This man was born in 1926, in Harlan County, which means he was born into the period of fierce coal miners' struggles there to unionize, and was only five years old when the violence culminated in a shootout leaving many dead and wounded. The area is still desperately impoverished. My grand-niece and grand-nephew, both high school students, just returned from their second church-sponsored mission trip to Harlan, where they worked on building housing units. I'm very proud of them, particularly since just a few years ago, their mom lost her professional level job with G.E. Credit, subsequently couldn't keep up her mortgage payments and lost her house, and she and her kids ended up in a shelter for several months. She's pulled herself back up by her bootstraps, working several jobs at the same time, and now has a rental house, and a job working for Loew's - but of course for only 39.5 hours a week because heaven forbid they have to provide her with benefits!
Here's some history on Harlan/County, past and present:
Bloody Harlan - scene of coal miners' struggles to unionize back in the 30's - Always remained a very poor community. "There is no bloodier chapter in the history of U.S. labor than the struggle of coal miners, and some of the most violent episodes within this chapter occurred in Harlan County, Kentucky. The people who live there remember it as “bloody Harlan,” the site of fierce battles between miners and coal companies that culminated on May 4, 1931, in a shootout that left a large number of dead and wounded. The song that fixed this struggle forever in the folklore of U.S. labor—“Which Side are You On?”—plays an important role in the film, both as a constant reminder of the historical continuity of the miners’ fight, and as a commentary, of sorts, on the kind of partisan filmmaking practiced by Kopple and her crew
Things haven't improved much in Harlan County since the thirties. The statistics tell a grim story. Its population, now 40,000, has declined by 36 percent since 1960. More than 24 babies out of every thousand die before reaching the age of one. If they do live long enough to enter school, they will be poorly educated. The expenditure per child on public school is one half the national average. Only 23 percent of those over the age of 25 have finished high school. Whether they have or not, they are likely to live their lives in poverty. The median family income in Harlan County is $4,600. People have only a 50-50 chance of living in a home with plumbing. Many will not find work. If they do, it will probably be in the mines, where they will die young—most likely of black lung disease.
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