Nearly 30 percent of county residents live in poverty, and most households earn less than $30,000 a year. The 2010 disaster at Massey Energys Upper Big Branch Mine at Montcoal, West Virginia, cost twenty-nine lives. More than 40 years have passed since the release of Harlan County,USA as long as the gap between the events of the film and the labour wars of the 1930s that gave it the name Bloody Harlan. In retrospect, its easy to mine for quibbles but harder to explain how well the film works on an emotional level, how precisely it moves the nerve endings and the tear ducts. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". The incidents involved coal miners and union organizers on one side, and coal firms and law enforcement officials. Kopple unfolds the story with ellipses, flashbacks and digressions. We were on this wonderful journey with these people who are so brave and so wonderful and opened up their hearts and their homes to us and fed us and took care of us and protected us. Which Side Are You On? was written in the immediate aftershock of a midnight raid on Reeces home and her children by Harlan County sheriff J. H. Blair, in search of her husband. Mr. Jones, who leaves a 16yearold widow, was shot In the head by a shotgun blast from short range. Somebody said, Arent you worried? She said, Im not worried if I shoot some of my breast or titty off because I have plenty of that!. Bobby Simpson, 79, has been blind for more than a half-century, but still managed to shovel coal. Retrieved from: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=iyQqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pEYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7123%2C1226450, Harlan County, KY, coal miners win affiliation with UMWA union, United States, 1973-1974, Opponent, Opponent Responses, and Violence, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. Previews and coverage for films playing at DOC NYC 2022, DOC NYC announces the world premieres of new films from, The Kingston Canadian Film Festival returns as Canada's largest showcase devoted exclusively to Canadian films, running, Doug and the Slugs and Me wins the Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary at the, If/Then Hulu Short Documentary Lab invites applications with an emphasis on LGBTQIA+ storytellers to participate in, In The Colour of Ink, Brian D. Johnson profiles artisanal ink-maker Jason Logan and his creative, Claire Simon delivers a probing documentary epic about women, their bodies, and the intimacy of examining. Use of violence was never sanctioned nor forbidden by leadership. [4]:32. Only late in 1939 did intransigent Harlan coal masters reluctantly sign on with the union. Billy C. Bruner Why is it that the mine owner, union officials and a doctor are identified by name onscreen but the miners and their wives are not? So did Barbara Kopple withHarlan County,USA. Barbara Kopple: A 10-minute reel of 16-millimeter film. I guess also because I was doing sound. The Global NonviolentAction Database is aproject of Swarthmore College, including the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, the Peace Collection, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. <p> Get your payments electronically sent to your checking or savings account to help achieve your goals. Alas, catastrophe awaited, this time in the booming 50s. Thats brain thats laying there. In 1969, Tony Boyle was challenged for the UMWA presidency by Jock . I had a long fishpole with a mic on it and I just was swinging it back at them. Mr. Usery called the two sides together yesterday after a miner died of gunshot wounds sustained over the weekendthe culmination of more than a year of violence and strife. The Ohio Supreme Court today suspended a Cleveland attorney for two years for committing several ethical violations, including billing a client's mother twice for round trips to Youngstown to visit his client in prison when the man was in the local county jail.. In 1959 when Lewis retired, the union had been reduced to 180,000 members, and the southern coalfields, Harlan included, were non-union once again. Acknowledgements; Introduction; User Notes 1. We Be Here When Morning Comes: Bryan Woolley 9. Then one of the striking miners is murdered, and no one is prosecuted. See the wiki page Kentucky Probate Records for . They found sympathy there with spurned politicians and business owners who wished to see the company stores vanish. Eastover agreed to drop all charges against the striking miners in court and before the National Labor Relations Board. Several members stabbed a local sheriff when he dragged a woman violently off the road on 28 February 1974. . Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On gives the iconic Cree singer her due. Today, US coal comes mostly from the Western plains, dug out by huge earth-moving machinery and carried to the coasts on mile-long, dust-spewing trains. