The Path Was Steep (24 page)

Summer passed, and I was not well. Not anything that I could put my finger on, just headaches, backaches, and never, never feeling well.

I took aspirin and diagnosed my own illness. One day it was tuberculosis, the next heart or kidney trouble. We were cut two dollars monthly for medical insurance, both local and hospital, so a complete examination would not have cost us anything, yet not once did it occur to me to have a medical checkup.

Well, David finally told our young, very good doctor, Bill Stinson, of my ailments, and he insisted that I be taken to the hospital that very day. My condition was complete retroversion of the uterus, and all of the ligaments were broken. I will spare you the details. Surgery was a must, and I could never, never again have a baby. For many years, when I saw a nursing child, I had a very special sadness and pain in my heart.

But the operation was successful, and life went on as usual—no, a new, different life began for us at Piper.

Jim Ledford, John Nash, Bryant Perry, Charlie Erwin, and others talked among the men, reminded them of past abuses. They brought out a petition to have a union, and soon every blue-collar worker in Piper and Coleanor had signed as well as all the men in Belle Ellen and those across the Cahaba field. The government had given the men the right to organize a union and to strike if they thought it necessary to obtain higher wages and better working conditions. United, coal miners became a growing power to be reckoned with through future years.

Christmas and the traditional tree again brought unity between the company and the men for a short time. But after the holidays, little bits of hatred and hurts were dug from their rotting earth and polished. One man reminded another of the miseries of the past, and with that voice from Washington to encourage them, they were ready to fight.

All over the world, men were growing literate. Communication bounced from pole to pole, and workers everywhere were united. In Russia, communism seemed a bright example to many. In Germany, Hitler promised immortality, a thousand-year reign for the Third Reich. In Italy, the voice of Benito Mussolini was heard in the land.

In America, land of the free, in the country born of and for freedom, there were new thoughts and new ideas. Many trembled. Would America turn communist? Or fascist? Would she sell her soul for bread? Or had decades of freedom bred giants? Would men, could men throw off shackles of one kind without donning others?

It took us eight years to learn. It took that “Day of Infamy,” December 7, 1941, for us to learn that we could fight and strike and demand our rights—that we could wrangle and cut ourselves until we bled, and yet that the seeds of freedom were deeply sown. We settled our battles among ourselves. No fascists, Nazis, or communists could tell freeborn Americans how to run their country.

But at this time, our Armageddon was eight years ahead. We now searched the past and we feared, and our men, savage in their determination to stand united against whatever oppression the future might hold, stood as one man.

Demands were made.

They were refused.

The men laid down their tools and brought lunch buckets home; Piper, Coleanor, and Belle Ellen were on strike. All stood firm in their demands.

Rumors spread through February and into March. Strikebreaking can be a bloody business. Armed guards were brought in to guard imported strike breakers—“scabs,” we called them. Hunger could face miners again. Hunger was not easy to forget, but was there strength to see this through?

Mr. Ben Sherrod, general manager of Piper and Coleanor, spoke for the owner. Not one demand would be met. The men could return to work or else—.

One night as David and I listened to the radio, a car roared down the road, brakes squealed, and steps bounded across the porch and to our door. As the door opened, I heard the trample of feet and an angry murmur, low but growing.

O. C. Busby stood at the door. Then Raymond Jones and Hap Hendon followed. Raymond and O. C. had come to warn David and Hap. “If you have a gun, Dave, bring it,” O. C. said. The men were white-faced. Hap’s eyes were wild, and his hair was bushed high on his head. “The company has brought in a bus-load of guards. Mike Self is their chief!”

“Where are they?” David asked and kissed me hastily.

“In the Coleanor office.”

Terror sent cold chills over my body. I fell on my knees beside the bed. Then I raised my head to listen to the tramp of feet as men took the road that led to Coleanor. I would have stopped David if I could, if I’d had time to think. Stunned, I opened the door to another knock, and Vic Hendon and her children came in. They were crying. We went to sit in the living room. Sharon and Davene joined in the tears; then we became strangely silent, numbed, just waiting, and I wondered, is this a deathwatch we are keeping?

