung by Florence Reece (as Florence Reese), additional lyrics by Joshua Waletzky (as Josh Waletzky), "This Little Light of Mine", written by Harry Dixon Loes (uncredited), sung by, "Trouble Among Yearlings", instrumental by Country Cookin', "Lone Prairie", by Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward, "They'll Never Keep Us Down", written and sung by Hazel Dickens, accompanied by Lamar Grier, John Katarakis, John Otsuka, and Gary Henderson, In 1990, the film was selected for the United States, Gail Pellet, "The Making of Harlan County, USA: An Interview with Barbara Kopple,". 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. This is ours., Johnson sounded as though he had walked straight out of a Woody Guthrie song. Perhaps this was ultimately why labor issues burn people up so terribly, because they always come down to familythe families were born into along with the ones we raise, and the brotherhood and sisterhood that work creates for us, especially down in the mines, and for men like Ferguson and Johnson. Then you had the fact that everybody carried guns. That chill didnt leave me after I said goodbye to Johnson. Years after the strike, Eastovers president, Norman Yarborough, conceded that the UMWA out public-relationed us all over the place. The union launched a highly effective national Dump Duke campaign urging people to dump Duke stock; they sent miners in their work clothes to the New York Stock Exchange floor. I thought of us as the two faces of Janusshe looking toward Harlans future and I looking to its past, two members of a generation trying to make something of our respective Harlan legacies. Self: Harlan County U.S.A. But in Henrys voice I also recognized something of my own fanged passion for the people I love. Over this they were none too pleased, which poses a problem: I love the film. From an early age, Floyd developed a hobby of exploring caves. Do n She took some heat from the union, too, which was concerned that she and her crew were getting too close to the miners. Some people hold grudges, echoed Henry. Black Mountain, Kentuckys highest peak, tops out at 4,145 feet, marking the edge of Harlan County and the Virginia border to the east. Home Recipes Drink Recipes Cocktails. 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. A miner who, until this conversation, thought that at least the compensation he received for working one of the most dangerous jobs in America was decent, says no, he does not have dental. I was curious about Henrys words but wary of accepting them, reminding myself that I had to keep my own biases in check. Kopple initially intended to make a film about Kenzie[citation needed], Miners for Democracy and the attempt to unseat Tony Boyle as president of the UMWA. He shut down that coal mine and stacked all his belongings and equipment up and never used them again and never mined coal again in his life.. An illustrated postcard from 1915 shows the town pleasantly nestled in a crook of the river and bears an optimistic motto: Harlan, Ky., Aint What Its Going To Be.. All the way to New York. In its 1889 coverage of a notoriously cold-blooded feud concerning the Turner and Howard families (both of whom happen to be my ancestors), the New York Times wrote: The country is wild, and the whistle of a locomotive has never been heard by many of the inhabitants. At the time, the county had a population of about six thousand. Learn more about merges. Nine months into the strike, a bunch of miners go up to Wall Street to pass out fliers. As I walked toward Nolan and Elizabeth, who were already heading to the car, I set my back to these thoughts and the surrounding peaks. 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. 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. They went around and showed the most dilapidated houses you could find. This account has been disabled. (The Revealer has been wobbly of late while Ive been attending to other duties, but the spring crunch is almost past. Trivia. Eastover refused to sign the contract, so the Brookside miners went on strike. I took a good hard look at this ailing place. And while hes open to working in other industries, jobs anywhere are in short supply. Cans of coffee, cracker tins, Radio Girl perfume, dresses with sweetheart necklines, and shoes in their original boxes all sat on the shelves, ready to be sold. 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. Harlan is on the cusp of a very important time right now, one of the scabs had said to me. The Revealer should return to regular form within a week or so. You got dental?. Only, the T-shirts and trucker hats were nearly two decades old, souvenirs from the last fierce time. Please complete the captcha to let us know you are a real person. The scabs discussed the strike and, For me, said Lewis, right at the beginning of the film youre kind of dealing with the broader picture and then narrowing in. The intended broader picture is the greater American coal industry, the USA in, 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. There was no truth in that movie, Henry said over the phone, reacting as though I had passed a rattlesnake through the line when I said I was a fan of Harlan County, USA. Its Appalachian. Me and him put it behind us. Youre safe here with us.. 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. Fill a Collins (tall) glass with ice. Duke Power didnt want that to be filmed, he said. 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. 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. 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. We will review the memorials and decide if they should be merged. Top with soda water and garnish with additional cucumber slices and basil. 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. In a cocktail shaker, muddle the basil leaves. It crackled with the sound of logs being cut in the splitter. But there was some on that picket line that had nice homes and nice cars and nice everything. The people in the movie didnt work at Brookside. 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. Rowlett moved back after securing a coveted position at the railroad company less than an hour away. It rippled cross the country I remember running into a camouflaged crew in Southern Illinois thatd just set a fox they said was rabid on its way down into a mine full of scabsbut I never was able to figure out who won. Jackie Stump says: There may not be a real fighting union again in his lifetime. Most of the men are rail-thin, gray cadavers, too polite to push their pamphlets across the divide. In choosing my handsome preacher father for a husband, a man whose harsh Depression-era Georgia tenant farm upbringing was closer to that of a coal miners than to that of my mothers company familys, she had married down in her relatives eyes. It may have been Prohibition, Greene told me as we sat on an overstuffed couch at the Little Inn, the Harlan bed-and-breakfast where I stayed, but there was moonshine going all over the place. The documentary concludes with the message that the miners struggle is forever ongoing. Save to an Ancestry Tree, a virtual cemetery, your clipboard for pasting or Print. In one scene, Scott pulls a pistol from her bra. As of January 1, 2015, theres not a single union coal mine left in the state of Kentucky. Please ensure you have given Find a Grave permission to access your location in your browser settings. Thousands of others from Appalachia made the same migration. Trending. Parts of the documentary troubled me, though. Usery Jr. summoned Eastover president Norman Yarborough and Duke Powers board chairman to Washington, D.C., where they signed the UMWA contract at last. I wouldnt mix a full batch ahead because the soda water would lose its fizz. At Kopple, among others. Menu. Now, he owns and lives in a rural Georgia motel that caters to low-income people who dont fit into public housing for a variety of reasons, ranging from addiction to their status as seasonal workers. This post is archived, some links or media may be broken. 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