ENVIRONMENTAL VOICES: CULTURAL, SOCIAL, PHYSICAL, AND NATURAL || Coal-Mining Songs as Forms of Environmental Protest

Center for Appalachian Studies and Services/ East Tennessee State University

Coal-Mining Songs as Forms of Environmental ProtestAuthor(s): R. Chesla SharpSource: Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association, Vol. 4, ENVIRONMENTAL VOICES:CULTURAL, SOCIAL, PHYSICAL, AND NATURAL (1992), pp. 50-58Published by: Center for Appalachian Studies and Services/ East Tennessee State UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41445621 .

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Coal-Mining Songs as Forms

of Environmental Protest

R. Chesla Sharp

G.C. Jones ends his biography Growing Up Hard in Harlan Country with, "The big seams of coal that brought wealth to these hills have been mined out. Only the scars left on the mountains remain, where the drifts were made" (1985, 177). In this paper I examine coal-mining songs as modes of dealing with these scars. I have called the paper "Coal-Mining Songs as Forms of Environmental Protest"; within the term environmental I include both social and physical surroundings.

This approach to mining songs comes out of a tradition that sees art as a weapon for social justice and environmental change. It was from this tradition that John L. Lewis was speaking when he said, "A singing army is a winning army" (Denisoff 1972, 133); and Woody Guthrie inscribed "This machine kills Fascists" on his guitar (Denisoff 1971, 4). It is of course in this tradition that Theodore Dreiser begins Harlan Miners Speak: Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields with Aunt Molly Jackson's "Ragged Hungry Blues."

These protest songs are cries for justice from groups that have been mistreated, most often oppressed. Jackson's "Ragged Hungry Blues" illustrates perfectly the state of privation from which these songs come:

All the women in the coal camps are a-sitting with bowed-down heads, Ragged and barefooted, the children a-crying for bread. (Dreiser et al. [1932] 1970, vi)

"Ragged Hungry Blues" was written during the Harlan Country coal strikes of the early thirties, the conditions of which Jackson describes in Greenway's American Folksongs of Protest:

50 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association



On the 17th morning in October my sister's little girl waked me up early. She had 15 little ragged children and she was taking them around to the soup kitchen to try to get them a bowl of soup. She told me some of them children had not eat anything in two days. It was a cold rainy morning; the little children was all bare-footed, and the blood was running out of the tops of their little feet and dripping down between their little toes onto the ground. You could track them to the soup kitchen by the blood. After they had passed by I just set down by the table and began to wonder what to try to do next. Then I began to sing out my blues to express my feeling. ([19531 1970, 266-267)

William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience points out that there is no rationally deductible connection between an outer fact and the sentiments it may happen to provoke since the same fact will inspire entirely different feelings in different persons, and at different times, in the same person ([19021 1961, 130). James's thesis is beautifully illustrated with the variants in the "Only a Miner" cluster. All the songs in this cluster describe the death of a miner, comment on the low value placed on a miner, and mention the wife and children of the miner who are now left to fend for themselves. But these events are interpreted differently in the variants. There is a version that sees the events from a passive religious perspective:

The hard-working miners, their dangers are great And many while working have met their sad fate. They are doing their duty, as all miners do, Shut out from the daylight and darling ones too.

The miner is gone, we see him no more; God be with the miner wherever he may roam; And may he be ready Thy calls to obey, Looking to Jesus, the only true way.

He leaves a companion and little ones too, To earn them a living as all miners do;

God be with the miner; protect him from harm; And shield him from danger with Thy dear strong arm; And bless his dear children wherever they be, And take them at last up to Heaven with Thee. (Green 1972, 88)

The world view here is one of resignation. The miner is doing his duty as all miners do. He is seen as a type and not as an individual. He leaves "a

Volume Four, 1992 51



companion and little ones too to earn them a living." The fate of the children drop into the background until the last two lines where God is asked to bless the dear children and take them at last up to heaven. The song asks God to be with the miner and to protect him from harm. Since the song is a lament describing the death of a miner the statement at first might seem ironical, but by the last stanza the song has shifted from the individual miner to the generic miner.

Molly Jackson composed a version of "Only a Miner" from a totally different view of the world. The first three stanzas are similar to the religious version except the phrase "doing their duty" is written "while mining." However, Jackson has three stanzas at the end which are unique to her version:

Leaving his children thrown out on the street, Barefooted and ragged and nothing to eat, Mother is jobless, my father is dead, I am a poor orphan, begging for bread.

When I am in Kentucky so often I meet, Poor coal miners' children out on the street. "What are you doing?' to them I have said, "We are hungry, Aunt Molly, and we're begging for bread."

