The turbulent decade closed just as it had opened, with a strike. It began as part of the UMWs national strike to obtain a union shop. In Harlan a fifteenweek strike ensued that pitted the operators' association against the county's nine thousand union miners, supported by the federal government, the UMW, and the nation's public and editorial opinion. When the strike began on 3 April 1939, every county mine closed in Harlan County for the first time in history. Union officials, realizing that a return to the violence of the 1931 strike would destroy their cause, urged members not to resort to violence, even after union zealots forcibly baptized nine nonunion.....
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