At the heart of Harlan’s re-creation are two things we all could use: creativity and community.
It’s late Sunday afternoon in Harlan, Kentucky, and the streets are quiet. It’s the day after the Poke Sallet Festival, Kentucky’s longest continually running festival, and no doubt Harlan is celebrated out. I walk the downtown, getting the feel of the place I’ve come to. The mountains surround the town, green as the new dollar bills that must have flowed during its coalmining heyday.
It was called Bloody Harlan, site of notorious mine wars in 1931-32, with Florence Reece’s “Which Side Are You On?” its anthem. Barbara Kopple’s 1976 documentary “Harlan County, USA,” gave the world a frontline chronicle of the 13-month Brookside mine strike. And, two years ago, there was the widely-publicized miners’ protest, when the Blackjewel coal company abruptly filed for bankruptcy owing its workers weeks of wages and benefits.
This is Harlan, a coal town with a brave but notorious history, with Darrell Scott’s “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” its tagline, thanks to the “Justified” television series and pretty much every country singer alive.
But here’s the thing. Walking the shadowed streets of Harlan, I saw bright beauty in the painted brick wall murals. I felt the respect and deep remembering at the Harlan County Coal Miners Memorial Monument. I smiled at the bold storefront of the artisan boutique, Sassy Trash.
And the dozens of partially filled blessing boxes (“Take what you need, leave what you can”) and #WithLoveFromHarlan logos (“Community + Love = Hope”) left me knowing that Harlan had some new stories to tell.
Which is exactly what Brandon Pennington and Laura Adkisson with Harlan Tourism are very good at doing. Both are Harlan County natives and the children of coal miners. Both left for school and came home clear about their calling.
“We haven’t always gotten to tell our story—and we want that story to be the truth,” Adkisson says. “Everything we’re able to do here is because of what was done before.”
“We’ve faced poverty, mining disasters, and hard times—in the end, what you’re left with is your people.” Pennington says.
To understand Harlan’s people, you’d do well to understand coal camps and mining practices. So we travel to Lynch, once the largest company-owned town in Kentucky. Owned by a subsidiary of US Steel, Lynch at its peak was home to 10,000 people from more than 38 countries, as well as Harlan natives and Blacks from the Deep South. It had its own schools, hospital, movie theatre, hotel, company store and post office. Today nearly all of it is gone, but visitors can ride a low train deep into Black Mountain’s Portal 31, once one of the richest coal mines in the world.
It’s cool and drippy in the mine, and the curves of the tracks take you deep into the mountain, where illuminated robotic coal miners narrate their work and their lives, moving through four decades of mine operation. I leave with a deep respect—and an unshakable image of working entire shifts bent low or on your belly.
With only 400 coal jobs left in Harlan County today, what’s next, I wonder. Over lunch at the Moonbow Tipple Coffee and Sweets Shop, Adkisson goes big. “What we may see is a move back to what we were before—self-reliant.”
While outside investors are contributing to Harlan’s downtown—its first microbrewery is set to open late this year after the city went wet in 2019—“Harlan Strong” runs deep in this place.
Take Main Street’s Sassy Trash, for example. It’s two floors of repurposed yard sale finds and work from more than 30 artisans on Harlan’s Main Street. What started as a hobby in 2014 is now full-time work for both April and Paul Collins. “You can stay in Harlan—you don’t have to leave. We took a chance on downtown Harlan and we have never regretted that choice,” April says.
Buy something at Sassy Trash and you’ll find a brochure in your bag that says it beautifully: “We are the experts on making old things new again. We are upcycling our community!”
If you had to point to one recent Harlan event that tells both pieces of its history—coal and community—it would be the 2019 Blackjewel protest. And Harlan County Judge Executive Dan Mosley tells the story clean and clear.
“It started with a phone call—letting me know that Blackjewel was filing for bankruptcy. I didn’t worry too much—this was nothing out of the ordinary here.
“But we discovered pretty quickly that the Blackjewel miners in Kentucky and Virginia were out over three weeks’ wages. The coal had been mined. But the miners hadn’t been paid.”
Mosley went into action, setting up an immediate needs database for the miners, calling together unemployment benefits and Health Department staff to provide help.
Hundreds of miners blocked the railroad tracks to keep the coal they’d mined but not been paid for from leaving. The blockade lasted through the summer, and litigation is ongoing.
“We reached out into the community for help. Churches brought food boxes, Leslie Bledsoe from With Love From Harlan was out at the encampment writing checks for the miners’ utility bills, providing diapers and shoes for their children. And Joyce Cheng, owner of our local Chinese restaurant, went through town dressed in miners’ clothes soliciting donations. Even Bernie Sanders donated pizza to the miners,” Mosley says.
One thing is clear. Mosley and Harlan believed in their cause, and their people. “It was the right thing to do, standing with the miners,” Mosley says. “The right thing to do.”
I leave Harlan pretty sure that Laura Adkisson has it right: “Anything can happen here. We’re here for the long haul.”
For more information on the festivals, art and outdoor activities in Harlan County, check out the tourism website at harlantourism.com.
Bob Howard and the Art of Coal
I saw it in the coffee shop: a small oil painting of a coal tipple pushed up hard against the rail tracks, lumber and bricks stacked among weeds, and trees rising into a pale gray sky. It seemed true to Harlan, and honest, and I bought it.
It’s called “Push and Grunt #1, Evarts,” and it’s painted by an artist-coalminer-teacher named Bob Howard. He put himself through Cumberland College working on weekends mining coal. After he graduated, he mined coal for 15 years until a teaching job opened up.
His story is the painting’s story. “I grew up in Highsplint Coal Camp, near Lynch. It was a great little community. There were 200 houses in those hollers. Now they’re all gone.
“That old tipple sat across from my high school within a hundred yards. I would sit and study and draw it when I had classes on that side of the building. One of my friends was killed there. It has a lot of memories.”
To see Howard’s work, go to Bob Howard, ART, on Facebook, or email him at coolart99@hotmail.com.
The story above first appeared in our September / October 2021 issue.
