Beside the deep mines of working-class history, blocking the tracks unlocks the future.
Just past the Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College, the railroad to the Cloverlick Mine runs parallel to the road. Before last summer, this was a quiet place
Beside the deep mines of working-class history, blocking the tracks unlocks the future.
Just past the Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College, the railroad to the Cloverlick Mine runs parallel to the road. Before last summer, this was a quiet place, a sleepy community called Cumberland, in Harlan County, residing in the shadow of Pine Mountain: a high, long ridge running up the spine of the Kentucky–Virginia border. This is the coal miners’ heartland, or it had been, that is, until the Blackjewel coal company filed for bankruptcy in July of 2019, and eighteen hundred coal miners lost their jobs.
Not only were the miners out of work, they were also not paid for their final month, leaving hundreds of employees without a paycheck as back-to-school shopping demands loomed. During a time of year when some miners would normally take time off to spend with their families, they spent July on the railroad tracks blocking the passage of a train loaded with coal they had chipped from the ground entirely for free. Workers vowed to stay on the tracks until they received the wages they were owed.
Harlan County has long been the site of struggle between coal miners and the companies they work for. The power of coal miners was broken long ago during the lengthy, violent series of battles in the 1930s between unions and bosses that earned Harlan County its moniker, “Bloody Harlan.” It’s a storied place, and miners and supporters alike would use the lore of Harlan throughout the summer to propel the struggle to visibility.
On one of the first nights at the blockade camp, in the midst of a heavy rainstorm, a number of the young men on the tracks began to sing a famous song of local infamy—a battle cry, a lamentation, and a warning. “You’ll never leave Harlan alive,” they sang, an ode to decades of hard times in Eastern Kentucky. Coal companies have spent years creating a climate of scarcity and desperation around the precious coal jobs in one of the last Appalachian states with a high number of active deep mines.
The miners came out to block the tracks about a week after they learned they’d lost their jobs and a month’s pay. Theirs was a wildcat action, with no union backing. Some with families, some without, the workers were prepared to spend the stormy nights of an Appalachian midsummer outside. Later, those in solidarity with them came from over the mountain and across the nearby co