23

All Men Brothers

Mike Self! Legends had made a demon of him. Half of them must have been purely legends. Possibly he was a good neighbor, a loving husband, and father. Possibly he went to church on Sunday and lived a good moral life. Coal miners across Alabama hated the very name of Mike Self, yet all had to admire his courage. He was not afraid of the Devil himself, and he was now in Coleanor with his henchmen. They had been brought in to guard men who would take the very bread from the mouths of our children.

Self was company deputy at Acmar—“shack rouster,” he was called. Coal companies had been fighting for existence. The owners lived, as a rule, over the mountain in Birmingham. Cadillacs, furs, jewels, trips to Europe: these had been the accepted way of life for them.

Coal miners were mostly just figures on a ledger to them. At the top, they scarcely were aware of the turbulent base of the pyramid that held them aloft. The owners hired general managers. Under these were the superintendents. Next came the mine foremen and on down to the common workers.

Now, in Coleanor, one question was answered. The tramp of running feet had answered it. Miners were not afraid. Many had ancestors who had fought in the Revolution and all other wars. They, too, would fight if necessary.

This dread night, as feet thundered past our house, David joined the men who ran, some cursing, some weeping. A black man from Belle Ellen swam the river and climbed the hill to Coleanor. This man wept as he ran, afraid that someone would fire the shot and kill Mike Self, whom, he believed, it was his right to kill.

“I was sick,” he wept, with what breath he could spare for weeping. “I wasn’t able to work, and he made me—he had a gun—he’d a killed me. Made me hold to the tail of his horse. I had to run or he’d a dragged me to the mine—and he laughed at me as I run—and they made me work all day. I got the right to kill him.”

We’d heard the story before, and we believed it. Yes, the man was black and did not have the rights of white men then. But in a coal mine, all faces are black, and all men brothers. Rights taken from one miner were considered taken from all, and each had a tale of bitterness.

Many stories had come from Acmar. One said that the village was ruled by armed thugs. And these men had come to bring the same rule to our peaceful, tree-surrounded area. Jim Ledford had prepared the miners for such a night as this. “Kill a man’s spirit, and he is forever yours,” Jim warned. If any could kill the spirits of these men, it would be such guards.

Wise in experience, the officials understood coal miners. They knew that regular trains and bus lines would be guarded as they came in and out of Coleanor and Piper.

Not too many years past, a train load of strikebreakers had been killed at Woodstock in Bibb County where the train had stopped at a siding to let another pass. The men who fired into the boxcars said they did not know the strikebreakers were there. They had fired to frighten the men, whom they said they believed to be in the regular passenger cars.

Possibly this was true. They had certainly been in the regular cars at first, then were hidden in the boxcars for their own safety. But more than a score of them had been killed. Remembering this, the local officials had not brought the guards in openly by train or bus. Once entrenched in town, they knew they would be strong. The problem was getting them there. They chartered a bus, which took the long route through Boothton, a coal-mining town in Shelby County, then on to Marvel, in Bibb. From Marvel there was a back road to Coleanor which was seldom used. They had traveled this way, and now the men were in the company office in Coleanor.

The best-laid plans of men do fail. Self was recognized through a bus window by someone in Boothton. Miners throughout the Cahaba field had been expecting such a thing. The Piper-Coleanor-Belle Ellen strike was a proving ground for the future of miners. All miners in the Cahaba field were involved and deeply interested.

The men at Boothton were prepared, knew their work must be done quickly but silently. If the officials at Boothton learned what they knew, the news would be telephoned to Coleanor and the thugs would be on guard.

Trusted men were sent first to Piper, and they would warn Coleanor. On to Belle Ellen they went. Other men were sent to Dogwood, Marvel, Aldrich—all through the area, and men from these towns gathered with all speed to help their fellow miners. Every available car was soon loaded and rushed to Coleanor.

The men were wise, indeed. Cars and feet that had thundered with earth-shaking speed slowed as they neared their destination. Cars were parked out of hearing, a guard set to warn any who might approach, and silently the miners gathered in an armed ring about the office in Coleanor. In the darkness they stood, all around the lighted office.

