-Donald Trump won the White House in 2016
in part because of his promise
to bring the American coal miners back to work.
-We are going to put our coal miners back to work.
-Three years later,
we're seeing coal companies shut down at a near record pace.
Right now, we're in the mountains
of eastern Kentucky,
heading to a place called Harlan County.
In Harlan County is the heart of coal country up here.
And it was largely a county that was built by coal mines
in the 1920s and the early 1900s.
And we're here because last July,
Blackjewel Coal laid off 1,100 workers
of this tiny populous.
People who depended on coal for their livelihoods.
And they were the last game in town.
-No pay, no coal.
-And the story of Harlan is really the story
of coal country across America.
And as this nation moves from fossil fuels
to renewable energy,
we are here to find out what the next generation of
would be coal miners are going to do now
that that economic base
and that financial future has been taken away from them.
♪♪
I've come here to meet Joe Watts a 24-year-old,
who, like the generations of men before him,
was raised on the promises of coal.
-You got your hunting gear back there?
-Yeah. Hunting gear.
-Yo, where we at right now?
-This is the Portal 31 Expedition Mine in Lynch.
This is one of the first mines in Lynch.
It was opened by US Coke & Coal.
They opened this mine and built this coal camp. You call it.
This was the heart of this town for a long time back in the day.
-Do you have many familial connections to this mine?
-Yeah, my family, one of my memaw's brothers,
her uncles, and was one of the first people
to work in this mine.
-And now it's just a museum.
-Yeah, it's a museum.
This thing here it shows the timeline of how
this mine and the city developed
from the 1910s to when it shut down in 1963 or '67.
-There was a picture of a kid back there.
-Yeah, they was 10, 11 year olds that
were coal miners back in the day.
-Yeah. -And no gravy, you know,
ain't no gravy job and underground miners
didn't have no easy job, that's for sure.
They earned their money. -Yeah.
-Everybody earned their money
that worked in the coal industry.
♪♪
We got laid off the day,
my superintendent told me, he said,
"It's just bunch of paperwork."
They filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
He said, "We just can't."
They told us to send everybody home
for a couple of days until they get this paperwork sorted out.
About three weeks went by.
A train was getting loaded. They laid us off.
But they could still come in here and get a train
and haul out the mountain -- the coal that we worked for
and washed for them and got it ready,
but they can still come in here and get it and take it out
to make money off.
Well, I've never thought nothing about it,
but four or five other guys,
they got together on the track.
When that train come out of there,
they stood in front of it and told them it ain't leaving
this hauler with that coal.
So they backed that train up and it sat right here
for three or four months.
-The company was loading the train
with over a $1 million worth of coal
when the coal miners stepped on the tracks
and blocked the trains from leaving
for the next three months.
-No coal!
No pay, no coal.
-How has the town changed since then?
-Or what have you noticed?
Have you seen any of your neighbors or anybody that
you know really still suffering or...
-Everybody, well, our unemployment --
when you file for unemployment,
you get six months of unemployment
if you don't find a job.
And my unemployment just ran out end of January.
So now everybody's gonna either gonna have to move
or get a job somewhere else.
Having to move on and to a whole nother another city
that you don't know nothing about that
your family ain't gonna be there.
It's just gonna be you and, I mean,
I'm a grown man, I ain't scared of that,
it's just... it's just gonna be different
not seeing my family every day.
-Joe comes from a family of coal miners
going back four generations, all of whom lived, worked,
and raised families in Harlan County.
His 22-year-old brother, Jake, chose college over coal,
and he's back visiting for the weekend.
There's a lot of people in the national conversation,
right, but they oftentimes talk about coal towns
as being antiquated, right, a relic of the past.
Part of American history that doesn't really
have a place in the future.
-People look at me differently when I say
that I'm from southeastern Kentucky
or that I say from I'm from rural Appalachia
or that my dad's a coal miner.
People probably think most of us are stupid.
They probably think people in this region are on opioids
or so I feel like that they don't --
they're not worried about helping us
because they see us as, like, subhuman.
-So they don't understand until you've been a coal miner,
until you've walked in our footsteps,
then don't judge us.
-What was it like going into those mines every day?
-First day's pretty scary, you never forget it.
You go away and you're scared to death.
You don't -- you don't know if it's gonna fall or not.
But after you're there a little while
you just learn not to pay no attention to it.
But you gotta be aware 'cause you never know
what's gonna happen. -Right.
-You might go in one day and not come out.
I've seen that before, too.
♪♪
-How does it make you guys feel to see the industry
in decline in this town?
-It's heartbreaking, really.
Guys that work hard, you know, overnight and then,
one day they might get up and go to work
and be laid off, that's it.
-You saw your son get laid off. -Yeah.
Broke my heart because... [ speaks indistinctly ]
-I don't think they tried.
I think they ought to respect, I mean,
coal kept this country on life support for a long time
especially back there in World War II
like in all that steel and stuff.
If it weren't for coal, we might not even be here today.
I mean, that's the way I feel about it sometimes.
-You know, would coal still be a part of their identities?
-I would think so.
I would like for it to be a part of my kids because
it's always been a part of mine and I couldn't imagine it
not being part of mine.
-Is the idea of leaving enter your minds at all?
-Yeah, it has mine. I don't want to...
-Why?
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
...try to stay around here anyway.
-Do you guys think there's a future here still?
But you're gonna stay anyways. -Yeah.
-Why? -I don't know, it's just...
-It's home. -It's home.
-In 2019, the coal industry suffered
the sharpest decline
ever recorded in American history.
And for the first time ever,
renewable energy surpassed coal and domestic energy production.
And the effects of coal's departure are most apparent
in the six cities that make up Harlan County. --
Benham, Cumberland, Evarts,
Harlan City, Loyall, and Lynch.
Harlan County currently has the highest unemployment rate
in the state of Kentucky.
And according to the most recent data,
more than half of the income of Harlan residents
comes from either Social Security,
Medicare, or food stamps.
And all of this can be traced back to the decline
and the departure of the coal industry.
Right now, we're in Cumberland,
which is one of the smaller cities in Harlan County
that also was heavily affected
by the closure of the Blackjewel mine.
Right now we're going to go inside
one of the local barber shops to just hear
from some of the people
who have been here for generations.
How these mines closing has affected life here
in Cumberland.
How have you guys seen this area change?
-People not having a choice anymore
of where they can go to work now.
And people are leaving houses behind and you know,
everything because they have no other choice.
And with a lot of the problem we have, too,
is the coal industry still owns
a tremendous amount of property here.
-Yeah. -Oh, yeah.
-Yeah, they shut everything down.
Uh, they own the coal rights to it so they essentially
own the property.
Well, when they leave, we can't do anything with that property.
-Why not just move away? -'Cause it's home.
-Yeah.
-Yes, and also, you know, in my instance,
my home's paid for.
So am I supposed to just walk away from it
and leave that sitting because the problem you have here is
you don't sell your home if you tried to leave
because nobody's coming in here.
-Do you all feel like the government should step in
or do you put any faith in the government at all?
-Our population just went down so quickly
and things around here that we're that important anymore
because we're so small now. -Yeah.
And when coal fell off,
that's when the opioid crisis struck.
-I think without someone larger stepping in, you know,
to be able to help us then it's not gonna go very far.
♪♪
-Churches in Harlan are some of the few buildings
left standing, offering any help to a growing population in need.
St. Stephen's Catholic Church in Cumberland
has one of the largest food pantries in eastern Kentucky,
and it's become one of the last sources of hope for communities
suffering in the wake of coal's departure.
-In July, when I came here last year,
people or families, daily came to Holy Trinity Parish
asking for food,
and some people came and asked some money
to settle their utility bills.
The big families come in and collect food baskets.
Last July, it was 275. Around 275.
And last December, it had gone up to 400.
-Wow. -That's what we have to do.
That's what Jesus wants us to do.
Feed the hungry.
-How often do you guys come down here
to buy food from the pantry? -Every time.
-How heavily does the community, depend on the church
providing this? -A lot.
[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-Has it gotten worse since the mine closed?