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Shot in the face with a shotgun. The whole thing was a wonderful moment. The . POV engages filmmakers and film lovers in conversations about the art of non-fiction. How would you describe the nature of work God gave to Adam in the Garden of Eden?He told Adam that he could eat the fruit of any tree in the Garden except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.11. Married Diana Jones on They were married Nov. 5, 1973. In Harlan County there wasn't no neutral. Ive got to think the advice is Once you go, dont leave.. It's a reminder of the county's heroic history of struggle and solidarity. They believed that the strikebreakers would be more hesitant to use violence against women. Nationalism, the new issue of Jacobin is out now. The union, with all that it promised, is gone. Honoured with an Academy Award, and listed in the National Film Registry, the film set the standard for other fictional films about class struggles (Matawan,Norma Rae) and the populist documentary films of Michael Moore. Afterward I tore a sheet from a calendar on the wall and wrote the words to 'Which Side Are You On?' I always listen to a radio station called NPR. Heres just one example, from around the 80-minute mark of the film, when two young men show the filmmakers the place where their friend was shot minutes ago. Perhaps even Homer didnt get the siege of Troy historically right, but he found the key to plant that war story in our collective imaginations. Florida statutes already say sexual battery of a child under 12 is a capital felony, but it has been effectively moot because of Supreme Court rulings barring the death penalty in such cases. Mr. Read today's latest news headlines from Lexington, Kentucky and Fayette County. [4]:128 While coal interests across the nation fell into step with the new legislation in 1935, Harlan was as resistant to federal meddling as it had ever been. By clicking Accept All, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. 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. Sad. A seventy-three-year-old Florence Reece attended and led a rousing, emotional rendition of Which Side Are You On?. /4 . For the claim to greatness, lets start with a few of its indelible images: the buoyant opening shot of miners, looking like boys as they jump on a conveyer belt carrying them into the underground; the harrowed face of an old miner, animated with indignation, as he describes how the life of a mule was worth more than a mans to the owners; the vitality of union activist Lois Scott grinning as she pulls a pistol from her bra, promising to fight fire with fire; the dreadful flashes of gunfire in the pre-dawn light; a wad of a murdered mans brain tissue on the ground; an aged mother collapsing beside the open coffin of her son. It had a great impression on me throughout the rest of my career. Also, the organizers told me way after the film that there had been a price put on my head to shoot me. Strangers were kidnapped, then lucky if they were just taken to the county line. It does not store any personal data. The incidents involved coal miners and union organizers on one side and coal firms and law enforcement officials on the other. As we learn from the making of feature on the 2006 Criterion 30th anniversaryDVD, occasionally, as in a scene where a miner and a New York cop compare jobs, the films subject wore a hidden wireless microphone. A miner was killed by a company foreman. Point of View Magazine392-401 Richmond Street West Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 Canada, Running in theatres March 2 - 5, @kingcanfilmfest. Working with patients on their unique treatment plan that meets their family needs and health goals so they can return back . Yet it is also true that Harlan County,USAdoes not have the clarity and rigour of what we would usually think of as a well-made documentary. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. [Bloody] Harlan County was happening, so I went and stayed there for 13 months. Todd Melby: If I remember correctly, one of the very close opening shots is the miner going into the coal mine on a horizontal conveyor belt. The 2000 television movie Harlan County War starred Holly Hunter. 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. Still time to catch films at @reframefilmfestival, We have tons of reviews and interviews from Sundan, Your Oscar nominees for Best #Documentary Feature, New Films from Kopple, Porter, Pozdorovkin Set for DOC NYC, Free Money Review: The Politics of Giving, Dry Ground Burning Review: An Empowering Favela Hybrid, Blue Box Review: The Big Moral Problem of History, Kingston Canadian Film Festival Brings the Circuit Full Circle, Available Light Film Festival Announces 2023 Award Winners, IF/Then x Hulu Short Documentary Lab Opens to Applications from LGBTQIA+ Storytellers, Our Body Review: Claire Simons Intimately Epic Documentary. Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview. Songwriter Florence Reece reported, Sheriff J. H. Blair and his men came to our house in search of Sam that's my husband he was one of the union leaders. You think you have a certain idea, but you have to let that leave your mind and let whatever happens happen and just go with it. The new union leadership pledged to organize (or reorganize) the unorganized. Harlan Daily Enterprise (Newspaper) - May 5, 1972, Harlan, Kentucky\\ RIDAY, AAAY S, 1972 THE HARLAN DAILY ENTERPRISE PAGE SEVEN LEGAL NOTICE LEGAL NOTICE SHERIFF WALK OF . The killing was a turning point. Registered users can login to the website. Along with opposing the UMWA union, Eastover management also wanted a 'no-strike' clause to be included in any final contract. Billy Carroll Bruner, 39, a foreman at the Eastover mine, was wounded in the shootout and charged with the killing.Mr. Growing Up Hard In Harlan County: G. C Jones 4. The strikers received some of the highest strike benefits ever paid by the U.M.W.