The officials and the armed guards in this office must have been jubilant, making their plans, while unknown to them this army of men gathered with one intent: to fight—to kill! kill! kill! if necessary.

Word had spread that bloodhounds had been brought to the county seat in Centreville and held in reserve there. For what purpose? To track down our men as if they were criminals? We knew the pattern. When Self and his men were in control, then the strikebreakers would come. Our harvest would be hunger, despair, and finally giving in to the company, working under whatever conditions and pay they might wish to impose. It had happened once; it could happen again.

Washington was to help later. John L. Lewis would send all aid as soon as possible. But this night, our men stood alone against armed, trained gunmen. Who could believe they would rebel? That peaceful coal miners would stand against such men? As Israel of old quailed before Goliath, so miners would quail before the very name of Mike Self, officials must have thought.

Only they didn’t.

Most of the local leaders—Jim Ledford, Bryant Perry, and George Nash—had gone to Birmingham for a meeting with the U.M.W. officials. Tension had grown during the strike. Trouble was expected. Black men and white guarded the homes of local officials day and night. Jim Ledford was busy at all hours, meeting with groups of men, strengthening, advising. Flossie and Jim had a prearranged signal. If he was needed, the porch light would be burning.

The light burned bright that night.

Even though the leaders were gone, sanity reigned, although the miners, many of them armed now, had anger and bitter wounds to remember. Some wanted blood vengeance, wanted to kill, kill, kill—but sane men were able to stop them.

Percy Tillery lived at the top of the hill above the river in Coleanor. Men from Belle Ellen had come two ways: one, the long miles downriver by car to cross the bridge, then up the hills to Coleanor. Others, not wasting time, swam the river and raced up the hill to Coleanor.

“They popped over that hill like rabbits,” Tillery said later. “I collected their guns and stacked them as they came.”

But sanity ruled by a very thin thread. Charlie Erwin was there. The men trusted him. “Let there be no bloodshed,” he pleaded. “Don’t let that be on our record.”

Perhaps a thousand men now surrounded the office. Inside were the guards—heavily armed, trained men—and with them the company officials, carrying out the orders of their superiors. Mr. Sherrod was there; his reputed words, “Let them eat hickory nuts; let them eat mussels,” still rankled in the bitter hearts of these men. Mr. Randle was there, and other officials. Piper and Coleanor men were their neighbors and friends. Many men would die. These guards were trained gunmen. They would pour volleys into the crowd. If one shot had been fired, a massacre would have resulted.

At the end, all inside the building would have died.

Mr. Sherrod came out to plead with the miners. Tears ran down his cheeks. “We will send these men back. We will do anything—only do not shed blood.”

Here was balm for miners. Here was slight healing for old wounds. They, too, had begged once. For bread!

And for the first time in his life, perhaps, Mike Self begged—not for his own life, but for the lives of his men.

“He was not afraid,” David said in awe, admiration, too, when he told me. “He was not afraid for himself. I stood just a few feet from him. His eyes were cold. I never saw such eyes. He didn’t want his men to die. He stood before those hundreds who hated him, and he was not afraid. He lighted a cigarette. His hands were perfectly steady.”

Jim Ledford, Bryant Perry, and George Nash had now arrived. “Kill them! Kill!” some of the men screamed. But the leaders were sane men and proud. They talked in soft voices, calmly, talked reason to the miners. If one madman had fired one shot, blood would have colored the green hills of Coleanor. Miners, as a whole, were God-fearing men. They did not want bloodshed, though hired men had come to shed their blood, had brought bloodhounds and guns to overcome them; even so, they listened to their leaders, and these prevailed.

But as long as a man lives who was there that night, it will be remembered. Coal miners had been stripped naked, humiliated, but now the general manager of the company pleaded with the men, wept before them. Balm for old wounds. They stood tall now. Once again they could think of themselves as men.

All of the guns that Self and his men had brought with them were turned over to the miners. Some of them are used for hunting in Bibb County today. Mike Self was armed with three pistols, one between his shoulders. Self may have thought of shooting his way out, but there were his men to consider, so he consented to being disarmed. He and his men would leave peacefully.