Harlan, Kentucky - In the Deep Dark Hills of Eastern Kentucky..."Bloody Harlan"

okay friends neighbors i'm excited to be back on the road again just battled off covid believe it or not i was positive for a couple of weeks and i'm back my voice is not back quite yet as you can probably tell but that's par for the course with me so hang in there we'll um you're gonna like this video today because uh it's coming from the deep dark hills of eastern kentucky so hopefully that'll be a little bit of a tip off for you and you'll see in just one split second here as promised we're rolling in from lee county virginia into harlan county kentucky yes the harlan county alrighty i mentioned into the city of harlan kentucky uh which is of course the capital of harlan county the not the capital but the county seat harlan i was surprised because if you look around it seems like a bigger town very well bigger city uh population the last census was about a little over 1700 and there and then a guesstimate recently has around 1500 nowadays which is kind of surprising because you'll see it's kind of a spread out got a few things going on a lot of that has to do with the fact that uh there's it's kind of a captive audience here in harlan county it's kind of isolated so all the surrounding towns and communities feed into this and i think harlan county itself has about in the ballpark of 25 000 people so most of them would come down here to shop or do business and that type of thing she's still got lynch cumberland uh edwards and all these smaller towns and communities to feed into this area but harlan county at one time in 1940 it peaked a little about 5100 population so just like a lot of these coal cities and towns took a huge hit in population and looks to continue to maybe do so i'm just stunned though i have been here for a few minutes and i have yet to see the first reference to coal whatsoever that would be unthinkable 20 years well heck 10 years ago that would have been unthinkable that you would not see i haven't seen the friends of cole sticker i've not seen any kind of reference nicole keeps the lights on nothing not one thing which is very odd to say the least as this town said he was built on coal literally we'll get down to the downtown business area i highly recommend if you want to know anything about coal mining industry especially labor disputes you want to check out harlan county usa the documentary event it was amazing captured the labor dispute between the united mine workers and the coal operation and duke power was involved with that and it was just man it's tense it's it's almost hard to watch uh and but it's amazingly captures that whole era very well i happened to be in the middle of a strike myself when i first went into mining right out of high school i got a job and it was the last major strike the pittson strike and i remember the tension and the man it was just a and that that harlan county usa captures every bit of that because it was vicious [Music] also are you quite often hear the term bloody harlan uh there was call there was a harlan county wars there was also a mine dispute back in the once in the 1930s and it was just another ugly episode between the coal companies and labor really brought about uh labor unions rise in this area especially and that's astounding too is that the best of my knowledge there's no remaining members of the united mine workers around not not actively working in the mines unless that's changed recently that was true as of a year or two or three years ago and uh which is another thing that just knowing that this county in town was built on coal and union kind of hard to imagine appears they've installed a floodwall of some sorts i'll get to the downtown area and cut back in on you okay turning into the business district here and take a look around and this goes back to the glory days of harlan you'll see a lot of these buildings are now unfortunately empty and in native repair and there's a particular segment in that harlan county usa documentary that sticks in my mind where the union had a march downtown area and went down through this part of it so it really sticks with me as you can see back then you know these businesses were full and it was a prosperous area area but man you just there's a lot of cars today it's a sunday so a bit of a church crowd out there's a really good restaurant down here called the portal which i normally stop at i won't be today because a little cove and hangover but as you can see a lot of these buildings are getting in pretty sad shape looks like church letting out so cut off here real quick i'm back at the end of the street that we were just going down i don't like to film people without permission so if i can avoid it that's why a lot of people ask me about well there's no people in a lot of my videos well i try to keep them out as much as possible just for the fact that i don't necessarily want anyone filming me without my permission anyway down here toward the high school in the elementary school several notable people from harlan the harlan county at least anyway they uh one most recently made note was jordan smith won the voice a few years back it was a