As part of their cross-country journey to find America, DC Comics superheroes Green Arrow and Green Lantern visited an Appalachian mining settlement in June 1970. Contained inside Green Lantern #77 and entitled “Journey to Desolation,” the story finds the pair in a small town whose sole industry is a coal mine owned and operated by Slapper Soames. Soames is also the de facto law of tiny Desolation and keeps both his employees and the townsfolk in line through the barrel of a gun. Unable to leave or fight back, the miners are left to eke out a life of poverty with no hope on the horizon.
In February 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy likewise made a journey to Appalachia as acting chairman of the Senate subcommittee on poverty. “For two days, Kennedy traveled hundreds of miles up and down the hills and hallows of eastern Kentucky, on what the press dubbed a ‘poverty tour,’” journalist Matthew Algeo wrote in his 2020 book, All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy’s 1968 Tour of Appalachia. During the trip, Kennedy visited one-room schoolhouses and a strip mine, small shack houses and run-down high schools. He found desolation and despair, but also a “proud people” who “worked hard and live(d) clean, spirited lives.”
The same can be said within the Green Lantern comic book. “We all work in Slapper’s mine mostly ’cause we don’t know any other kind ’a work, an’ even if we did, there ain’t none around,” Green Arrow and Green Lantern are told. “We plain folk, scratchin’ out a livin’ where maybe smarter ones would give up. But dang it, this b’longs to us, like it b’longed to our daddies an’ our grand-daddies.”
The miners accepted their fate because they didn’t know how to change it. Then along came a young miner named Johnny Walden, who taught himself how to play guitar and began writing songs about the miner’s troubles, giving them a tiny bit of self-respect in the process. As a result, Slapper Soames sensed trouble on the horizon and had his men take Walden into custody, then sentenced him to death. Green Arrow and Green Lantern arrived in Desolation the day before the hanging, finding the townsfolk ready to take up arms to save Johnny Walden.
In 1963, Harry Caudill published Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area. The book examined the poverty of the region and blamed both corporate-owned strip mines and corrupt government officials for the devastation found on the hills and mountains of eastern Kentucky. In 1968, Caudill testified at an ad hoc Senate subcommittee meeting chaired by Robert Kennedy in a high school gymnasium.
“Nearly 24% of the white adults over the age of 24 are functional illiterates,” he reported. “In some counties more than 25% of the people are on public assistance. In southern coal fields some 70,000 men are totally disabled as a result of silicosis and pneumoconiosis. The rate of unemployment is higher than anywhere else in America.”
After having painted a picture of poverty and despair, Harry Caudill next addressed the inherent wealth of the region. “While the mountains are teeming with poor and underprivileged people, they also bristle with some of the biggest and most prosperous names in America,” he explained. The list of companies that operated mines in the region included the Ford Motor Company, International Harvester, and the United States Steel Corporation. Caudill, however, primarily focused on the Kentucky River Coal Corporation and Penn-Virginia Corporation.
“Last year, each of them cleared more than 61% gross receipts after payment of all taxes and operating expenses and paid dividends equal to, or in excess of, 45% of gross receipts,” he said. “Thus their dividend rate was nine times as high as that paid by Standard Oil of New Jersey and General Motors.”
In the town of Desolation, Slapper Soames doesn’t have to worry about paying dividends to stockholders as he’s the sole owner of the mining operation in the region. He also doesn’t care that Johnny Walden was riling up the coal miners with his songs. What did worry Soames – and the reason for Walden being sentenced to hang – is that the singer might someday leave Desolation and hit it big, resulting in curious journalists visiting the city. “Outsiders’d see how you treat folks like slaves,” Walden says, to which Soames replies, “Ain’t that the everlovin’ truth.”
As for the pending uprising by the miners, Slapper Soames considers it an opportunity to remind the townsfolk who is in charge. “Give the boys the word,” he orders when the “peasants” are set to attack. “An’ remember – only kill ’bout a third of them. The rest gotta be back to work in the mornin’.”
It required an abundance of coal to fuel the vast iron and steel furnaces of the late nineteenth century. U.S. Steel, Bethlehem Steel, and a host of subsidiaries therefore descended upon Appalachia to acquire mineral rights from landowners – while the landowners still owned what was above ground, what was underneath now belonged to mining companies.
Despite the wealth being generated from coal, however, very little trickled downward. In All This Marvelous Potential, Matthew Algeo notes that there were no taxes on coal mined in Kentucky. Companies only paid property taxes on the assessed value of the land, which was often undervalued by corrupt government officials. While food, clothing, and medicine were subjected to a three percent state sales tax, meanwhile, mining equipment was exempt.
“So, in Pike County, for example, $65 million worth of coal was mined in 1966, but local taxes covered only 18.3 percent of the county’s $4.1 million school budget,” Algeo writes. “And 45 percent of the population lived below the poverty line.”
Against overwhelming odds, the miners of Desolation attack Slapper Soames’ fortress. Land mines erupt as they cross an open field, while machine guns fire at any survivors. Unable to stand by and watch a slaughter, Green Arrow and Green Lantern join the battle but even they are no match for Soames’ men. Green Arrow is knocked unconscious and captured, only to discover that Walden is on Soames’ payroll when he awakens.
“The miners was tendin’ to get heated up,” Slapper Soames explains. “I figgered sooner or later they’d try somethin’, maybe even get outside help.” But if Walden could rile them up before they were ready, the miners would inevitably be routed.
Fortunately Green Lantern arrives to not only save Green Arrow but put an end to Soames’ plan as well. “Justice came to Desolation and the miners won,” Green Lantern remarks afterwards, to which Green Arrow replies, “Look at them – injured, grieving for lost friends and family. Nothing to look forward to except more poverty and ignorance. You call that winning?”
Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated just four months after his own visit to eastern Kentucky, but his February 1968 journey put the plight of Appalachians on the national radar nonetheless. In 1972, the Kentucky state legislature enacted a thirty cents per ton severance tax on coal, resulting in millions of dollars being funneled to counties for schools and roads. The coal mines may have dwindled in the decades since but the people are still hard working and proud – and no longer live in an isolated mountain town called Desolation.
Anthony Letizia