Blood Runs Coal Quotes

“Lucy was not alone. Nearly 3.3 million Appalachians left their homes between 1950 and 1969 after John L. Lewis’s infamous bargain with the big coal companies. Mechanization proved a far more dangerous enemy to their way of life than the company-owned sheriff. Three out of four eastern Kentucky miners were out of work by the mid-1950s. By then, Look was calling Central Appalachia America’s “underdeveloped country.”
― Mark A. Bradley, Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America

“Three years later, the civil rights lawyer vividly recalled that day: “In his straightforward way, Yablonski told me that he had decided to run for the presidency of the UMWA, that he would probably be killed before the fight was over, but that he had to do it.” Rauh knew Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy well, but he always said that Jock Yablonski’s decision to risk his life for the country’s coal miners was the greatest act of courage and moral fiber he ever saw.”
― Mark A. Bradley, Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America