Word: appalachia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...negotiated, after the White House had intervened and called on both the industry and the union to settle their differences for the national good, the critical decision last week lay in the rough and sturdy hands of the 165,000 United Mine Workers. In scores of begrimed towns throughout Appalachia, in settings as varied as Utah, Missouri and Pennsylvania, they marched to their union headquarters to cast their ballots-or, in some instances, angrily shred and burn their copies of the pact. And though the final results would not be in until this week, from the very first tallies...
...White House's ability to settle the strike was strictly limited. Both sides have proved to be stubborn, fractious and suspicious. In the scarred and desolate hills of Appalachia, owners and miners both take for granted a degree of conflict that does not exist in other U.S. industries. From the start, the 130 companies that belong to the Bituminous Coal Operators Association showed a determination to bludgeon the union into a contract that had little chance of ratification by the rank and file. In exchange for a 37% pay increase over a three-year period, the owners insisted...
...Paycheck, a favorite of the miners, was recruited to support the settlement in one-minute radio spots. Instead of belting out his top song, Take This Job and Shove It, he pushed the new contract by singing a few bars of Spread the Good News Around. Miller traveled through Appalachia, appealing to the locals and making a pitch on television. District presidents chorused their own praise of the pact over nine TV and 50 radio stations in all the regions where U.M.W. coal is mined...
Along with social conditions, the impact of religion on West Virginia women interests Daugherty. "Religion is what's glued many people together in the very dark times of depression and of mining accidents," she says, and adds that "the church still has a very powerful influence, especially in Appalachia; for many people, the school and church are still the only real places of socializing." In her course this spring, she will show her own films of women's participation in Pentecostal groups, which are part of Appalachia's fundamentalist religious revivals, and in the mountain "serpent-handling" cults. She will...
Daugherty sees her year at Harvard as a chance "to get away from the narrow tunnel vision we're all susceptible to, whatever we do," but intends to return next year to her native state. "I want to spend the rest of my life working with women in Appalachia... I've been changed through living in other parts of the world and going through doctoral education, but I feel in my gut I still know what life is there...