The Wilder Davidson Story: The End of an Era; Part 3; The Strike

The following program has been made possible in part by a grant from the Tennessee Humanities Council, a not -for -profit corporation whose principal funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities by contributions from businesses and individuals in the upper Cumberland region of Tennessee and by WCTETV. When I got the Wilder, I thought I was going to see him. Davidson used to be a pretty place and a nice place and Wilder was too and Highland was too down there, but it all disappeared, the people just all gone out and left. I never dreamed that it would be like that always and that I'd live out there all my life. I love to live there, didn't I? I sure did back then. There's a good place to live. There was a lot of people in there too. For six months, it was just like a war going on in Wilder. You could hear shooting day and night,

dynamite. Mining companies was king of the hill, buddy. You stooped and you bowed. They owned the mines, they owned the house, they owned the store, they owned everything. Now Wilder's best coals have been dug out in this country, they say. I know it's got a bad name, but they've never been no better people in the world. It's hard to talk about it. The Wilder -Davidson story, the end of an era, is a community -based oral history project that tries, through the voices of those who lived there, to preserve the history of the five Uppercumberland coal mining communities of Wilder, Davidson, Twinton, Crawford and Highland, Tennessee. Part three, the strike, looks at the development of the labor

union in the Wilder -Davidson coal mining complex and the nationally prominent strike of 1932 -33. The coming of the railroads to the upper south in the 1880s and 1890s paved the way for American industrialization in the form of coal mining. Southern workers, used to an independent style of work, found themselves confronted with large corporations that made them wage earners and controlled their lives. In an attempt to retain some control over their own futures, Appalachian coal miners joined the developing American labor union movement, especially after the federal government supported unionization as part of the World War I mobilization. The United Mine Workers of America achieved impressive strength by 1919, but it broke down because of a wave of post -war strikes that year, a declining demand for soft coal during the 1920s, and an unfriendly national climate for unions. A UMW local was formed in Wilder in a 1919 strike, but was broken

by the coal operators in a 1924 strike that drove wages down to the 1917 level. What makes the union is the working conditions. Men's treated the way they're treated. You see, the company on you, when I was coming up for years, they owned the store, they owned the houses, they owned the doctor, they owned the politicians, whatever they said. So the conditions got to get bad, they just keep getting bad and worse, and so directly they get tired of it. They had a union there about 1920, somewhere back in there, but when I went out there, there was no union there, and they didn't organize until about 1931, I think, when they organized, when they had the big strike. Well, it was a slip -around deal at that time. see, if the company knows

you signed a card, see, these organizers come in, they get all the men to sign it. They could, you see, before they get a charter, and get all of them, and then they just slip around in the woods, you know, a few men would get together, go to somebody's house, and they'd get them. And, you know, if the company found it out at that time, you see, till Roosevelt's law, after he passed the law, they could organize that and get it forward by that stop all that. Back in that time, didn't have, the union didn't have any support from the, I don't know how to say it, I guess, from the law, from the government, state, federal, and whatever. And you had to get out, if you joined the union, would have to maybe go out in the woods and meet a fella. And maybe two or three of them would sign a card, you know. And that way, that way you got in the union.

you persecuted quite a bit if you joined the union, if they knew it. Of course, we'd done it secretly, you know. But after they changed administrations back in that time, it wasn't too bad. But it was a trying time, if you had to be pretty, well, I don't know where you'd say brave or what, but you had to believe in the cause that you were engaging in at that time, if you, when you went to join the union at that particular time. Now, do you remember the mining strike of 1924 at Wilder? Oh, do I? Yeah, we lived out here on the mountain in Morgan County then, and people just went everywhere and lived over around the mines. We was on a big farm, we was all right.

