Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Charles Lankford of Harlan, Kentucky
Charles Lankford enters the historical record most clearly at the moment of his death. On May 5, 1931, he was one of the men killed in the shooting near Evarts that became one of the defining episodes of Bloody Harlan. Later accounts consistently preserve his name among the dead, which makes him part of one of the most important labor conflicts in eastern Kentucky history. Yet those same accounts preserve much less about the rest of his life, which means that any article centered on him has to begin with a simple truth. Charles Lankford is historically visible, but only in fragments.
The Problem of Writing About Charles Lankford
That uneven record is what makes Charles Lankford worth focusing on. In many retellings of the Battle of Evarts, the larger strike story takes over so completely that the individual people inside it nearly disappear. Lankford is one of those figures. The accessible public record confirms that he died in the conflict, but it does not easily provide the fuller details that would let a historian describe him with confidence as a husband, father, miner, guard, clerk, or deputy without qualification. That does not make him unimportant. It makes him representative of a common problem in Appalachian history, where ordinary people often survive in the archive only at the moment when violence or disaster pushed them into public view. This is partly an inference from the available public sources, not a complete statement about all archival material that may exist in local records.
What Can Be Said Firmly
What can be said firmly is that Charles Lankford stood on the side opposed to the striking miners at Evarts and that he died in the clash that followed. Beyond that, the public summaries are not perfectly consistent in how they describe the men killed on that side. Facing South’s reconstruction refers to the dead as three guards and one miner, while Clio summarizes the casualties as two policemen, a store clerk, and a striker. That inconsistency matters because it shows how memory flattened the people involved into general roles and left someone like Lankford less clearly defined as an individual. His name survived, but his precise place in the structure of company power and county authority became harder to pin down in later retellings.
Charles Lankford in the World of 1931 Harlan County
Even with those limits, Charles Lankford clearly belonged to the tense and dangerous world created by the Harlan County coal struggle of 1931. The wage cuts, the organizing drive, the evictions, and the armed atmosphere around Black Mountain and Evarts created a setting in which company interests, law enforcement power, and antiunion force often overlapped. Men like Lankford were part of that world, whether they were acting in a formal county role, a company role, or some blurred mixture of both. His importance lies in the fact that he was not merely present in Bloody Harlan. He became one of the men whose death fixed the conflict in public memory.
The Day Charles Lankford Died
On the morning of May 5, 1931, armed tension that had been building for weeks erupted outside Evarts. Facing South describes three cars carrying Black Mountain mine guards passing through town before a firefight broke out on the road below Evarts, leaving four men dead at the end of roughly half an hour. Charles Lankford was one of those dead. That is the point where the surviving narrative becomes much louder, but it is also the point where the man himself is most easily lost inside the event. A person centered reading should therefore treat the battle as the setting of his death, not the whole meaning of his life.
Why Charles Lankford Still Matters
Charles Lankford matters because he reminds us that the history of Bloody Harlan was made not only by famous organizers, union leaders, and later martyrs, but also by men whose names endured while their fuller identities faded. He was part of a conflict that transformed Harlan County’s national image and helped define the county’s place in labor history. At the same time, he stands as one of the many Appalachian figures whose memory was narrowed by the archive itself. To keep the focus on Charles Lankford is to acknowledge that he was a real person caught inside a larger war of labor, power, and survival, and that recovering even part of his story is worthwhile historical work.
Remembering Charles Lankford
The most responsible way to write about Charles Lankford is with restraint. The record does not support turning him into a fully developed character by guesswork, and it does not support letting him vanish into a general account of the Battle of Evarts. What it does support is something quieter and more honest. Charles Lankford was one of the dead of Evarts, one of the men whose life was overtaken by the violence of Harlan County in 1931, and one of the people whose name still marks the cost of that struggle. In that sense, keeping him at the center is not narrowing the history. It is restoring one part of it.
Sources & Further Reading
American Civil Liberties Union. The Kentucky Miners’ Struggle: The Record of a Year of Lawless Violence in Harlan County. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 1932. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006597633
Chicago Daily Tribune. “Four Guarding Mines Slain in Outbreak.” May 6, 1931. https://www.proquest.com
Clio. “The Battle of Evarts, Kentucky, 1931.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://theclio.com/entry/12137
Gannes, Harry. Kentucky Miners Fight. New York: Workers International Relief, 1932. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/who/Gannes%2C+Harry
Harlan Miners Speak: Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/further-reading
Hevener, John W. Which Side Are You On? The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931–39. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p070778
Kentucky Miners Defense. Bloody Harlan; the Story of Four Miners Serving Life for Daring to Organize a Union, Daring to Strike, Daring to Picket: Facts from the Court Records in the Harlan Frame-Up Trials. New York: Kentucky Miners Defense, [1938?]. https://search.worldcat.org/title/19820505
Kentucky Miners Defense Records, 1931–1937. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University. https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/tam_032/
New York Times. “Blasts in Mine Zone Alarm Kentuckians.” May 7, 1931. https://www.proquest.com
New York Times. “Three Deputies Slain in Kentucky Mine Riot.” May 6, 1931. https://www.proquest.com
Pine Mountain Settlement School. “Bibliography: Harlan County, Kentucky.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/bibliographies/bibliography-guide/bibliography-harlan-county-kentucky/
Portelli, Alessandro. They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. https://books.google.com/books?id=fJAVDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover
Taylor, Paul F. Bloody Harlan: The United Mine Workers of America in Harlan County, Kentucky, 1931–1941. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990. https://archive.org/details/bloodyharlanunit0000tayl
United States Congress. Senate. Committee on Manufactures. Conditions in Coal Fields in Harlan and Bell Counties, Kentucky: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Manufactures, United States Senate, Seventy-Second Congress, First Session, Pursuant to S. Res. 178, May 11–19, 1932. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932. https://books.google.com/books/about/Conditions_in_Coal_Fields_in_Harlan_and.html?id=62FPjDsYsS0C
University of Kentucky Appalachian Center. “A Strike Against Starvation and Terror.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/background-coal-strike
Author Note: This piece keeps Charles Lankford at the center as much as the surviving record allows. Because the public record on his life is much thinner than the record on the Battle of Evarts, I have tried to separate what can be firmly documented from what later retellings have blurred.