Blue Ridge Country September/October 2021 - 16

OUR BLUE RIDGE TOWNS
'WHAT YOU'RE LEFT WITH IS YOUR PEOPLE'
Harlan, Kentucky
Faces Forward
At the heart of Harlan's re-creation are two things
we all could use: creativity and community.
By JOAN VANNORSDALL | Photos courtesy HARLAN COUNTY TOURISM
t's late Sunday afternoon in Harlan, Kentucky, and
the streets are quiet. It's the day after the Poke
Sallet Festival, Kentucky's longest continually running
festival, and no doubt Harlan is celebrated
out. I walk the downtown, getting the feel of the
place I've come to. The mountains surround the
town, green as the new dollar bills that must have
flowed during its coalmining heyday.
I
It was called Bloody Harlan, site of notorious mine
wars in 1931-32, with Florence Reece's " Which Side Are
You On? " its anthem. Barbara Kopple's 1976 documentary
" Harlan County, USA, " gave the world a frontline
chronicle of the 13-month Brookside mine strike. And,
two years ago, there was the widely-publicized miners'
protest, when the Blackjewel coal company abruptly
filed for bankruptcy owing its workers weeks of wages
and benefits.
This is Harlan, a coal town with a brave but notorious
history, with Darrell Scott's " You'll Never Leave Harlan
Alive " its tagline, thanks to the " Justified " television series
and pretty much every country singer alive.
But here's the thing. Walking the shadowed streets
of Harlan, I saw bright beauty in the painted brick wall
murals. I felt the respect and deep remembering at the
Harlan County Coal Miners Memorial Monument. I
smiled at the bold storefront of the artisan boutique,
Sassy Trash.
And the dozens of partially filled blessing boxes ( " Take
what you need, leave what you can " ) and #WithLoveFromHarlan
logos ( " Community + Love = Hope " ) left me
knowing that Harlan had some new stories to tell.
Which is exactly what Brandon Pennington and Laura
Adkisson with Harlan Tourism are very good at doing.
Both are Harlan County natives and the children of coal
miners. Both left for school and came home clear about
their calling.
" We haven't always gotten to tell our story-and we
want that story to be the truth, " Adkisson says. " Everything
we're able to do here is because of what was done
before. "
16 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
" We've faced poverty, mining disasters, and hard
times-in the end, what you're left with is your people. "
Pennington says.
To understand Harlan's people, you'd do well to understand
coal camps and mining practices. So we travel
to Lynch, once the largest company-owned town in
Kentucky. Owned by a subsidiary of US Steel, Lynch at
its peak was home to 10,000 people from more than 38
countries, as well as Harlan natives and Blacks from the
Deep South. It had its own schools, hospital, movie theatre,
hotel, company store and post office. Today nearly
all of it is gone, but visitors can ride a low train deep into
Black Mountain's Portal 31, once one of the richest coal
mines in the world.
It's cool and drippy in the mine, and the curves of
the tracks take you deep into the mountain, where illuminated
robotic coal miners narrate their work and their
lives, moving through four decades of mine operation. I
leave with a deep respect-and an unshakable image of
working entire shifts bent low or on your belly.
With only 400 coal jobs left in Harlan County today,
what's next, I wonder. Over lunch at the Moonbow Tipple
Coffee and Sweets Shop, Adkisson goes big. " What we may
see is a move back to what we were before-self-reliant. "
While outside investors are contributing to Harlan's
downtown-its first microbrewery is set to open late this
year after the city went wet in 2019- " Harlan Strong "
runs deep in this place.
Take Main Street's Sassy Trash, for example. It's two
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