But then it didn't farm, didn't have enough deep. We raised our stuff. Lord, they come out with wagons and begging us for apples and tares, malices, and anything we had. Oh, strikes, that was just a little teaser. Now, one time, somebody shot a man in the Horvitz house, he is a union man too, and they shot in his house, and his wife was a cook and sufferer, and the bullet just didn't miss her head. They never know who's done it, but it's done during that time. Were any people killed during that strike of 1924? Well, none, I know of. I never hear of them, nobody being killed, but they've done a lot of dangerous things. They were watching them all the time. With the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, the already ailing American coal mining industry was devastated. Small coal operators, such as those in the Wilder -Davidson complex, were forced to retrench in order to survive. During this period, labor unions were rapidly disappearing all over the South. Indeed, after

impressive successes during World War I, only 12 % of the American workforce belonged to unions in early 1930. Despite this setting of economic depression and the failing labor union movement, miners in Wilder -Davidson were able to reorganize and gain a one -year union contract in July, 1931. The union began to get a little stronger, I think, and the way the men had been treated between the years, during the years from 24 to 32, I think that caused it to be stronger, because they began to realize that they were never going to get no recognition until they did band together. And of course I'm concerned, the union was a value to the people, to the men. We was treated differently when we got the union in there. We tried to treat it quite a bit different, because they couldn't tell you if you didn't like the job, get off of it, there's a barefooted

man out there that wants your job, and I've heard that. I'm not saying that I've heard it. And me and B talked too, like these bunch of cattle, or dogs, they put it that way, I've heard that. I was raised out there with them, I know what went on. So I was asked the question how the company treated the men, and some ways it treated the men pretty good, and other ways it treated them bad. I know that to be a fact. So tell me those, I had a brother that was pretty bad to drink, and they told him my daddy did after on him off, he'd have to make him leave home. My daddy told him he wouldn't do

it. Of course after that they got into him, they didn't fire him after that. Just over things like that. Is that humanity? Is that the way people should be treated? No, I'm a union man, and I'm a strong union man, and I don't mind people knowing it. Rather than give in to a 20 % wage cut, Wilder miners went on strike July 9th, 1932. Well the contract ran out, the company didn't want to sign a new contract, and they talked around a while, then they decided that the company just decided that they were going to bust the union, and that's what happened. The miners were

wanting better working conditions, and better pay, and they were entitled to it of course. They were working for real low wages, and the times were hard then, and people that did work were desperately in need of money to support their family with. In a pattern typical all across America at the time, the mines reopened with strike breakers on October 19th, 1932, and extra mine guards were hired. The burning of railroad trestles, the destruction of company property, and widespread violence prompted the governor to order out Tennessee National Guard units from Cookville and Cleveland, Tennessee. They come up and say, well we're going back to work, and they put out the word for people to come at morning to work, and the people that already didn't want them to work. So first thing happened, they burned about a $20

,000 tip. Now that don't count like much money in 1986, but in 1932 that was a lot of money. And they blew it up the fans, they burnt the railroads, and then things got so bad, they thought I guess, they brought, I believe they called the militia then, maybe the National Guard now, whatever. They come in. What really got us up there, I think, was that they killed a mine superintendent as they were some mine. He was sitting in his office about four or five hundred yards away. They shot him on a high -powered rifle and killed him. The relationship between the miners, they all got along just fine until they organized the mines, and they had their strike. And then after that, miners came in from different localities, you know, when they started the mines back to this place, those that wouldn't work. So the ones that came in to

work were called scabs, and friction developed between the two groups. And then they had shootings and dynamitings, and they had to call out the National Guard before the strike was over to try to maintain peace between the two groups. And that went on for several months. They bowed these trussles at once, a couple times of a night, you'd hear a kaboom, and they bowed them things up, and there was no way under them. didn't a chance to call out that railroads, and they bowed them big vent fans up in the mines, I guess, off on different hills while they'd have vent fans. And I guess the little scabs would come out of there hollering for air, but like I said, you couldn't much blame them, their kids was hungry. I'd done the same thing than me. I believe 26 people were

shot and injured to some degree by shootings, mostly of bushwhacking nature. I know I have a lawyer friend now that was raised over in my community, you know, and they came down from Crawford. And his father had a big family, I guess about six or eight children in the family. And he used to walk from Crawford to Wilder, and he had two grown sons, and they used to guard their daddy to work. One of them walked on one side of the road in the woods, and the other one on the other side, and he had walked down the railroad from Crawford to Wilder to work, and they made him with shotguns every day to protect him, keeping him being shot. Former residents remember their reaction to the National Guard in Wilder and Davidson. They were a bunch of boys with a bunch of horses, and I think they caused more problems than they saw. They would get scared themselves at times and start shooting, and you'd just be like a war. They'd have machine guns

and rifles and pistols and everything going off, so you would wake up often in the middle of the night hearing dynamite and shooting. Now these people didn't have a chance against the National Guard, that's a militia where it was. That still burns me up. Company A of the 109th Cavalry of the Tennessee National Guard from Cookville was stationed in Highland Junction and later in Davidson. We were young, 18 years old, we'd already been grilled, we'd get ambushed at any time. They were trying to blow up them trussles to keep that train out of there, that's the only thing that bothered us, and was worrying about where they were going to blow up the next trussle. The biggest problem we had, I think it was more, as it went along, was the drinking and fighting. As far as we're concerned, we were never in any danger. I don't think, of course, we were young and didn't see danger.

