This mining town I live in is a sad and lonely place
Where pity and starvation are pictured on every face.
Harlan County Ballad
The pine-backed Cumberland Mountains walling off Kentucky's Harlan County from the rest of the world breed into the Harlan-born a primitive defiance. In years past, Harlan moonshiners disdained to dodge revenuers; safe on impenetrable hilltops, they patted rifles and taunted federal agents with doggerel. Harlan justice was rudimentary; seldom was a killer hanged, but often one murder was avenged with another. And when the United Mine Workers set...
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