Harlan Thug War on Union Mines 

HARLAN DEPUTY SAYS HE WON TITLE OF “THUG”

FOR PART IN WAR TO SMASH COAL MINE UNION

Tells of Catching and “Bumpin off” Organizers in Kentucky

April 30, 1937

A little man with sleepy eyes and a dangling cowlick, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, slouched languidly in the red-leather witness chair before the Senate Civil Liberties committee yesterday, to tell how he and his fellow deputies of Harlan County “went out to hunt down union organizers.”

“Thug Johnson, they call me,” said the little man with shamefaced pride. “Thug Johnson, of Bonnie Blue, Va., they called me that cause I was a thug.”

“How do you mean a thug?” asked Chairman Robert M. La Follette, jr.

“ Cuz I was always goin’ out thuggin.” said the witness, Thuggin is what we called goin’ out and catchin’ union organizers, takin’ them for a ride and bumpin’ em off. “But I never liked nobody-not in Harlan County, anyway.” Johnson added as the spectators roared. He had told the committee he had been acquitted twice on murder charges in Wise County, Va., his home.

“Thug,” whose real name is William C. Johnson, testified in a casual and carefree manner about his job as a deputy for the Harlan-Wallis coal mine, where he had strict orders to “fire all union men I learned about,” and of his special assignments to “beat up union men and bust up their meetin’s.”

As a specific example of his ability to follow the orders of his superiors, Deputy Sheriff Theodore R.Middleton, he cited an instance where “Merle saw Robert Ragland, a union man, in a poolroom. He says to me to go offer Bob Ragland a drink of liquor and when he drinks it, whip him over the head with your pistol.”

“Did you do it?” asked La Follette.

“I certainly did. I went in and invited him to have a drink of liquor and then I whipped him over the head with a pistol, “Then I put him in jail for being drunk,” added Johnson, stroking his weather burned cheek reflectively.

Johnson told the committee Pearl Bassham, prominent coal operator of Harlan County, “had heered about me as a mine foreman and a Baldwin-Felts detective agency man, and so he and Fred Loving, the supe, (superintendent) sent for me to work as a cut boss in the mine.”

Describing one occasion when a mass of armed deputies, turned back crowds of miners on their way to attend a union meeting, he said he “met Ted Creech, who showed me ‘over some guns he had, especially a submachine gun. He showed me how to handle it.”

Creech, now being held for the District grand jury, on bond of $2,000, for perjury before the Civil Liberties Committee in another matter, has told the committee flatly several times he never had or used a submachine gun in Harlan County, although several witnesses have testified he used such a gun such a gun for driving miners away from the meeting Johnson was describing yesterday.

Johnson told the committee Merle Middleton, a deputy, called out to him as the deputies “kicked some of the miners and poked the others with shotguns, to ‘Whoop ‘em up, Johnson!’ in order to keep the men moving down the road. “I had a pump shotgun on me that time,” mused Johnson, “and a .44 special pistol and a .38 special pistol, and Merle had a 30-30 high-power on him.” On another occasion, he said, Sheriff Middleton called all the deputies together to outline the day’s work in driving out union organizers.

“It was on a Sunday mornin’ at 7 a:m:,” Johnson recalled with a smile,  “and the high sheriff, old Theo R., himself, said there would be two union meetin’s that day. He said it was open season on union organizers and not to let nobody stop on the highway to get to the meetin’s. Nobody did neither.” Searching his memory for other occations, Johnson told of trips he made with three other deputies in search of union men.

“I asked old George Lee,” said Johnson. “He and Merle Middleton and Frank White and me was the deputies in the car-I asked old George what we’re goin’ to do with any union men we catch, and he said, “Ram a .45 down their throat and take ‘em to a mountain top and bump ‘em off.” But we didn’t find any union men that time.” In the audience, George Lee, a saintly looking white-haired man with pink cheeks and clear blue eyes, smiled warmly at the recolletion, while bull-necked Sheriff Middleton and bald little Pearl Bassham exchanged sympathetic smiles.

Official Testifies

In the earlier session, Daniel Boone Smith, Commonwealth’s attorney for the counties of Bell and Harlan in Kentucky, a smooth-voiced young man, smartly dressed in a slate-gray gabardine suit, gray shirt and blue tie, testified in a confident and assured manner about the legal processes of Harlan County.

Smith admitted three coal companies, one of them in Harlan_Wallins Coal Mine, operated by Bassham, paid him total retainers of $2,100 a year, while his salary was $500, augmented by forfeitures and fines to a limit of $4,000. He told Senator Elbert D. Thomas, Democrat, Utah, that “perhaps there was some conflict at times” between his duty to the counties and his loyalty to the mine owners. He told the committee he was “a little bit proud of my record” and assured them that in his opinion “all the miners who voted for me before would vote for me again.”

Later testimony from union organizers contradicted this statement, and Smith appeared unable to give “satisfactory answers,” according to La Follette, to a long list of criminal indictments against coal-company deputies which Smith had moved to dismiss.

In one instance he dismissed four indictments of conspiracy of other crimes against Merle Middleton and later dismissed tow murder indictments against the same man “Peggy” Dwyer, union organizer later charged that “Boone Smith is owned by the operators, body, soul and britches.”