Music and activism

Rich Trumka, recently deceased leader for the AFL-CIO and former head of the mine workers union spoke these words at the Pete Seeger - Labor Heritage Foundation "Carry it On!" concert on April 26, 1986 in Washington, DC.

 

Songs have been the bricks and mortar of our movement, as much as strikes, marches, picket lines, and organizing drives.

 

Songs have given us courage to stand up and fight. They’ve been a camera when there were no photographers; they’ve been a peacemaker when we needed calm. They’ve been an embrace when we needed solace. They’ve been our history books when we needed to remember our past, and they’ve united us when we’ve needed a collective voice.

 

Have you ever wondered why there are more songs about coal mining than any other industry? Or why many of the greatest songs of the labor movement – “Which Side Are You On?” or “Solidarity Forever” -- are about coal miners or were inspired by coalfield struggles?

 

What other union can boast of such a long list of talented singers from its own community as Merle Travis, Florence Reece, Uncle George Jones, Aunt Molly Jackson, Sarah Ogan Gunning, Jim Garland, Jean Ritchie, Hazel Dickens, Nimrod Workman, Phyllis Boyens and the talented young rank and file coal miner from West Virginia, Rocky Peck?

And can you name me any folk singers who haven’t cut their teeth singing coal mining songs? Music and the United Mine Workers of America are inseparable.

 

Coal miners came to America from many places and we brought our singing traditions with us when we settled here. We were Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh in the 1840’s. We were freed slaves up from the cotton plantations just after the Civil War. We were Italians and Slavs immigrating from the 1880s through the 1920s. And we were Spanish-American and Chinese brought to the Western coal fields to build the railroads and the coal mines around the turn of the century.

 

We needed music to break down our isolation from each other, and we sang regularly in our union meetings, our homes, our churches, our barrooms, at funerals and in the mines.

 

Because our union activities were outlawed and brutally repressed, we used word of mouth to send our message of unionism.  That habit carried into all other activities. We learned our history from the older men and women of our communities who preserved and passed down our traditions orally through stories, poems and songs.

 

Our mining communities were isolated from larger towns and cities and we lacked the diversions available to city workers. Our barrooms were our stages and our churches our social centers. When coal operators forbade us to sing church hymns or hold prayer meetings during long strikes, we just moved our services to someone’s house where we continued to sing.

 

Our ballads memorialized our mine disasters. Our marching bands fortified us for long treks up and down mountain roads. Our prayer songs enabled us to share our grief over the loss of loved ones. Our picket line songs helped us face the powerful corporations whose drive for profits caused miners to lose their lungs, their limbs, their homes, their communities, and their lives.

 

Wherever there was a just fight, whenever another in the long procession of coal mine disasters occurred, when coal miners and their families came together to celebrate, grieve or organize, there too were the singers and songwriters.