The Path Was Steep

by Suzanne Pickett

  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.

  A call went to Boothton. The chartered bus was stopped there and returned to them. When they left, it was by the same back route. Among thousands of men, there is always the chance that one will break. One might fire a shot at the sight of men entering the bus. To avoid this, the seventeen guards, with Self, were escorted one by one, Jim Ledford on one side, John Nash on the other, and Bryant Perry guarding his back. No miner in the Cahaba field would risk hitting one of their loved leaders.

  Self and the miners at Coleanor and Piper made headlines the next day. An era had ended; the little people were beginning to assert their rights. Oppression must end, and this was the beginning of the end. Self and his men had been glad to leave guns behind and escape with their lives. A giant had fallen.

  The names of Piper, Coleanor, and Belle Ellen blazed across newspapers all over America. Men had stood as men. Taking heart from this success, miners throughout Alabama, then the whole South, came out on strike. They joined their Northern brothers and . . .

  Th
e rest is history.

  When John L. Lewis shook his eyebrows, the whole nation listened. Bellwether of the unions, he led demands for better working conditions, hospitalization, pensions. Coal miners are well-to-do these days, using their power as ruthlessly, perhaps, as coal companies once used theirs. But Piper—my Piper does not profit. After World War II, natural gas and electricity began to erode the market for domestic coal. Commercial mining almost died. Boothton, Belle Ellen, Marvel, Piper, and Coleanor mines closed.

  The faded houses in Piper were sold and moved. The great oaks were murdered, and pines were planted on those high hills. Strip-mining has left wounds on those beautiful hills. Yet the Cahaba still flows in its peace and beauty, and Piper and Coleanor still live in the hearts of all who ever lived there. From across America, hundreds come yearly to the Piper-Coleanor Reunion.

  And suddenly—

  America is now energy-conscious, and millions of tons of black diamonds still lie underground, enough in this field for more than a hundred years.

  Someday, perhaps, Piper will live again.

  Epilogue

  During the Mike Self-U.M.W. incident at Coleanor, my sister Thelma Johnson, and her husband, George, afraid for the girls and me, came down and took us home with them to Dolomite. Three days later, David appeared with our furniture on a truck. A slow rain fell. We were moving to the extra house on Papa’s farm and would farm that summer.

  My usual reply: “David! We can’t! You don’t know how to farm!”

  “All right, then, I’ll unload the furniture here in the road and go to Detroit to look for work.”

  We went to the farm. In a week, David changed his mind. On a cold day in March, snow was falling, but that didn’t faze David. He left, walking, to “bum” a ride to Birmingham—then on to Detroit. I followed, weeping, but he could outwalk me. So I returned to see about the girls.

  David found a job. My cousin George Mosley was foreman at Budd Wheel. He and his darling wife, Linda, took us in, helped find an apartment, and we settled in.

  In three months, we made a trip back home. Then Mr. Randle was, of course, happy to have David back. I was delirious with happiness.

  One Wednesday night in 1935, David had an experience with God at a Baptist-Methodist Men’s Prayer Meeting. A true “born again” experience. He came home radiant with happiness. From that day on, there was no more “drinkin’” and “cussin’.”

  Otherwise, he was the same exciting, ambitious person. His father had taken him out of school at age sixteen and put him to work in the mine. Now, David studied mining books, took exams, received fireboss status, then mine foreman papers. When he was not given the next “bossing” job in Piper, he was hired by Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel.

  Coal mining was growing across America. David, as section foreman, headed the monthly lists for safety and also production of coal. T.C.I. had a number of mines in the Birmingham area. Next David was made night mine foreman of Docena mine, then mine foreman at Edgewater mine.

  T.C.I. operated “captive” mines. U.S. Steel took all of the coal. Black Diamond of Birmingham was the largest commercial mining company in the South, operating seven mines in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The company contacted David a week or so after Pearl Harbor and offered him a job as superintendent of their No. 9 mine in West Blocton in Bibb County (seven miles from my beloved Piper). David accepted, and we moved the last of January 1942.

  Mr. Bissell, the owner of Black Diamond, was so proud of David—boasted that he was, at age thirty-four, the youngest mine superintendent in Alabama. He was also the best. Three hundred men worked at the West Blocton mine. David was over the whole shebang: production, renting company houses, the office, commissary, clothing, furniture stores, and the restaurant—all owned by Black Diamond. West Blocton was then thriving as a shopping center for many coal mines. There were also many other stores, privately owned.

  No. 9 mine broke all records for coal mined in one day. And coal was desperately needed those war years. The record was painted on the office wall in large numbers. While David was there, his records were broken again and again, but his records were never broken afterwards.

  We loved the old superintendent’s house—the oldest and largest house in West Blocton—with its big rooms, high ceilings, French windows and doors. It was and still is the best place in the world for me. The night we moved in, I sat before a huge fire in the living room and felt not only “at home,” but as if I had returned home.

