Harlan County USA (variously written with and without a comma) is a 1976 American documentary film covering the "Brookside Strike",[1] a 1973 effort of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky.

Kopple initially intended to make a film about Kenzie[citation needed], Miners for Democracy and the attempt to unseat Tony Boyle as president of the UMWA.

"[3] Kopple and her crew spent years with the families depicted in the film, documenting the dire straits they encountered while striking for safer working conditions, fair labor practices, and decent wages.

She followed them to picket in front of the Stock Exchange in New York City, filming interviews with people affected by black lung disease, and miners being shot at while striking.

This sticking point became moot when, a few years after the strike, the UMWA folded the agreement won by this group of workers into a global contract.

Later, after he was convicted of giving $20,000 to another union executive council member to hire the killers of Yablonski and his wife, Boyle appears frail, sickly and using a wheelchair; he was carried up the courthouse steps to face sentencing.

Lois Scott, a leading woman in the mining community, is shown playing a major role in galvanizing the people in support of the strike.

At their best Kopple and photographer Hart Perry bear unassuming, expressive witness to the experiences, aspirations and abiding grievances of the Brookside miners and their wives, who organized auxiliary strike actions.

give one the full-flavor of the miners' mood and the union fervor sweeping the mining community in the black mountains of Appalachia.

[12] In the film's 2004 Criterion Collection special feature, The Making of Harlan County, USA, associate director Anne Lewis compares Scott to Women's Liberation activists.

She reveals that the head strikebreaker, Basil Collins, wanted to hire someone to shoot her; however, the most dangerous incidents were the acts of violence by the mine owners against the miners.