$80 a week for a single man, $90 for a couple and $100 for a family. Organizers were shot at, their homes gassed. Sheriff Blair was voted out of office in 1933 and died in 1934, replaced by T. R. Middleton, a candidate who ran on a pro-union platform. Here is an edited version of that conversation. On July 1, Blackjewel LLC abruptly shut down its six Harlan mines, filed for bankruptcy, and sent the miners home without pay. On April 1, Harlan County is 200 years old. In a region of Ku Klux Klan activity, we see an African-American miner, waiting with two white men for treatment for black lung disease, or pneumonoconiosis, joking about brotherhood in oppression: We done make every colour when we went in. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the union and the association in their new contract for 1974. And theres the films unusually potent soundscape, which Kopple herself recorded: the high rasp of a miner warning of an imminent explosion; the union bullhorn cutting the morning air calling for picketers; the hubbub of a street parade; the wall-to-wall traditional music, including political calls to arms, songs of joy and plaintive grief and calls to solidarity, that chain the present to the past. Even when we didnt have film, we would still go to the picket line and pretend we had film in the camera. The series revolves around the inhabitants and culture in the Appalachian mountains area of eastern Kentucky, specifically Harlan County where many of the main characters grew up. Crawling kingsnake (6:09) Louise (4:24) Poor boy a long way from home (4:09) Stay all night (5:44) Going down south (3:49) Coal black Mattie (3:48) Do the romp (5:01) Sad days, lo Violence continued against the workers and community. I went in front of him thinking I was so strong and invincible and you hear me get knocked over. Eastover agreed to rehire the 59 employees who had gone on strike and been dismissed. But the strike still caused economic hardship, especially among the poorer people in Harlan County. Todd Melby: How many minutes would fit in [one reel of film]? (Robert Gumpert / Appalshop Archive). Three company men and one striker were killed in the exchange of gunfire. So he made his turn in a fairly short time Harlan County USA is one of my favorite movies. 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. Subscribe today and get a yearlong print and digital subscription. They say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there Youll either be a union man or a thug for J. H. Blair Which side are you on? Todd Melby: Did your microphone or recorder get damaged? The greatness lies in its enduring emotional power. The 1976 documentary won an Academy Award. She talks about incidents of violence during the standoff. What are the physical state of oxygen at room temperature? The strikers were not themselves entirely nonviolent. That was the morning that everybody had guns. This is based on the events in Harlan County, Ky. during the early 1970's strike. HARLAN COUNTY, Ky. (WYMT) - 3/22/2022 Update: Officials with the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet confirm to WYMT James Brown's body was found approximately three miles into the mine and . Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. -Who shot him? Not much can be done about these creeps.People just need to be steadfast and honest themselves. [4]:79, Under the auspices of the National Industrial Recovery Act, which promoted the right to organize one's workplace and outlawed discrimination and firing based on union membership, approximately half of Harlan's coal mines, those in the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association, were run as open shops from October 27, 1933 March 31, 1935. We dont see you, but we can hear you interact. although I think he was mostly thinking of the assaults on character caused by an oppressive society like 1930s Germany rather than the assault on your character via the goodies you can buy if sell out. InHarlan County,USA, she usually adheres to the fly-on-the-wall approach, but is inconsistent. "Harlan County" won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1977, but it had been years since the film was shown on the big screen. The Harlan County War, or Bloody Harlan, was a series of coal mining-related skirmishes, executions, bombings, and strikes (both attempted and realized) that took place in Harlan County, Kentucky, during the 1930s. First Boyle has Joseph Yablonski, who ran against him for the union presidency, murdered along with Yablonski's wife and daughter. The question is back: Which Side Are You On?. Persons per household, 2017-2021. If you followed that road, it would take you to the mine. Box 14*. On 30 April 1974, the NLRB sided with the workers but no specific action was taken. What Are the physical state of oxygen at room temperature that you happy. March 2 - 5, 1973 to organize ( or reorganize ) the unorganized 59 employees who had gone strike. Who leaves a 16yearold widow, was wounded in the head by a shotgun blast from short range NLRB with... Todd Melby: did your microphone or recorder get damaged to abide by any agreement between. 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