Appalachian History Series
On a sweltering July dawn in 1973, the sleepy hamlet of Brookside woke to the rumble of coal trucks and the sight of cardboard signs nailed to wooden staves: UMWA ON STRIKE—NO CONTRACT, NO COAL. By nightfall gunshots echoed off the Clover Fork valley walls, and Harlan County was once again poised to earn its nickname, “Bloody Harlan.” Over the ensuing thirteen months, the fight for a union contract would redraw gender lines, inspire an Oscar-winning documentary, and culminate in a tragic death—yet leave the community more determined than ever before.
Brookside on the Brink (1973)
Eastover Mining’s refusal to honor the men’s June 22 vote to join the UMWA triggered a walk‑out on July 26. Company guards escorted strikebreakers past skeletal picket lines limited by court order to three people per gate. Shots riddled clapboard homes, strike leaders were hauled to jail, and Duke Power’s lawyers pushed injunctions through a sympathetic county judge. The county teetered between stalemate and open war.
Women Take the Line & the Camera Rolls (1973–74)
With paychecks halted and arrests mounting, approximately 100 wives, mothers, and daughters formed the Brookside Women’s Club (BWC) in September 1973 to support the strike and amplify their voices in the labor movement. They sang union hymns in the road, endured tear gas and nightsticks, and shamed troopers who hesitated to rough‑up grandmothers.
Filmmaker Barbara Kopple arrived weeks later, her 16‑mm camera becoming both witness and shield. Violence still flared—dynamite at a tipple here, a deputy stabbed there—but the presence of a running lens often stayed itchy trigger fingers. By spring 1974 more than ninety arrests and forty documented acts of violence had hardened national opinion against Eastover and Duke Power.
A Martyr & a Contract (August 1974)
The struggle’s raw cost became evident when 23-year-old striker Lawrence D. Jones was shot by mine supervisor Billy C. Bruner outside the Highsplint gate on August 24, 1974, and succumbed to his injuries four days later. Thousands streamed behind his casket. Public fury—and the possibility of federal intervention—drove Eastover back to the table. On September 5, 1974 the company signed a standard UMWA contract that recognized seniority rights, a grievance process, and the miners’ right to strike.
From Picket Line to Silver Screen—and Beyond
Kopple’s documentary, Harlan County, USA (1976), distilled 120 hours of film into a searing record of Appalachian class war and the women who kept the flame. The picture won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary and fixed Brookside’s struggle in the public imagination. Today, BWC grandson Matthew Strong reminds high‑schoolers that “Mamaw’s pistol sits in a shadow box, but her courage is the real heirloom.” Crosses mark the pull‑off where Jones fell, and a 2023 Kentucky Heritage sign directs travelers off KY‑522 to the silent prep plant—a pilgrimage site for labor historians and tourists alike.
Legacy: Women’s Networks & a Long Shadow
Long after the contract ink dried, Brookside’s women kept marching. Sudie Crusenberry glued newspaper clippings of the strike beside her children’s drawings, creating a scrapbook that historians now mine for clues to grassroots strategy; Bessie Lou Cornett, who once faced down coal trucks, later organized against a highway project that threatened a Black Knoxville neighborhood—proof that the picket line was a training ground for regional civil‑rights and environmental justice campaigns.
The strike also left a cautionary lesson. Brookside inspired miners across Central Appalachia, yet corporate consolidation and a collapsing coal market eventually outpaced union strength; by late 2014 the shutdown of Patriot Coal’s Highland Mine marked the end of unionized coal mining in Kentucky, leaving no working miner in the state holding a UMWA card. Retired Brookside picketer Kenny Johnson later said that many younger miners enjoy union-won pay and benefits “because of the sacrifice that we made … it wasn’t because we wanted to be out of work.” UMWA spokesman Phil Smith warned that, with no union competition, “non-union operators … can begin to cut wages, cut benefits, and cut corners on safety”—a reminder that Brookside’s gains, like its songs, require each new generation to keep the chorus alive.
Sources & Further Reading
Global Non‑Violent Action Database, “Harlan County KY Coal Miners Win Affiliation with UMWA.”
Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, Interview with Lois Scott, Aug. 28 1986.
Barbara Kopple, Harlan County, USA (First Run Features, 1976).
Henry Chiles, “Appalachian Women Make Their Voices Heard,” Medium, Apr. 28 2018.
Heather Duncan, “Mountain Justice: Appalachian Women Fought for Workers Long Before They Fought for Jobs,” Scalawag, Mar. 25 2019.
Associated Press, “No More Union Coal Mines Remain in Kentucky,” Fox Business, Sept. 5 2015.
Author’s Note: The Brookside stand reminds us that the line between isolation and history’s center can be one dirt road, one song, or one stubborn grandmother away.