Hell in Harlan - front page

Continental Hotel, Pineville, Kentucky, and debated the advisability of returning toHarlan County. Some urged caution while others dismissed the threats of gassingand bombings as mere bluff. The bolder councel prevailed. Thomas Ferguson, aveteran of thirty-seven years in the United Mine Workers of America, had beennewly assigned to act as an organizer in Harlan County. He described the unionconference as follows: "All of the fellows who were organizers, along with WilliamTurnblazer who is the president of District 19, were present. We discussed theadvisability of all of us fellows going back into Harlan County and staying there andtrying to reestablish headquarters until we could organize. Bill Turnblazer madethis statement, 'They ain't going to shoot you organizers' and Mr. Arnett spoke upand said, 'the hell they won't. They shoot governors in Kentucky'. (He was referringto Governor Gobel who was assassinated on Inauguration Day.) Well, I agreed withBill that I did not think they would. I thought they would try to scare us andfrighten us in every way they possibly could, but the next day we went in anddiscovered that Bill and I were wrong, because they shot me."Two days later the organizers drove into Evarts where they rented aplot of ground to be used for holding an open-air meeting on the following Sunday.Then they proceeded to the mines of the Black Mountain Corporation, which wasunder contract with the UMWA, and attended a local union meeting. The meetingwas held in the afternoon in order to permit them to be out of the county beforenightfall. At 4:30 p.m. they returned on the road from the Black MountainCorporation's coal camps to Harlan Town. Thomas Ferguson and "Tick" Arnettwere riding in a car driven by William Milton Hall. Three other organizers followedin a second car. Between the towns of Verda and Ages, they came upon a car parkedby the side of the road. Frank White was seated in the car behind the driver's wheel.As the cars bearing the organizers drew near, two blasts on the horn came from theparked car. Instantly bullets rained onto the two cars as they drove by, damagingthe front car and wounding Ferguson in the shoulder. The drivers stepped on theiraccelerators and careened down the highway at a speed of more than seventy milesan hour, swerving past obstacles that had been placed across the road by thebushwhackers. Arnett later described this wild ride to the LaFollette Committee:"Just as we got about even with the car, the driver, who was later identified asFrank White, gave two blasts on the horn. We were approximately twenty feet pasthis car when a rain of bullets began to hail in and around our car. There was onebullet came and penetrated the radiator and there was another bullet came through115