We would be a patrol, when we first went up there, we had just about 20 men, I think it was, something like that, and maybe 10 horses. We were a of a day time, and we'd, the captain had us going out into the woods and places, and we'd run up on an old group of men sitting around a little fire, having a, we figured, a union meeting, and a lot of them would have, that was before you ever had any of the long whiskers around anywhere, and they'd have their whiskers and bearded grown out on them, a lot of them, and they'd be sitting there, caulking. We wouldn't bother them, we'd speak to them and go on. We had these motor cars, patrol of track wheels. course, in day time, there wasn't much danger, because they weren't going to blow up nothing. At night, we had guards that they ever trust. As people go, what did you think about the people up there? They was all right to us. We got along with them. Didn't take much off anybody? Uh -uh. They didn't take much off of us, and we knew we had enough to not give them death.

We didn't give them no static, and they didn't give us no static. And when they went out with us, when something, them old boys, when we'd seen a light on to the hill up there, we put it out, and when you turn them on, they'll brought an automatic sluice on you. You go hunting for cover. The majority of the people were really nice people, in my opinion. I stayed into commerce right now. They gave me that job to stay at this commerce area, just be there all day long, for eight hours. I stayed there eight hours. And everybody that came in that commerce area seemed to be just preaching nicely. But we had a few people up there that was doing this dirt. That's about the biggest thing it was. Everybody, all of them, I wasn't doing that. It's just part of them. They were good people. I found them as a whole, good church -going people. We went to church with them on Sunday. We dated

some of the girls. They were, well, I think one or two got married with a girl so far. Harvey Mayberry married a girl up there. But I found them as a whole, just hard -working people. People that were solid people. We saved a lot of property damage. We saved a lot of lives. Because those people that were crossing that picket line and going in there, they were in trouble. The strike lasted from July 1932 through that terrible winter and into the summer of 1933 in the depths of the greatest depression in American history. Mining families suffered tremendous hardship and deprivation. Organizations in Nashville sent aid trucks to Wilder Davidson with food and clothing. Many former residents also remember driving trucks through surrounding communities

collecting food. My George would like to start to death here. They'd take an old truck and they'd spill it to the pool. They'd take anything to give them. Potatoes or beans or peas, they'd go into these. Well, as a trip I went on, they went pulling in below Nashville and they'd fill that truck full. And then they'd come back and just park it and divide it out to families, you know. The county just tried to equal it out the best they could. So I was living here when they were on this track. Did they come by and see you? Yes. I usually give them some deeds when they come around. And then farmers would give them pumpkins and squash and potatoes and all kinds of that stuff. I guess they swallowed it up. I mean, they're glad to get it. Now potatoes, I know one time somebody would give us a bunch of potatoes and we'd get them fried, stewed, baked. We hadn't had none so long, you know. fixed them every way we could think of. But they

nearly, if they had a cow, they had the tire to the house overnight. And I think they finally got to them. People was hungry. The most important thing that stands out in my memory was the people. The fact that the suffering that they had gone through. And we sensed that when we got up there. And we knew that they were having a hard time. just like what Sloan said a while ago, we gave them stuff. could, the food where we could. And especially kids, things of this nature. I mean, kids that would hang around the place over there some. And I think the thought of living in those houses that I saw, seven below zero, no coal, maybe a little, but not like they would have normally, is

the most outstanding thing in my memory that will always stay with me. I guess that's about right. The people, I guess, would be the biggest thing, would be outstanding. The way they had to suffer there. Especially in the time that we living in. You think of having a strike and a depression on, too. That's terrible. Captain Crawford had a bunch of cattle, he was feeding out fattening. And when we'd get out of stake or meat, we'd come down there and kill us a calf and take it right on up there. We'd it to the first class. And then we'd feed those kids that come in there. I don't know how much extra milk we'd have for them. Kids would come in there hungry and we'd feed them and take care of them. And when we left, all of them kids cried just like babies, see us leave. It has an memory in my life that I will never forget.

