They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History

Abstract

Few places in America are as immediately associated with union struggle and violence as Harlan County, Kentucky. From Florence Reece's haunting song “Which Side Are You On?” (1931) to Barbara Kopple's prize-winning documentary, Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976), the labor battles in eastern Kentucky have captured the imagination of artists and activists of the American Left. That history also captured the imagination of the Italian oral historian Alessandro Portelli who spent the past four decades recording interviews with more than 150 Harlan County men and women. What results is a collective oral narrative that explores how the county's history as a site of exploitation and resistance has been seared into the consciousness of its citizens. That history shapes not only the memories of the Evarts massacre of the 1930s and the Brookside strike of the 1970s but also the region's folktales, the overstated isolation of the settlement era, and myths concerning slavery and reputed Cherokee ancestry.

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