In 1931, the coal miners of Harlan County, Kentucky, were engaged in a bloody dispute with the mine owners. Attempting to intimidate union leader Sam Reece, the company hired men marshalled by Sheriff J.H. Blair to raid his family home. They did, terrorising Reece’s wife and children.
That night Florence Reece sat down and on the calendar that hung in the kitchen, wrote one of the most famous protest songs of the American left: Which Side Are You On?
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there.
You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.