Title: Committee for Miners Records
Inclusive Dates: 1963-1965

Creator:

• Committee for Miners

Call Number: Mss 39; Micro 829; PH 5034

Quantity: 0.8 cubic feet (3 archives boxes), 1 reel of microfilm (35 mm), and 0.1 cubic feet of photographs (1 folder)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Abstract:

Records of the Committee for Miners (CFM), an organization formed to raise funds for legal and economic assistance to unemployed miners in eastern Kentucky, together with related personal papers of Peter B. Wiley, a field worker for CFM. The Committee's initial purpose was to raise funds for the defense of eight unemployed miners accused of conspiring to dynamite the L&N railroad bridge in Perry, Kentucky; its larger purpose was protection of rights and liberties for the unemployed in the mining region. Included are correspondence between staff members such as Hamish Sinclair and Arthur Gorman in New York and field workers and miners such as Bernard Gibson in Hazard, Kentucky, national union leaders, and other concerned individuals such as Rennie Davis and Carl and Anne Braden; reports; planning material for the Appalachian Summer Project in which CFM cooperated with SDS; microfilmed clippings; printed matter; and Wiley's notes, writings, and a 1964 diary. Miscellaneous similar papers are presented for the miners' own committee, the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment, and the Appalachian Economic and Political Action Conference.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00039

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The Committee for Miners (CFM) was formed in July 1963 in New York City. Its initial purpose was to raise funds for the defense of eight unemployed miners accused of conspiring to dynamite the L & N railroad bridge in Perry County, Kentucky. All of the accused were “roving pickets” organized in the southeastern counties of Kentucky to force small truck mine operations to recognize the contract made between the United Mine Workers and the National Bituminous Coal Mine Operators Association.

Although the Committee for Miners organized to raise legal defense funds, its larger purpose was protection of the rights and liberties of the increasing numbers of unemployed in the mining region, and the committee soon began to sponsor economic and political activities among the unemployed in eastern Kentucky. Its main office and the center of its fund-raising activities remained in New York, but it maintained field workers and an office in Hazard, the county seat of Perry County. It also had a legislative committee in Washington, and other loosely organized committees in cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit. Among the attorneys who aided the miners were I. Philip Sipser and Paul O'Dwyer in New York, and Harry M. Caudill, Whitesburg, Kentucky, and Dan Jack Combs, Pikeville, Kentucky.

In December 1963 the Greater New York Students Committee for Miners helped to organize a well-publicized project to “Bring Christmas to Kentucky”. They gathered food and clothing in the eastern cities and distributed them in the mining area. Early in 1964, miners organized the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment which took as its purpose and slogan, “food, jobs, and justice”. In March 1964 the New York and Pennsylvania Committees for Miners cooperated with ACFE and the Students for a Democratic Society in conducting a conference at Hazard that was attended by miners and about 175 students, and which undertook to study the area and its problems and to develop plans and programs to alleviate unemployment and hunger.

During the summer of 1964, the Committee for Miners sponsored “The Appalachian Project” in an attempt to help the newly-organized Appalachian Committee for Full Employment. Aiding in this endeavor was the Economic Research and Action Project of SDS. Three to five field workers were in the Hazard area most of the summer.

On November 7, 1964, representatives of nine organizations including the Committee for Miners met at Highlander Center, Knoxville, Tennessee, and formed the Appalachian Provisional Organizing Committee, designating it as provisional so that ideas and plans could be creative and changing. On December 12 the Appalachian Economic and Political Action Conference replaced the provisional organization. It was composed of fourteen cooperating social action groups whose purpose was to “encourage a strong alliance between jobless and underpaid Negroes and whites in Appalachia and unite them in solving their common problems”.

In April 1965 the Committee for Miners ceased raising funds, citing as its reasons disagreements between the CFM and ACFE as to policies and leadership and ACFE's decision to raise funds independently. During most of the period covered by these papers, Hamish Sinclair and Arthur Gorson directed the work of the Committee for Miners in New York and Hazard, and Berman Gibson headed the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment in Hazard.

Among those who did field work in Hazard in the summer of 1964 was Peter B. Wiley, a graduate of Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, who was about to enroll at the University of Wisconsin. Wiley was the donor of his own papers relating to the Appalachia Conference and the Appalachian Summer Project, and the records of the Committee for Miners. The Wiley Papers and those of the committee have been organized here as one collection.

The papers include correspondence from March 1963 to May 1965 carried on between personnel in the New York office and miners in Kentucky, field workers in Hazard, and various committee members in other cities. Because the miners enlisted the aid of labor and social action groups, there is correspondence with individuals such as Rennie Davis of SDS's Economic Research and Action Project and Carl and Anne Braden of the Southern Conference Educational Fund. While the correspondence reveals the ways in which the committee was trying to help the miners financially, reports from field workers in Hazard also show the problems encountered in trying to bring economic and social aid to the area.

Included with the correspondence and reports are minutes, plans, progress reports, and budgets of the Committee for Miners; material concerning the Appalachian Conference of March 1964; and Wiley's notes, writings, and a diary. There is an extensive microfilmed clipping file for 1963 to 1965, covering the trial of the accused miners, conditions in the Hazard area, and problems of Appalachia and the miners, and miscellaneous records of the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment and the Appalachian Economic and Political Action Conference are also present. Also included are photographs (35 mm negatives and contact sheets) likely taken during the trial.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Peter B. Wiley, Madison, Wisconsin, 1965 and 1967, and Berkeley, California, 1968.

Processing Information

Processed by archives students, 1968, and Margaret Hafstad, February 26, 1969.

Mss 39	Committee for Miners
Box   1 Folder   1	Appalachian Summer Project, Hazard, Kentucky, 1964
Box   1 Folder   2	Application for field work, 1964-1965
Box   1 Folder   3	Broadsides, handouts, circular letters
Micro 829	Clippings, 1963-1965
Mss 39	Correspondence
Box   1 Folder   4-5	1963 March-1964 February
Box   2 Folder   1-5	1964 March-December
Box   2 Folder   6	Finances, 1963-1965, undated
Box   2 Folder   7	Magazine articles regarding miners and Appalachia, 1963-1964
Box   2 Folder   8	Minutes, plans, progress reports, 1963-1965, undated
Box   2 Folder   9	News releases, 1963-1965
Box   3 Folder   1	Songs and poems, undated
	Trial
Box   3 Folder   2	Legal statements and article by Steve Geller, 1964 July
PH 5034	Photographs likely taken during the trial, circa 1964-1965
Mss 39	Wiley, Peter
Box   3 Folder   3	Articles and speeches, 1964, undated
Box   3 Folder   4	Notebook regarding Appalachia Conference, 1964 March Note: Also includes notes, 1964 November.
Box   3 Folder   5	Diary at Hazard, Kentucky, 1964 June-July
Box   3 Folder   6	Appalachia Conference, 1964 March
Box   3 Folder   7	Appalachian Committee for Full Employment, 1964-1965
Box   3 Folder   8	Appalachian Economic and Political Action Conference, 1964-1965
Box   3 Folder   9	Students for a Democratic Society, mailings, 1963 June-1965 May
Box   3 Folder   10	Other poverty projects, undated