huge deal great singer so well deserved and believe it or not nick lachey who was one time married to west elementary school one time married to jessica simpson was born in harlan county believe it or not little fact i did not know and frankly doesn't seem believable but it is here's the high school hopefully you'll see that it's a little darkish home of the green dragons [Music] whitefield public library to the right there a lot of one-way streets and so forth down here it's a little bit tricky but keep pressing on so hopefully they'll have a downtown revitalization program at some point that will get some of this back up because there you can tell they're nice buildings they were meant to last when they were built and i'll stop down here and get out of the car show you a little bit of the courthouse okay i want to give you a little bit of a view of the street down here near the courthouse turn it around here you can see the actual courthouse itself it's a pretty nice little building still take a little look at the statue this was for world war one appears back across the road it looks like it says nbc bang but that was one time the bank of harlan was established in 1934 which would have been the absolute heyday of the boomtown experience so give you a look at this thing down to here still a little bit of fall colors in there as a little ambiance and i'll be back here in a second when i'll see something else interesting this marker tells a little bit about how the county was named it was named as says 1819 for major silas harlan was born in virginia in 1752 came to kentucky in 1774 built harlan's station seven miles south of harrisburg on salt river 1778. commanded spies 1779 in illinois campaign of general george r clark who said he was one of the bravest soldiers that ever fought by my side he was killed in 1782 at the battle of blue licks while commanding his detachment he's buried at blue licks also an interesting footnote is that silas harlan's grandson went on to serve as a supreme court justice i'll throw that in there while i'm at it this talks a little bit about some 22 courthouses were burned in kentucky during civil war and one of them was in harlan county it was retribution uh harlan in particular for the burning of the lee county courthouse in virginia the confederates burned it among this and says that of those 22 12 of those were burned by confederates eight by gorillas two by union accident cochosit hurlan was burning reprisal for burning of lee county virginia courthouse october 1863. here on the other side of the courthouse you'll see in honor of the harlan county coal miners who sacrificed their lives while supporting a family in the nation look at all those names amazing hundreds of names back to that harlan county usa documentary it was uh you talk about some interesting characters uh it is i can't recommend enough to watch that uh i watch it about it once every five years or so and i watch it about a year ago and i can't believe i lost some of those guys names uh especially that the uh company man that had some battles with the union members so all kinds of little interesting things down here let me clear something up before i get too far out in front of my skis here as they say i uh one thing silas harlan was not the grand father of the supreme court justice actually his fiancee at the time he was killed ended up marrying his brother so his brother ended up being their father i thought we need to clear that up speaking of other famous people from harlem we had um k wood ledford very well known announcer for the university of kentucky basketball and football there was bernie bickerstaff who i remember coaching the seattle supersonics but he was affiliated with the nba for a long time i'm pretty sure he coached charlotte's basketball team i can't remember if he's bobcats or hornets at the tom and some other teams he's been had been around nba for a long long time and then there was probably the most accomplished athlete in the history of kentucky possibly a man by the name of wallace wawa jones was given the nickname wawa interestingly enough by a sister who couldn't pronounce his name called him wawa so one of the better nicknames around to me anyway but anyway he he played basketball for adolf rough adolf rupp and um played football for bear bryant imagine that nobody else can claim that are they and um we ended up winning olympic gold medal a couple of national championships in basketball so he was quite the accomplished athlete wawa jones he played in nba ended up getting i think it's definitely i can't remember just mention that but he just he was drafted by the chicago bears he didn't play football in the nfl but he was that kind of athlete passed away about five or six years ago i do believe and there's a songwriter named jerry chestnut he sang he wrote the song goodyear for the roses for george jones that's what i remember seeing a lot of people sign that song alan jackson and he also sang t-r-o-u-b-l-e if you remember uh travis trade had a hit with that fairly i would say recently but more recently and also elvis presley so i smell t-r-o-u-b-l-e probably spelled a lot of trouble here in harland in his