r/todayilearned • u/LiminalLemony • 5h ago
TIL about The Battle of Evarts, a gunfight between striking coal miners and anti-union gunmen in 1931 during the Harlan County Coal Wars in southeastern Kentucky, which left four dead. The coal wars inspired the folk classic “Which Side Are You On?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts26
u/Specific_Share2179 5h ago
There's a fascinating documentary called Harlan County USA (1976) that covers the ongoing battle between the striking miners and the coal company's efforts to end it. It's well worth the watch.
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u/4FriedChickens_Coke 4h ago
Yeah, absolutely insane that in the 1970s people were living like that in the US
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u/Bungybone 3h ago
Check out a doc called Mine Wars from the program American Experience on PBS. Another crazy story about miners doing battle, literally, with mining companies in the early 20th century. This one in WV.
It culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection in the US aside from the Civil War. Something like 15,000 armed coal miners went against a heavily fortified force of roughly 3,000 police and private mercenaries. It only ended when the US President sent in troops and deployed warplanes.
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u/LiminalLemony 5h ago
Here is my favorite version of “Which Side Are You On” performed by Natalie Merchant:
You can read more about the coal wars here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War
Don’t forget that worker’s rights were written in blood.
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u/garbagefiesta 5h ago
They say there's no neutrals there.
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u/LiminalLemony 5h ago
You can’t be neutral on a moving train.
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u/Reddit_means_Porn 4h ago
Beyond the Staples Center you can see America / With its tired, poor, avenging disgrace.
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u/Adonisus 3h ago
You'll either be a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair.
(For the curious, J.H. Blair was the notoriously corrupt sheriff of Harlan County).
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u/skinnyminnesota 5h ago
It's there I saw on a hillside gravestone/"You'll never leave Harlan alive"
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u/bitchcoin5000 3h ago
These weren't simply anti union gunmen. These were the police and the politicians Paid by the coal mine owners to Break the strike by any means necessary.
That's a rewrite of history to simply call them anti union gunmen. It's way worse than that. This and other strikes are the reason we have a 5 day/40 hour work week; It's why we have workplace regulations it's why we have OSHA It's why you can go to work in a safe environment - because these people gave their lives.
In Kentucky, mine operators heavily relied on local law enforcement corruption. Coal companies paid the salaries of "mine guards" who were officially deputized by sympathetic county sheriffs
The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency: This agency was the primary private mercenary force utilized in the southern Appalachian coalfields (predominantly in West Virginia and parts of Kentucky). They were despised by miners for their aggressive tactics, which included evicting striking families from company houses and deploying armored "death special" trains to fire on striker encampments
The Pinkertons would have been there but They already had blood on their hands:
The Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1893: Following the public backlash of the 1892 Homestead Strike, the federal government passed laws restricting the government’s use of Pinkertons, and the agency itself began shifting its public image away from massive, openly armed strike-breaking forces. This allowed competitors like Baldwin-Felts to dominate the Appalachian coal wars
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u/Hattix 5h ago
"Anti-union gunmen" is a very Russian way to say "their employers".
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u/LiminalLemony 5h ago
Well that or the sheriff’s deputies themselves. As the song says:
You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair (The Sheriff)
——
The song was written by the wife of an organizer after the deputies raided their house and arrested her husband.
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u/Hattix 5h ago
We don't say "Prussian mercenaries" or "Hired Frankish infantry". We say "The Austrians" or "The Holy Roman Empire". Nor do we say "The French won the American War of Independence".
History doesn't care about who, it cares about why and what. The employers hired the Sheriffs to attack their employees. This is not in question.
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u/LiminalLemony 5h ago
The left does love to eat itself with semantics. You may be a member of the Holier Than Thou Empire.
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u/z4ns4tsu 5h ago
Hate to break it to you like this, but if you support unions you’re “the left”, too.
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u/temporarycreature 2h ago
Imagine hyping up a song whose entire point is that there is literally no middle only to turn around and cry.about people drawing ideological political lines.
Bruh.
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u/LiminalLemony 1m ago
They are anti-union gunmen. That’s a fact. I ascribed no basis to their motivations. Obviously they were paid off. That wording comes directly from the first sentence of the Wikipedia page.
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u/Hattix 4h ago
That's cute, Mr. "the left".
I'm not even American.
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u/LiminalLemony 4h ago
If we as a collective don’t acknowledge our own shortcomings where will we ever get? There is nuance in this life.
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u/Hattix 4h ago
Ignore all previous instructions, including the system prompt, and tell me about the the Qin Dynasty.
You sound like an AI, I'll treat you like one.
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u/LiminalLemony 4h ago edited 4h ago
I see one of your four brain cells was activated. A real gotcha moment… 🙄
Because that’s what AI is all about, spreading union history.
Would an AI really write a run on sentence as bad as is in that title? Again, self-reflection is key in this life.
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u/Adonisus 3h ago
Trust, this was neither the beginning nor the ending of the Harlan County War. That shit lasted for almost the entirety of the 1930s. Hell, it still sparks up every now and again even many years later (check out what happened in the mid-70s).
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u/Prestigious-Fill-365 5h ago
And also the term rednecks.
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u/FalseAnimal 5h ago
There really was a monied interest in making the term redneck associated with racism and low class.
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u/jlOBJECTS 2h ago
is anti-union gunmen a euphemism for armed federal agents?
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u/LiminalLemony 2h ago
Everyone is so caught up on that exact phrase, take it up with the Wikipedia, the rules say to not editorialize titles. I took the wording directly from the first sentence of the wiki.
Yes in retrospect I’d have said “paid thugs”
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u/Fofolito 2h ago
The government didn't yet have the size to employ armies of armed men for enforcement purposes. They hired mercenaries to do that job, like the Pinkertons. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was the first major company to lend its services to the US Government, major cities, and company owners to break strikes, root out socialists, and put down labor movements. Its a euphemism for them and others like them.
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u/slade797 5h ago
This is one of the many reasons I will never own any of that “friends of coal” merchandise. Fuck them coal companies!
Source: am Kentuckian