A documentary about a Kentucky miner’s strike endures 50 years later. Harlan County USA‘s message still resonates today.
Transcript
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
When Eastern Kentucky coal miners went on strike in the early 1970s, a documentary film crew embedded in the community. The film “Harlan County USA,” which turned 50 this month, captured the tragedies and triumph of the miners’ struggle for a union contract, and it became an indelible portrait of the region. From the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom and member station WKMS, Derek Operle reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, “HARLAN COUNTY USA”)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: My, you’re real power (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hands on the car (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey, keep waiting for it (ph).
DEREK OPERLE, BYLINE: “Harlan County USA” follows workers at the Eastover Mining Company who went on strike more than 50 years ago to fight for safety improvements, more pay and better health and pension programs. Director Barbara Kopple and her small crew arrived in Eastern Kentucky in the summer of 1973, but she was already paying attention.
BARBARA KOPPLE: And a whole movement was starting to happen, known as Miners for Democracy, throughout the coal fields. And I thought that that would be a really incredible piece to follow.
OPERLE: On their first day in Harlan County, they filmed violent arrests and women being dragged off the picket line and met a miner named Jerry Johnson, who put them up at his place. Johnson still calls Kentucky home and lives with black lung disease. Over lunch at his house on top of a hill in Liberty, he says he was one of the first people on the picket line at Brookside, and he had his reasons.
JERRY JOHNSON: Well, they had equipment there – didn’t have brakes on the locomotives that hauled us into the mines. Not really enough air, and not – no money much.
OPERLE: The miners weren’t the only ones on the picket lines.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, “HARLAN COUNTY USA”)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
OPERLE: Their wives, mothers and sisters formed the Brookside Women’s Club to support their fight for a standard union contract. Kopple says the women were just fighting for their families and their neighbors.
KOPPLE: Your grandfather worked in the mine. Your father worked in the mine. And your husband, if you were married, worked in the mine, or your brother worked in the mine. So when they had the opportunity to do something, they jumped right in to do it.
OPERLE: As tension climbed during the 13-month struggle, the picket lines got violent, and eventually it turned deadly, culminating in the death of Lawrence Jones, who was shot by a mine supervisor in late August of 1974. Within days, a strike that had raged on for more than a year came to a close. The miners got their contract, and Kopple went back to New York to edit the documentary, using music from Appalachian songwriters, like Florence Reece, for her score.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON”)
FLORENCE REECE: (Singing) Which side are you on? Which side are you on?
OPERLE: “Harlan County USA” premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 15, 1976. The film would net Kopple the first of her two Oscars for best documentary. Its echoes are still heard to this day in the music of Appalachian artists like Tyler Childers…
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LONG VIOLENT HISTORY”)
TYLER CHILDERS: (Singing) It’s the worst that it’s been since the last time it happened. It’s happening again right in front of our eyes.
OPERLE: …And in the work of filmmakers like Steve Maing, who codirected the 2024 documentary “Union,” a film that follows efforts to organize a warehouse operated by Amazon in New York.
STEVE MAING: I think so much has changed over time culturally, but I think there’s a sort of, like, stark sameness – right? – that these stories share.
OPERLE: Today, there aren’t any union mines left in Eastern Kentucky, and the former Brookside Mine is long since grown over with kudzu. Chad Brock runs a local hardware store not far from where strikers picketed in “Harlan County USA.” He let me hop in his truck for an impromptu driving tour of spots from the film. Brock, a former county magistrate, has seen it dozens of times.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK RUNNING)
CHAD BROCK: You know, a lot of people knows us by that. You know, when you say you’re from Harlan, you know, they know you. You know, it’s kind of – I guess you could say it’s our heritage.
OPERLE: “Harlan County USA” stands as more than a documentary about a strike, but as a portrait of a community banding together to fight for each other and one that’s consistently ranked among not just the best of its genre, but the best films of all time.
For NPR News, I’m Derek Operle in Harlan, Kentucky.
DETROW: To learn more about the impact of “Harlan County USA,” you can visit wkms.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THEY’LL NEVER KEEP US DOWN”)
HAZEL DICKENS: (Singing) There ain’t no way they can ever keep us down. Oh, no, ain’t no way they can ever keep us down. We won’t be bought. We won’t be sold. To be treated right, well, that’s our goal. And there ain’t no way they can ever keep us down.
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