"Will you please help us to get something to eat? We are ragged and hungry, thrown out on the street." "Yes, I will help you," to them I have said, "To beg food and clothing, I will help you to get bread." (Green 1972, 80)

Jackson sees a naturalistic world that does not care for the worker. The miner is killed by some accident, not doing his duty as the religious version would have it. Jackson focuses on the plight of the children. She makes them individual by pointing out that they are barefoot, ragged and hungry and their mother is jobless. In the last stanza, Jackson takes the plight of the children upon herself: "I will help you to get bread." The psychological import is far different from the ending of the religious version: "And bless his dear children wherever they be,' And take them at last up to Heaven with Thee." The religious version may serve some type of sentimental piety; Jackson's version may start a revolution. At least it creates a social activist.

It is of course the mental viewpoint represented in Jackson that results in songs of protest. The first mode of protest which I would like to describe is an awareness of a problem without commitment to action. Denisoff calls the songs produced by this perspective rhetorical songs




(1972, 61). This form of protest is hardly a protest at all. The song describes some social or physical condition but offers no ideological or organizational solution. The early version of Sarah Gunning's "Dreadful Memories" illustrates the category perfectly:

Dreadful memories! How they linger; How they pain my precious soul. Little children, sick and hungry, Sick and hungry, weak and cold.

Dreadful memories! How they haunt me As the lonely moments fly. Oh, how them little babies suffered! I saw them starve to death and die. (Greenway [1953] 1970, 274- 275)

Gunning's "Dreadful Memories" describes the miserable conditions of the Harlan coal fields of the 1930s. But it stops with the description and, in the version quoted, proposes no solution. The song probably aided the writer by expressing her conditions, by helping to create a sense of cohesion within the community of workers, and by focusing on the plight of the coal fields, but it does not call for any action or the joining of any movement. A song serving similar purposes dealing with strip mining is "Draglines":

Draglines at my heart; they're tearing up apart And the mountainside where we were born, Must I weep and mourn for the land, It took ten million years to form. Now all my eyes can see are just the bleeding scars Across the mountainside, across the mountainside. (Silverstein)

Songs like "Draglines" and the hymn-like version of "Only a Miner" usually do not go beyond a cry of desperation. The composer often believes his duty is simply to suffer or that reform is not possible or at least it is not the role of the composer to bring about the reform. How- ever, "Dreadful Memories" contains within itself enough pent-up anger that only a slight stimulus can move the composer to a call for action. The version of "Dreadful Memories" that Gunning sang at the Appala- chian Music Workshop held at the Highlander Center in 1972 contains the following verse:

Really, friends, it doesn't matter Whether you are black or white.




The only way you'll ever change things Is to fight and fight and fight. (Blaustein 1972)

The song that calls to action Denisoff calls the magnetic song (1972, 60). The function of the magnetic song is not simply or even primarily to express the emotional state of the composer. It appeals to an audience and attempts to convert the listeners to a movement or an ideology. The classic example of this type of coal song is Florence Reece's 'Which Side Are You On":

Come all of you good workers, Good news to you 111 tell, Of how the good old union Has come in here to dwell.

RefraimWhich side are you on? Which side are you on?

WeVe started our good battle, We know we're sure to win, Because we've got the gun thugs A-lookin' very thin.

They say in Harlan County There are no neutrals there; You either are a union man Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

Oh workers, can you stand it? Oh tell me how you can. Will you be a lousy scab Or will you be a man? (Greenway [19531 1970, 171)

The characteristics of the mind set of the magnetic song is its two-valued orientation, its class consciousness and its feeling that time is on its side. Reece's song asks, "Which side are you on" and then states, "There are no neutrals in Harlan country; /You either are a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair." The song goes on to say, "We are sure to win," a statement that had no empirical support at the time. In fact the union movement went down in miserable defeat. Class consciousness is, I think, clear in "Which Side Are You On." It certainly is explicit in Molly Jackson's "I Am a Union Woman":




The bosses ride fine horses While we walk in the mud; Their banner is a dollar sign While ours is striped with blood. (Greenway [1953] 1970, 270)

and in Sarah Gunning's "Hello, Coal Miner":

They come up to a miner's wife, say "I know how you feel" These dirty, rich aristocrats who never missed a meal They never spent a lonely night, or heard their children cry Or had to tell their children why daddy had to die (6)

Exactly what the Harlan miners wanted people to join is a fascinating question. The "good old union" that Florence Reece speaks of is the National Miners Union, a rival union of UMWA, set up by the Communist Party. Molly Jackson in "I Am a Union Woman" says:

When my husband asked the boss for a job These is the words he said: "Bill Jackson, I can't work you sir, Your wife's a Rooshian Red." (Greenway [19531 1970, 270)

and Sarah Ogan Gunning sings:

