Harlan County Horrors Part 20

A History of Harlan, KY.

by Preston Halcomb.

Harlan's very name conjures up memories of blood and violence. Decades of strife have engulfed the county, fueled by both the local coal mining industry and by feuds between individuals and whole families. This gives the people here a unique outlook on both morality and life, and this outlook makes the county an ideal setting for the stories contained herein.

Harlan County began life in 1819, incorporated from a piece of Knox County, Kentucky. Over the years, it has been chiseled away to form parts of present-day Bell, Leslie, and Letcher counties. The county as it exists today covers about 470 square miles of hills and valleys. The biggest cities in the county include the county seat of Harlan, as well as the cities of c.u.mberland and Evarts.

The county was named after Silas Harlan, who served as a scout and a major in the Continental Army. Harlan came to Kentucky with James Harrod in 1774, where he a.s.sisted Harrod's party in Harrodsburg, delivering gunpowder to settlers and helping them against the British during the Revolutionary War. Harlan built a stockade near Danville known as Harlan's Station; he also a.s.sisted in the establishment of Fort Jefferson at the mouth of the Ohio River in 1780. Silas Harlan died leading the advance party at the Battle of Blue Licks on August 19, 1782.

Harlan County has been rocked by great labor union unrest since the early part of the twentieth century, primarily centered on the labor unions a.s.sociated with the coal mining industry. The area gained one of its enduring nicknames, "b.l.o.o.d.y Harlan," due to the riots and murders that occurred. The conflict originally stems from a series of United Mine Workers strikes and labor-management battles that ended in a shoot-out between deputized guards and miners on May 4, 1931 in Evarts. This resulted in the confirmed deaths of three guards and one miner; an undetermined number were wounded.

The labor unrest was felt as late as the 1970s, the period doc.u.mented in the film Harlan County, USA by Barbara Kopple, and one of the most violent times in the county's history. In 1973, workers at the Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine voted to join the United Mine Workers Union. Soon after, management disputes led the workers to go on strike. The mine brought in "scabs" (non-union workers) to continue production, but miners who felt they were being illegally replaced attacked the scabs. During the strike, mine workers' wives and children often joined them on the picket lines. Many were arrested, hit by baseball bats, shot at, and struck by cars. One miner, Lawrence Jones, was shot and killed by a replacement worker; the murderer, Bill Bruner, served no time for this incident. Special Judge F. Byrd Hogg, a local coal operator who had been a.s.signed to the union case, ruled in favor of the mine management.

The county is filled with folklore and legends going back before its founding. On a spiritual level, Harlan County is a very devout place. Churches spring up like mushrooms on a cool morning. Underlying it all, however, is the same fatalistic worldview for which people from the area have become known. They have an inherent understanding that there are things out there that go b.u.mp in the night, and can be counted upon to spin ghost tales about the area whenever they get together.

Harlan County today is still a place where the nights are dark and the shadows deep, but there is a growing lightness as well. Many efforts have been made to modernize the area: a new ATV park is drawing nationwide acclaim and bringing much needed revenue into the county; the schools are being upgraded and consolidated; Harlan County's rich natural beauty is being exploited to bring tourism dollars to the area. The future of Harlan County looks bright, even if it is shrouded in a past filled with blood and darkness.

Preston Halcomb.

June 2009.

Lexington, KY.

Editor Bio.

Mari Adkins is a paranormal fiction writer who grew up in the coal mining community of Woodbine, Kentucky. Her fiction has appeared in the anthologies Stories from the Red Light District, Aegri Somnia, Vampire Bytes, and Help, as well as in Toasted Cheese and Apex Magazine. She is a submissions editor for Apex Magazine, and the social media maven for Apex Publications, in addition to doing freelance editing, writing, and book reviewing. Her current home is Lexington, Kentucky, where she lives with her husband and their calico cat. She is a mother and an avid supporter of kidney disease awareness and living organ donation awareness. The Kentucky mountains, their culture, their superst.i.tions, and their particular magics will always be in her heart and her blood.

Artist Bio.

Award-winning artist Billy Tackett is the creator the writer of the upcoming graphic novel Dead White and Blue comics, the official artist of Shane Moore's Abyss Walker series, and the self-proclaimed "Creepiest Artist in America".

He maintains a web site at billytacket.com.

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