  Then Black Diamond transferred David to their Blue Creek mine, with a new, much smaller house. We were not happy.

  David, offered a job as general manager for Garland Coal Company in the Smokies near LaFollette, Tennessee, accepted the job, and we moved to Lafollette. We loved it, but it was not Alabama.

  David made a trip home, saw a man or so, and was hired as general manager for Little Gem Coal Company at Dogwood, near Montevallo. There were two mines, and in two months all records were broken. There was a nice salary, also house, telephone, water, a 20 percent discount at the company store, and other “goodies.” Yet I was desperately homesick for West Blocton.

  By now, the U.S. had given great power to coal miners. They could advise U.S. safety men, point out the dangers, and they did go into the Dogwood mines with the safety men. The result: both mines were closed. Actually, they were extremely safe mines. In twenty-eight years, there had been only two fatal accidents in them. The mines never reopened, and men were out of work.

  David thought of buying a local, smaller mine, but Mr. Charles Blair, then president of Black Diamond Coal, offered him work as safety director over all of the Black Diamond mines, and David accepted. His reputation was such that the University of Alabama asked him to teach safety to coal miners at night, which he did.

  We had built a small house on Pea Ridge on forty acres of land we owned. But I was still homesick for the big old house in West Blocton. It was for the superintendent who must live near the mine. The safety director could live anywhere as he had to oversee all of the mines.

  Mr. Cardwell’s wife did not like the big old house and wished to move to a smaller house uptown. David saw Mr. Blair and bought the big house before he even told me. I could scarcely believe it until we drove up the hill from the Cahaba River on our first trip to see it again. Then I wept with joy.

  David made a Garden of Eden of the place—so many flowers, shrubs, large lawns. But he still had the wandering mind his mother had warned me about those years ago. A nephew interested him in taking work in California, selling insurance for those famous cemeteries. David applied for the job and was accepted.

  Oh, yes, by this time, he was safety director and assistant to the vice-president of Black Diamond Mine. “You’ll never work for Black Diamond again!” Mr. Blair told him when he quit this time.

  “David, I can’t go!” I wept. We had made several trips to California and loved it, but I didn’t wish to live there. “I am going,” David said. I had three weeks to sell my furniture—antiques collected over twenty years. We moved to California, but we didn’t sell our house. Later, I cried my way home also.

  David hated the work. “My nose stinks all the time,” he said one day after working in the smog. Another time he said, “I’d rather be in Alabama digging ditches than here.”

  We returned home, and I began hunting antiques once more. David bought a franchise for Standard Oil gasoline and opened in Montevallo—did quite well, too. But he was a coal miner. We were delighted when Mr. Blair sent for him to work as superintendent at Blocton No. 9 mine.

  In the meantime, coal mining was dying across America. Today, where dozens of mines once operated in Alabama, now there are very few. Also, the steel mills have closed in Alabama. Bibb County, which has enough coal underground to last two hundred years, does not have even one underground mine.

  David retired at age sixty-five. T
hese were the very happiest years of our lives. We made a wonderful trip to England and many to California, Florida, and other places. We were together constantly—became almost literally one person.

  You may not believe in miracles, but one is writing these words. In February 1987, it was discovered that I had colon cancer. The prediction: only one month to live without surgery, and I could die on the way to the hospital with another bleeding spell.

  I didn’t want to have the surgery, but David, a very strong man who never cried, wept constantly, his face wet with his tears, and pleaded with me to have the surgery. So, surgery was performed at Bessemer Medical Center. I was given one year to live by Dr. Edge. “I removed two cancers, each as large as my fist,” he said. Fortunately, a colostomy was not necessary. Today, Dr. Edge admits that a higher power was involved.

  I had been writing for the Centreville Press for years. The urge to write was always in the background. I began writing seriously at the age of forty. Very unsuccessful, I finally sold a short story to Weird Tales. Readers wrote the editor flattering letters. They bought everything I wrote after that. Soon, I was featured on the front page. I began writing books. Then I was offered work as reporter for the Centreville Press. When I became ill, readers across America who subscribed to their “home paper,” had private prayers and also their churches praying for me. One church in Dallas, Texas, with two thousand members, had my name at the top of their “round the clock” prayer list. More than ten years later, I have finally retired from the Press, but there is no sign of a return of the cancer.

  When the doctor told that I might have one year of life, David went up and down the hospital corridors saying, “I won’t live without her.” He didn’t have to.

  Three years after that, David and I had been in the yard; I ran into the house for a minute, returned, and he was lying on the lawn, blood running from his mouth. “David!” I knelt. “Speak to me, darling!” But I knew. “You can’t speak; you are dead!” I screamed. I tried to lift him, but couldn’t.