I hate the capitalist system I'll tell you the reason why. They cause me so much suffering And my dearest friends to die. (Blaustein 1972)

Korson did not include any of the NMU people in Coal Dust on the Fiddle because he thought they were Communists (Green 1972, 18). Green (1972, 77) and Denisoff (1972, 40-43) both believe the group was Communistic. Greenway plays down the Communistic element partly because he wants to protect Molly Jackson who was still living when he did his collection ([1953] 1970, 261-262). Hevener doubts a Communistic leaning. He says the Communists' atheist, interracial, collectivism and pro-Soviet views clash with the miners' fundamentalist, racist, individu- alistic, and patriotic views (1978, 56). I seriously doubt that the Harlan group of NMU members were ideologically Communists. The ending that Sarah Gunning put on "I Hate the Capitalist System" at the Highlander Center in 1972 was:

What can I do about it To right this wrong?




We all are going to join a union for the union makes us strong. (Blaustein 1972)

Joining a union hardly strikes me as the agenda of the Third International. It seems to me that the word capitalist has about the same import as dirty , rich aristocrat to Gunning.

By the mid 1930s the UMWA was back in the picture and with the aid of the federal government brought relief to the Harlan miners. The coal movement was then clearly a trade union movement until around 1960 when a disenchantment with the union set in. This disenchantment is seen in Jean Ritchie's "Blue Diamond Mines":

John L. had a dream but it's broken it seems And the union is lettin' us down.

and in Billy Edd Wheeler's "Coal Tattoo":

I've stood for the union, walked in the line, Fought aginst the company. I've stood for the U.M.W. of A., Now who's gonna stand for me? (7)

While there are no signs of an attempt to replace the trade union, I think I observe a mind-set that sees change coming about from individual and small group action. It is essentially in the women's movement in the mines in which I see this mind-set. The songs no longer start with "come all you workers." They serve as an affirmation to the self and a statement to the world about that self. Two songs will serve to illustrate this: Hazel Dickens' "Coal Mining Woman":

Just like you. I've got the right to choose A job with decent pay, a better chance to make my way. And if you can't stand by me, don't stand in my way. (5)

and Sue Massek's "What She Aims to Be":

She breathes that black and dusty air, wears pads upon her knees.

She's proud to be a woman and she's working to be free. She's a coal mining woman and that's what she aims to be. (7)

I would like to end this paper by quoting a couplet from "What She Aims to Be." It shows so well the optimism of a new perspective and




allows the fleeting illusion that the protest movement in coal might be successful:

It's a rough and rocky journey from the kitchen to the mine. But strength is gained from struggle and now Robin's doing fine.

Works Cited

Blaustein, Richard. 1972. "Dreadful Memories." Southern Appalachian Ethnog- raphy Series . East Tennessee State University Archives. Video.

Denisoff, R. Serge. 1971. Great Day Coming : Folk Music and the American Left . Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

. 1972. Sing a Song of Social Significance. Bowling Green, Ky.: Bowling Green University Popular Press.

Dickens, Hazel. "Coal Mining Woman." They'll Never Keep Us Down : Women's Coal Mining Songs. Rounder Records 4012.

Dreiser, Theodore et al. 1932. Harlan Miners Speak : Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.

Green, Archie. 1972. Only a Miner : Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Greenway, John. 1953. American Folksongs of Protest. New York: Octagon Books, 1970.

Gunning, Sarah Ogan. "Hello, Coal Miner." They'll Never Keep Us Down : Women's Coal Mining Songs. Rounder Records 4012.

Hevener, John. 1988. Which Side Are You On? The Harlan County Coal Miners , 1931-39. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

James, William. 1902. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Collier Books, 1961.

Jones, G. C. 1985. Growing Up Hard in Harlan Country. Lexington: The Univer- sity Press of Kentucky.

Massek, Sue. "What She Aims to Be." They'll Never Keep Us Down : Women's Coal Mining Songs. Rounder Records 4012.

Ritchie, Jean. "Blue Diamond Mines." Clear Waters Remembered. Geordie 101.




Silverstein, Deborah. "Draglines." They'll Never Keep Us Down: Women's Coal Mining Songs. Rounder Records 4012.

Wheeler, Billy Edd. "Coal Tattoo." They'll Never Keep Us Down: Women's Coal Mining Songs . Rounder Records 4012.

R. Chesla Sharp is professor of English at East Tennessee State University, where he teaches linguistics and directs the graduate program in English.




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ENVIRONMENTAL VOICES: CULTURAL, SOCIAL, PHYSICAL, AND NATURAL || Coal-Mining Songs as Forms of Environmental Protest