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About: Mine work and strike-busting in the deep south.
We talk a lot about the “white working-class” in terms of elections, but that’s most typically just a means to set white and Black voters against each other. Here, Barbara Kopple explodes all of our myths about the things that might concern a mineworker (predominantly, but not exclusively white) in the deep south.
Filmed as it was happening, the film documents what became known as the “Brookside Strike” against the owners of the Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, Kentucky. Kopple’s original intent was to create a film about efforts to unseat the wildly corrupt leader of the United Mine Workers of America union at the time, W.A. Boyle, who seemed to many to be in the pockets of the mine owners (he was later convicted of conspiracy in the murders of a reformist opponent’s entire family). That explosive story, though, turned out to be a side-note of the brutal, bloody, violent opposition faced by the striking mine-workers and their families.
These mine-workers, though, were no pushovers when it came to their rights and mine safety; nor were their wives and mothers. Modern politicians would be quick to call them socialists, but I doubt they’d do it within striking distance of their fierce opposition.
from Lifehacker https://ift.tt/6qDi8xU
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