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.
