http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC14folder/HarlanCty.htmlHarlan County, USA
The miners’ struggle
by Peter Biskind
from Jump Cut, no. 14, 1977, pp. 3-4
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1977, 2004
HARLAN COUNTY, USA, Barbara Kopple’s feature length film about a coal miners’ strike in Kentucky, is the best U.S. documentary in a long time. The film has its faults. Its editing is ragged; its narrative structure is confusing and begins to unravel towards the end. But its faults are the consequence of its virtues: an energy, immediacy, and passion rarely seen in a U.S. documentary. The film’s power comes from Kopple’s intimate involvement with the people she filmed, the risks she took, the places—jails, courtrooms, stockholder’s meetings—into which she forced her camera. Its strength lies not in its beauty, nor even in its politics, but in the moral authority that is inscribed in every frame.
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.
HARLAN COUNTY, USA documents a strike at the Brookside mine in Harlan County. The Brookside mine is run by the Eastover Mining Company. Until the strike began, the miners belonged to a company union, the Southern Labor Union, whose members were drawn from mines throughout Eastern Kentucky. Contracts varied from mine to mine, with pay scales ranging from $17 to $32 a day, as compared to $45 per day for miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America. Medical and retirement benefits were minimal and unreliable. More important, union officials didn't give a damn about the rank and file. Bill Doan, a miner, told the Citizens Public Inquiry into the Brookside Strike, “If you called someone from SLU, he might come in a week, he might come in two weeks, but when he did come, he'd go into Eastover’s office and talk for an hour. Then he'd come out ... get into his truck and run.”
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