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? Harlan County, U.S.A. is a ghost story. I felt a chill. He doesnt want to have to depend on anyone. Theres one man that dies every day.. But these rugged peaks were either washed out on my screen or out of view altogether. Strain the drink into an ice-filled highball glass. Both of us got saved at about the same time. As of January 1, 2015, theres not a single union coal mine left in the state of Kentucky. But these rugged peaks were either washed out on my screen or out of view altogether. 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. Next comes Nimrod Workman, the miner and singer whose story and song make for an incredibly affecting moment. Take the opening scene, when miners descend into a mine. Failed to remove flower. At Kopple, among others. Please complete the captcha to let us know you are a real person. Meanwhile, coal continues to fade from the energy landscape. 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. 6. She talks about incidents of violence during the standoff. He worked for my family at Brooksidehe described the mine as having been especially dangerousand then he worked at Highsplint, where he tried to bring in the UMWA until he got fired. Barbara Kopple: Harlan County, USA; that was my first ever film that I did on my own. [7], Harlan County, USA was preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with New York Women in Film & Television, in 2004. For nearly a century, Harlan County, K.Y., has occupied an outsized place in the American consciousness. These so-called scabs were willing to meet with me, though most asked to remain anonymous for fear of stirring up trouble. Then he still didnt join the union. Try again later. cemeteries found within kilometers of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. 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. One of the issues is water. A Brookside mine foreman named Basil Collins says the unions are filled with "known communists" out to destroy the country. Sometimes he would cough and keep coughing, and it was just black-looking, like that old coal dust.. Perhaps it was the brilliance of the Florida sunlight, or the way the air could feel like a steam bath even indoors, but my relatives wealth seemed dreamlike and unrealalmost a fictionthough I saw it with my eyes in the oil portraits that adorned their walls and felt it with my hands when I fingered their silk-covered antiques. Home Recipes Drink Recipes Cocktails. To use this feature, use a newer browser. We was treated like dirt. 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. The company men have names, the organizers have names. Close this window, and upload the photo(s) again. You own it. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary at the 49th Academy Awards. I confess, if the mine in Harlan County, USA had no connection to my familyif the story were about a different industry in a different placeI wouldnt be giving the company side another thought; Id be ready to see them fall mightily. The hurts that people put on each other during a strike dont heal too easy, said Brookside UMWA miner Junior Deaton. Top with soda water and garnish with additional cucumber slices and basil. A lot of the miners dont have it. 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. 7. Sheriff J. H. Blair, backed by the Harlan County Coal Operators Association, who counted my relatives among their members, deployed close to two hundred deputized mine guards to snuff out both unions. All photos appear on this tab and here you can update the sort order of photos on memorials you manage. 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. 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. Now I knew better. 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. Nolan turned the SUV around at the slagheap and we descended over road ruts to the mine gates. I had to work where I was going to get work and I didnt see nothing wrong with that., If it hadnt been for Eastover I wouldnt have the life I have today., There was too much intervention for it to be a true documentary. Duke Power didnt want that to be filmed, he said. More to explore. Eastover refused to sign the contract, so the Brookside miners went on strike. Back then, Nolan, the security guard, worked for Eastovers Highsplint mine, located nine miles away from Brookside. Were left here trying to figure out what were going to do. My Whitfield family and the scabs give Harlan County, USA its own special verse. No unionized mines remain in the. . This was just the beginning of Johnsons efforts to improve his and others lots. Some people hold grudges their whole life, said one of the scabs. No one ever gets Harlan right, is a lament I have heard from my Harlan relatives all my life. Not the famous oneslike Which Side Are You On? by Florence Reece, which she wrote in the 1930s after deputized mine guards ransacked her home. Jones was well liked, young, and had a 16-year-old wife, and a baby. It did feel as though the town had gone from Technicolor to black and white since the last time I visited, in 2004. He then told me a story about my family Id never heard beforeabout my grandfathers cousin Jack, who was running the mine at Kitts Creek. Over this they were none too pleased, which poses a problem: I love the film. A lot of people, he continues, dont understand that that electricity burning over therea sweeping gesture that takes in the whole city, shiny and modern, one giant black lung, reallytheres a man dying every day for that. Now the trains arent even running anymore. cemeteries found within miles of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. All Rights Reserved. He is easygoing for a security guard and handsome in a salt-of-the-earth way. There are gun thugs inHarlan 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. He roofed housing projects across the state of Georgiaprojects where he often went to live, and where my mother, brother, and I sometimes spent weekends. The strike began in July 1973 and lasted 13 months. All photos uploaded successfully, click on the Done button to see the photos in the gallery. 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. Do n The couple later founded the Cranks Creek Survival Center, a nonprofit that provided food, clothing and home repairs to area residents for decades. Hailing from Alabama, my great-great-uncles Augustus F. and Bryan W. Whitfield were among those drawn to Harlan seeking opportunity. 