“Don't scab for the bosses / Don't listen to their lies / Poor folks ain't got a chance / Unless they organize.” It’s a tune as old as time – written by Florence Reece during the Harlan County War in 1931 and revived again and again over the ensuing decades as the battle between the haves and the have-nots only continues to intensify.
If you feel the union spirit beating mighty in your brave Cat heart, you’re in good company. UK Libraries collections are full of materials documenting the powerful history of Kentucky workers fighting for their rights.
The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History is the home of numerous oral history collections concerning labor movements, strikes, and other forms of collective action.
One of the most remarkable is the Women & Collective Protest Oral History Project: 58 interviews that tell the stories of the Eastern Kentucky women who were at the forefront of two labor disputes in the early 1970s.
When workers at Pikeville Methodist Hospital went on strike in 1972, women maintained a 24-hour a day picket line for two years in an unsuccessful bid to win union representation. During the 1973-74 Brookside Mine Strike in Harlan County, union members from the United Mine Workers went on strike against Eastover Coal Company, but the strike was a full family affair. Miner’s wives formed the Brookside Women’s Club to militantly maintain the picket lines outside the mine, “frying scabs in a skillet.”
These heroic Kentuckians are the subject of the 1976 Academy Award-winning documentary Harlan County, USA. UK Libraries is the home of over 1500 reels of film, production logs, and notebooks produced during the making of the film, part of the Harlan County, USA Collection, 1972-1976.
Materials from participants, observers, and organizers of labor struggles in industries across Kentucky – including photographs, correspondence, newspapers, and other publications – are also freely available in archival collections on ExploreUK.
Invaluable first-hand accounts from the early 1930s labor unrest in the Kentucky coalfields of Harlan and Bell Counties may be found in the Herndon J. Evans Collection. Evans was the editor of the Pineville Sun in Bell County, Kentucky and closely followed the events unfolding around him. The collection contains handbills, leaflets, pamphlets, and newspaper clippings collected by Evans primarily from 1931-1933, along with handwritten notes, correspondence, and drafts of articles and editorials.
The Harlan County Mine Strike Photographs Collection consists of 22 striking black and white silver prints taken during the 1939 general strike in Harlan County. On May 15th of that year, Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler ordered 900 Kentucky National Guard to intervene between striking coal miners and mine operators – a move viewed by many as an attempt to use state force to break the strike. The National Guard remained in the county for nine months.
UK Libraries continues to accumulate materials related to labor relations in Kentucky. The James Robert Southard Photographs Collection is made up of thousands of digital images documenting life and labor across the state, including the DHL Teamsters strike in 2023. Southard has been a senior lecturer in the School of Art and Visual Studies at the UK since 2014.
The stories captured in these interviews, photographs, and archives are an essential part of Kentucky's story, one that runs righteous and quick through the spirit of Cats everywhere. Together we are mighty! Do not be afraid!