I may forget a lot of the details, but I won't forget it. The culmination of the emotional intensity of the strike came in the early evening hours of Sunday, April 30, 1933, when Union President Barney Graham was killed by company guards Jack Shorty Green and Doc Thompson. Everyone agrees that Graham was shot under the light of the gas pumps across the street from the wilder commissary. And most say he was then clubbed on the head with a pistol butt. However, there are dozens of variants to the sequence of events, motives, the number of persons involved, and the number of shots fired. Shorty Green and Doc Thompson were acquitted in Chancellery Court in Jamestown, Tennessee. Shootings and other violence continued into June, but the Union was effectively broken with Graham's death. What was the reaction at the death of Barney Graham? Well, of course those people that were

for the Union thought that he had been done a great wrong, you know. But then people on the other side were just as determined in their viewpoint that he was just a troublemaker and had been drinking too much and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Barney Graham was getting ready to go up that road past the church to his house. That night Barney Graham was drinking and had too much to drink really. And when my dad and mother come out of the store where he stopped my father and had my father between him and Frank Shilito, Frank Shilito was a deputy sheriff. And he was placing my father between him and Frank, so Frank wouldn't try to shoot him, but he had a gun in his pocket that he was holding. He didn't have the gun out, but he was aiming the gun toward Frank and was cursing Frank and trying to start trouble with him in that manner when

Shorty Green came out. He set up for it. I believe that. And I have heard that. Of course, I didn't have anything to do with either side at the time. I've heard that said, all right, these things that you don't know, you don't say that you know them, because I don't know that that's right. But it looked pretty obvious. Now, if they didn't play with him, he had 11 bullet holes through his body. And then they beat him to death. Yeah, they didn't kill him. There's fellas that shoot at him on top of the store there in Everhoare. Guns started firing from on top of the commissary. And behind the log, there was a log between the

store and post office. But see what everybody wanted them to think, that that was in self -defense. Because they had Wilder's leading citizens. And I think probably they're all dead, but they had them. That men never went back to the store after it closed. They had them lined up on store ports. Now, let me tell you something. They done a number on Barney Green. People right here didn't know it. And my sister could see a flash of fire. There was firing on him, too, from over our county around the house that was over there. He was in a crossfire. And I was always told that Shorty Green used two pistols that he was shooting with two handguns at the same time. And he hit Barney Green with about eleven or twelve shots out of twelve. You have to know Barney Green and the President of Union. I just met him when I was there before

him. We got to be good friends. And then when I was over there, I found out that the company had hired two professional gun thugs. Who had a record, a known record of convictions of killing, when I'm going to kill four people in strikes at Heron, Illinois and other places. And the other killed two people. One of them named Thompson, and I've forgotten what the other is named. I did think it was a needless murder. And it was a murder. I didn't think because the strike was broken, really. Because that did break it. That really broke the back of the Union when it killed. Barney was the Union leader. He was the person that all the Union men looked to for leadership. And he wasn't the only one, but he was really the head of the Union. It gave me a real respect and understanding of working people. They'd be willing to sacrifice everything for what they

believed was right. And how they stood together. What solidarity really meant. And on a collective level. And on a personal level, you saw the complete courage of a person like Barney Graham. He knew it was dangerous. He thought he'd probably be killed. He just had that personal integrity and courage. have to have a tremendous respect for people of that kind. Until you're willing to put your life on the line, you really don't believe in anything. If you're not willing to die for what you believe in, you don't really believe it. I'm convinced of that. I saw it in the Civil Rights Movement. I've seen it all along. he helped me learn that lesson, tragically. In 1933, upon the streets of Wilder, they shot him brave and free. They shot my darling father. He fell upon the ground. Twas in the back, they shot him. The

blood came streaming down. They took their pistol handles and beat him on the head. The hired gunman beat him until he was cold and bare. When he left home that morning, I thought he'd soon return. But for my darling father, my heart shall ever yearn. We carried him to the graveyard and there we laid him down. To sleep in death for many a year in the cold and sodden ground. Although he left the union, he tried so hard to build. His blood was spilled for justice and justice guides us still. Thank

Thank