Harlan, city, seat of Harlan county, southeastern Kentucky, U.S., in the Cumberland Mountains, on the Clover Fork Cumberland River. Laid off and owed pay: the Kentucky miners blocking coal trains As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. . Harlan | Kentucky, United States | Britannica It doesn't seem like enough. Following this episode, the women say, Norman Yarborough asked Judge Hogg to hold the UMW and a number of miners and women in contempt of the Judge's order limiting the number of picketers to six. We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. It seems to me that for a great many people in Harlan County-for poor people and a lot of coal miners the whole county is a jail. In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. October 31, 2016. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Burger Chef. She talks about the women being armed with sticks, mace . I've got five living children and four dead. Don Dalton, UMW Safety Director for Region Six, explains this. The county was once part of Knox County, only becoming official in 1819. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. Barbara says that she was reacting spontaneously to the spirit and determination exhibited by the women, that their testimony was the highlight of our hearings. Our delegation arrives on time at the Eastover office in Brookside. The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. He'd worked seventy-eight hours straight the preceding week. Harlan County War History, Impact, The Free Encyclopedia They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared .