(Photo of Pete Seeger and Florence Reece singing Which Side Are You On?)
Florence Reece was born in Tennessee in 1900. Her father was a coal miner and a union organizer and Florence was 12 years old when she first wrote Which Side are You On? as her father and the other United Mine Worker Association miners of the Appalachian coalfields went out on strike.
Florence later married a coal miner and union organizer, Sam Reece, and she became active in the protests during the 1931 Appalachian Mine Wars in Harlan County, Kentucky. Due to the depression, coal companies slashed miners’ wages by 10-30% and tightened control over their lives. They forced miners and their families to live in company owned homes, buy food and other necessities from company owned stores using company script instead of dollars, and send their children to company run schools. Miners were already living at subsistence levels and the restrictions were unbearable.
The miners went out on strike demanding union recognition, restoration of previous wage levels, cash wages instead of script, an end to company evictions and blacklisting of striking workers, and basic mining safety improvements.
The companies responded by hiring armed guards and bringing in the National Guard. 15 miners were killed. Armed thugs came into Florence’s home looking to intimidate her husband who had been forewarned, and so instead terrorized her and her children. According to the story she told Alan Lomax when he came to record her in 1937, after the company thugs left, Florence wrote updated lyrics to Which Side Are You On? on her kitchen calendar.
Although the unions were crushed and many miners were blacklisted and their families evicted, the miners’ struggle was not in vain. Their efforts paved the way for New Deal labor protections, successful re-unionization of the mines in the late 1930s and left a lasting legacy of Appalachian labor resistance. The Wars got national attention due to the violent clashes and Which Side Are You On? became a lasting union anthem.
The miners continued their fight for basic rights over the ensuing decades and their 1974 struggle was captured in a documentary titled Harlan County, USA. This video clip of Reece singing is from that movie.
Which Side Are You On?- Lyrics
Come all you good workers,
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
My daddy was a miner,
And I'm a miner's son,
And I'll stick with the union
'Til every battle's won.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there.
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can?
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Don't scab for the bosses,
Don't listen to their lies.
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?