If it weren't for the church
and the other churches in the community
helping folks out around here with groceries and stuff --
-Some of us starve. -Really?
-Yeah. What do you guys think about your future here?
You think you're gonna stick around Cumberland
when you get older or... -No.
-I don't want them to stick around.
And my daughter, she's their age.
I want her to go away.
-[ Indistinct conversations ]
-You ever concerned, though, that if that population
continues to grow rather than rely on the church,
people will just start leaving?
-It will happen. It will happen.
-What do you think the future of this county is?
-Kind of deteriorating.
We are Christians. We are followers of Jesus.
Our way of working is that not blaming
or cursing the darkness,
but to light a candle.
♪♪
-And this might be a really difficult thing to talk about.
You mentioned that the house is at risk of foreclosure.
Someone might come and take the house.
-Mm-hmm.
-If the worst comes to pass and that does happen,
what's -- what are you all going to do?
-I can't answer that, really. I'd hate to go through it.
It can't happen.
I've tried to get social security, too.
The banks gave me two extensions since I got hurt.
I don't have no more.
-How much longer was that last extension?
-Uh, the last one was six months
and it ran out last month.
I don't know how much longer I can hold that.
Yeah, I'm trying to do the best I can.
♪♪
-Are you worried that, you know, all your kids
are gonna have to leave, find a job and find a future?
-Yeah, I am.
They'll probably have to go off to get a good job.
But I hate that. I really do. But I can't blame them either.
But like I say, it'll always be home here.
♪♪
-How do you feel about your little brother getting out?
-It's just some people's different,
some, like, he didn't care to leave home, you know.
That's why I didn't leave when I graduated.
I didn't wanna leave home.
I just wanted to come out and work and make money.
But sometimes I'll look back wishing
I would've went to college and chose something different
because I feel like I ain't got nothing.
♪♪
-Where we at right now?
-We are up here in Partridge, Kentucky.
This is where me and all my buddies,
we all come up here and hang out.
-When you were younger? -Yeah.
Ride four-wheelers or whatever. -Yeah.
-This is an old deep mine.
I can't remember which mine it was.
It's North Fork 4 or 5 or 6. They named a bunch of it.
♪♪
-It's wild out there. -Yeah, it's pretty.
-It's so quiet, too.
-That's why it's so hard to leave this place for me.
♪♪
But you can see, I mean, it is everything you see right here
has been handled by a dozer
or a dump truck or been blasted.
♪♪
-Try and hit that rock over.
[ Gunshot ]
It's probably 150 yards or so, you wanna try it?
-Yeah, it's really far.
♪♪
[ Gunshot ]
-I believe I've seen some dust rolled off of it,
you know what?
You gotta come up here and we'll deer hunt one time.
-Yeah, I'm down for that, dude.
-Right, so this is what we do around here.
We deer hunt and coyote hunt and fish.
And ride four-wheelers.
♪♪
And we'll have to tough it out to make money somewhere.
So I might as well get it started. I'm just 24.
♪♪
-The youth of Harlan County
have found themselves in an unprecedented position.
Generations who spent their lives
following in their parents' footsteps
have finally arrived at the end of the road.
And in this movement, we're seeing a glimpse
of America's future.
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
It was worthless without the people that
actually went in there and got it.
-A generation of young people in industry towns
across the country who are raised for a future
that no longer exists and as cleaner and cheaper
renewable energy signals the end of an era for coal country,
no amount of EPA restrictions being lifted
are going to reopen their mines.
And if a new opportunity doesn't breathe life into Harlan County,
it's not the generations prior who pay the price.
It's the youth of tomorrow who live with the consequences.
Through the lives of Joe,
his siblings, and young people all over coal country,
we can see cycles of poverty and inequality
play out in real time with no clear answer
of how these cycles will be interrupted.
-I don't think the government is going to come in
and help out at all.
I think that if Harlan ends up doing anything more
than what it's doing now,
it'll be because of people in Harlan
want to try to pull it together.
-And if your only choices are to vote
for what's been an empty promise
to protect the lifeblood of your town
or to vote for someone who wants to cut it off completely,
I wouldn't put faith in the government either.
♪♪