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. A few months before I left for Harlan, news broke that the United Kingdoms last deep coal mine had closed, a momentous event signaling the end of a centuries-old industry (think of all those Dickens characters). You had to fight to keep what you had at work and maintain a safe home. We both knew this had to be true for everyone in Harlan, no matter what side they were on. Told through the eyes of the miners and their wives, who joined them on the picket line, Barbara Kopples film is an intimate portrayal of the miners struggle against corporate greed that continues to have resonance today. Theres people that still hate me. 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. 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. Their United Mine Workers camouflage, real jungle camo emblazed with slogans like GOD, GUNS, GUTS, AND SOLIDARITY. When I pulled up to his place behind the Black Mountain Elementary School, children were playing across a rippling creek from his trailer, and the schools American flag flapped in the wind. Thanks for your help! Because of how the film is edited, one believes that she is referring to the prior owners of Brooksidewhich means she is talking about my family. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Uncle Bryan was later succeeded by my grandfathers cousin Bryan W. Whitfield II, who sold the mine to Eastover Mining Company on the day I was born three hundred miles to the south: July 25, 1970. Mine workers in Harlan won living wages and benefits following a series of strikes and violent clashes with scabs and mine owners in the 1930s that earned the county the nickname Bloody Harlan.. The Pittston Strike of 1989. 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. Today he wore jeans and a navy hooded sweatshirt, with his neatly trimmed silver-white hair tucked under a Tractor Supply Company cap. Although Stewart says hes not much for politics, he harbors hope that Novembers presidential election will bring Donald Trump to the White House and mark a change for him and his family. He struck me as being like a lot of the men in my familymen whom novelist Tom Franklin describes as the sensitive guys at the dogfight.. One day, the scabs pulled out guns and placed them on the table. There was an error deleting this problem. Please check your email and click on the link to activate your account. Im definitely not in New York City anymore, I said. My father was born into a life of backbreaking farm work raising and picking cotton and grew up wearing clothes made from feed sacks. Miraculously, only two people got shot. [4] The miners were concerned that accepting such a provision would limit their ability to influence local working conditions. Receive free weekly recipes & inspiration! 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. Thats right, one of the scabs replied. what happened to basil collins harlan county. The first time I saw Harlan County, USA, in 2011, I was excited and a little afraid as I settled into my theater seat at the Museum of Modern Art. I had one of these last night at an event and it was lovely. My Howard grandmothers ancestors were among the first white settlers in Harlan. Its Appalachian. By JEFFREY COLLINS today. It reflected the culture of the people of Harlan County and showed the power of folk music that was a living part of their culture. I was a bit concerned that my request to get out of his SUV would get him in trouble with his bosses at Manalapan and Nally & Hamilton, the companies that currently own Brookside and its equipment, though the tipple, the last part of the mine to operate, shut down three years ago. Learn more about managing a memorial . Save to an Ancestry Tree, a virtual cemetery, your clipboard for pasting or Print. Born in 22 Sep 1898 and died in 15 Oct 1933 Sebree, Kentucky Basil Collins In 1973, he moved into camp housing at Brookside. Fill a Collins (tall) glass with ice. There is no arguing that the strike footage is what makes the film so enduringly powerful, a great cultural and historical document, and an incredible nonfiction film. 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. She notes that Duke Power Company's profits increased 170 percent in a single year. Becoming a Find a Grave member is fast, easy and FREE. I thought about Elizabeth and her familys efforts to improve Harlans economy by starting a new business. Try again later. The Highsplint miners lost their bid for the UMWA in favor of the company-friendly SLU. Make sure that the file is a photo. 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. When my parents divorced, I had to pick sides, and I chose my mothers, as most children do. Collapses, explosions and other accidents killed tens of thousands during the 20th century. Me and them that worked up at Highsplint was good buddies, Ferguson continued, but after that strike nobody of them would never speak to each other, never look at each other, nothing else. Add the gin, simple syrup, and lemon juice and fill the shaker with ice. Last edited on 27 December 2022, at 06:42, Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Things are looking up for the couple. He and some peers brought the companys age-based discriminatory pay system to the attention of the National Labor Relations Board. 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? Here is an edited version of that conversation. 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. Kopple came to town because UMWA organizer Houston Elmore invited her, hoping that the cameras would help quell the violence. Harlan County USA divides us into two groups: Those that love it and those that hate it. 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. We will review the memorials and decide if they should be merged. All the same, Im positive that theyre not Southern. By the end of the 1930s, the UMWA had established a better toehold in the county. 4 ] the miners were concerned that accepting such a provision would limit their ability to local! The National Labor Relations Board my life, theres not a single union coal mine left the. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary at the 49th Academy.. All photos appear on this tab and here you can update the sort order of photos on memorials you.. My screen or out of view altogether was my first ever film I... 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