time truth be told go run through the middle of the downtown area [Music] harlan is just so well known people know this place just it's kind of bizarre really considering how small it is and there was justified a lot of people remember that television series which was great i watched every episode of it just keeps getting referenced all the time and even channing tatum came and did some outdoor activities which is one thing that they really try to promote is such a gorgeous place there's kingdom come park down there and it is amazing and there's black mountain which is also pretty phenomenal and they draw a lot of people here for those both of those [Music] i thought this building's pretty cool it's called kentucky mind supply company nouns massive building so look at this and then i'll pop back up with some more tells to tell and here's a look at the downtown section i mentioned earlier where in that harlan county usa documentary you saw mine and the umwa miners marched down the street in a peaceful protest this was the fashionable words now they did these days interestingly too florence reese getting back to the music aspect of harlan uh florence ruth wrote the song which side are you on actually she originally supposedly wrote that when she was a 12 year old girl about her dad been on strike but she updated it in 1931 when she'd have been probably in the early 30s [Music] for her husband sam reese helped organize some of the union operations during the uh well the labor operations the general became known as the harlan county wars and that's where that nickname bloody harlan came into it because it's untold number of deaths and bombings all kinds of things it ended up it was the my coal miners union organizers versus law enforcement in fact uh they sent in the national guard at one point to occupy the town basically restore some sort of order heard me allude to it at the very opening of this thing too is another song that comes to mind is the uh in the deep dark hills of eastern kentucky it's the place where i trace my bloodline it was there i read on a hillside gravestone you'll never leave harlan alive and i meant to sing that acapella but my voice is shot unfortunately oh well you spare you that but if you haven't heard that song you'll never leave harlan alive if you haven't heard that song stop this video right now and go check it out because it is fantastic it is one of the better songs written about one of these areas um you'll never leave harlem live and that's my particular version is a favorite version it's from daryl scott although patty loveless does a fantastic version as well and even brad pitt paisley does a pretty decent one so here we are in bloody harlan i hope i'm gonna get me some bloody good eats here in a little bit but let me give you a look at that a lot of people love seeing these older downtowns areas look at that fire escape imagine what this was like in its a day anyway i'll cut that out for now i came on up the road a little bit to brookside and now i see that this mining operation is defunct the last time i was here it was actually an operation believe it or not looks like it's been a while again brookside was name sounds familiar because as part of that harlan county usa documentary that i won't shut up about which i forgot to mention earlier that florence reese singer of which side are you on was actually in that documentary singing that song which was kind of a neat thing she goes all the way way back to the harlan county war of 1930s and she showed up in that video later in life well like i said you're getting a shot of it just a defunct mom which is not all that uncommon around here brookside's a little bit out away from harlem the city on the way to everett's and uh but i want to give you a little shot of that just to just because it's here i guess and on that note we'll wrap this video up from harlan kentucky i hope you guys enjoyed it i do want to give a shout out to mr robert mendenhall for a very generous donation that made this trip possible thank you so much thanks to everybody for liking subscribing commenting all the ways donating the ways you support us um very much appreciated i uh want to say too dude watch out for this covid stuff i'm telling you it's no joke i didn't have that many symptoms but i did get a little bit of a cough one day until i whipped together some appalachian covered killer which was a shot of moonshine quite a bit of honey and a little lemon juice not that cold for a loop so appalachia one cove at zero i guess but anyway guys take care of yourselves and each other and god bless see you down the [Music] road

Channel: Real Appalachia

Views: 521,093

Keywords: appalachia, appalachian, tap, shane simmons, harlan, kentucky, lynch, evarts, benham, coal, coal mining, umwa, strike, bloody harlan, darrell scott, brad paisley, patti loveless, you'll never leave harlan alive, harlan county usa, florence reece, black mountain, barbara kopple, which side are you on, justifiied, harlan county war, letcher county, pennington gap, harlan county usa, documentary, bloody harlan

Id: DeTTP2tQlWc

Length: 23min 34sec (1414 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020