Harlan County is a county located in southeastern Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 26,831. Its county seat is Harlan. It is classified as a moist county—one in which alcohol sales are prohibited, but containing a "wet" city—in this case Cumberland, where package alcohol sales are allowed. In the city of Harlan, restaurants seating 100+ may serve alcoholic beverages.
Harlan is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Harlan County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 1,745 at the 2010 census, down from 2,081 at the 2000 census.
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.
Hazel Jane Dickens was an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, double bassist and guitarist. Her music was characterized not only by her high, lonesome singing style, but also by her provocative pro-union, feminist songs. Cultural blogger John Pietaro noted that "Dickens didn’t just sing the anthems of labor, she lived them and her place on many a picket line, staring down gunfire and goon squads, embedded her into the cause." The New York Times extolled her as "a clarion-voiced advocate for coal miners and working people and a pioneer among women in bluegrass music." With Alice Gerrard, Dickens was one of the first women to record a bluegrass album. She was posthumously inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame alongside Gerrard in 2017.
Joseph Albert "Jock" Yablonski was an American labor leader in the United Mine Workers in the 1950s and 1960s known for seeking reform in the union and better working conditions for miners. In 1969 he challenged Tony Boyle for the presidency of the international union and was defeated. He asked for a Department of Labor (DOL) investigation, charging a fraudulent election. In addition, Yablonski filed lawsuit against the UMWA on five different charges related to fraud. On New Year's Eve, Yablonski, his wife, and 25-year-old daughter were murdered, fatally shot at home by three gunmen found to have been hired on orders of Tony Boyle.
William Anthony "Tough Tony" Boyle was an American miner, union leader, and convicted murder-for-hire conspirator. He became president of the United Mine Workers of America union in 1963, serving until 1972. Boyle was convicted in 1974 of charges of conspiracy in the murder of opponent Joseph A. Yablonski, Yablonski's wife Margaret, and their daughter Charlotte, on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1969. After an appeal, his conviction and sentence were upheld at a second trial; he was sentenced to three life terms and died while still incarcerated.
The Harlan County War, or Bloody Harlan, was a series of coal industry skirmishes, executions, bombings and strikes that took place in Harlan County, Kentucky, during the 1930s. The incidents involved coal miners and union organizers on one side and coal firms and law enforcement officials on the other. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. Before its conclusion, an unknown number of miners, deputies and bosses would be killed, state and federal troops would occupy the county more than half a dozen times, two acclaimed folk singers would emerge, union membership would oscillate wildly and workers in the nation's most anti-labor coal county would ultimately be represented by a union.
Barbara Kopple is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work. She is credited with pioneering a renaissance of cinema vérité, and bringing the historic french style to a modern American audience. She has won two Academy Awards, for Harlan County, USA (1977), about a Kentucky miners' strike, and for American Dream (1991), the story of the 1985–86 Hormel strike in Austin, Minnesota, making her the first woman to win two Oscars in the Best Documentary category.
The West Virginia coal wars (1912–1921), also known as the mine wars, arose out of a dispute between coal companies and miners.
The Bituminous coal strike of 1974 was a 28-day national coal strike in the United States led by the United Mine Workers of America. It is generally considered a successful strike by the union.
The Bituminous coal strike of 1977–1978 was a 110-day national coal strike in the United States led by the United Mine Workers of America. It began December 6, 1977, and ended on March 19, 1978. It is generally considered a successful union strike, although the contract was not beneficial to union members.
Arnold Ray Miller was a miner and labor activist who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), AFL–CIO, from 1972 to 1979. Winning as a reform candidate, he gained positive changes for the miners, including compensation for black lung disease. He had difficulty dealing with growing internal union opposition. His last two years as president were particularly tumultuous and he suffered two heart attacks, finally resigning in November 1979 with the title of "president emeritus for life".
Joseph Albert "Chip" Yablonski, Jr. is an attorney in Washington, D.C. For much of his career, he was a partner in the firm Yablonski, Both and Edelman; the firm dissolved in 2006. Yablonski is now a solo practitioner in the Law Offices of Joseph A. Yablonski.
Kenneth Yablonski was a noted attorney with the firm of Yablonski, Costello and Leckie in Washington, Pennsylvania.
Mike Trbovich was a miner and labor union activist in the United Mine Workers of America, AFL-CIO, in the 1960s and 1970s. He was elected as vice president of UMWA in 1972, serving under Arnold Miller until 1977.
Samuel Morgan Church, Jr. was a coal miner and president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1979 to 1982.
The Pittston Coal strike was a United States strike action led by the United Mine Workers Union (UMWA) against the Pittston Coal Company, nationally headquartered in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The strike, which lasted from April 5, 1989 to February 20, 1990, resulted from Pittston's termination of health care benefits for approximately 1,500 retirees, widows, and disabled miners. The strikers also cited the refusal of the company to contribute to the benefit trust established in 1950 for miners who retired before 1974 and the refusal of the company to bargain in good faith as grounds for their action. The company cited declining coal prices, decreasing demand, and recession as its reason for limiting health care benefits.
The Coal Wars were a series of armed labor conflicts in the United States, roughly between 1890 and 1930. Although they occurred mainly in the East, particularly in Appalachia, there was a significant amount of violence in Colorado after the turn of the century.
The 1959 United Mine Workers strike was a labor action by union miners in Eastern Kentucky. Originally over a pay increase, it grew into a conflict between union and non-union mines that resulted in three deaths. It was the first instance of labor violence in the area since the Harlan County War and was the prelude to the Roving Picket Movement.
Miners for Democracy was a dissident movement within the United Mine Workers of America which created successful reform in the union's administration of the union in the early 1970s. It was organized in Clarksville, Pennsylvania in April 1970 after the funeral of Joseph ‘‘Jock’’ Yablonski, after the current president hired assassins for his murder. MFD formed with the mission to challenge the UMWA's current administration, decentralize the union and bring power back to the rank-and-file miners. MFD worked closely with the Black Lung Association (BLA), who also openly opposed the Boyle administration. BLA formed in 1969 led by Arnold Miller and Charles Brooks, and Miller would later be chosen by MFD as a candidate to replace Boyle as president during union reform. Mike Trbovish, who was chairman of MFD, became the vice president of the union under the Miller administration.
