When the boss sat in the same pew: Crittenden County and the mining that didn’t turn bloody

By: Robert Ordway

Outlets: Kentucky Lantern

Published: July 23, 2026

Words: 1,014

Last Updated: 4 weeks ago

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In the 1930s, as Harlan County, Kentucky, erupted into one of the most violent labor conflicts in American history, a quiet reality was unfolding two hundred miles to the west. In Crittenden County, men went into the ground every morning to dig fluorspar—a mineral essential to building the steel for Allied ships, the aluminum for wartime aircraft, and eventually the uranium for the atomic bomb. They put in the sweat equity, doing dangerous physical labor …

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