I was raised at the foot of the North Carolina mountains.
Mounds of earth pushed up, bookmarking spots of creation that deserve a little more attention.
Scientists say the Appalachian Mountains are ancient. Older than the Rockies, older than the Alps, older than the Himalayas.
The dinosaurs you see in museums? They are older than those, too. Some say they’re older than trees. Trees.
Justin Cox
They cast a shadow over everything we believe we know or have seen. They are the remains of a time before time.
My family and I passed through the heart of them on our way to visit my wife’s people in Michigan. We carved our way around highways that dipped and climbed back out. We held our breath going through tunnels. We saw lingering clouds cascading across the ranges.
We told our children they were haints. They were ghosts. They were spirits.
I don’t know if they believed me, but I know what I say is true.
There are spirits that come from these mountains, appearing when needed. They cause ears to stand like a deer whose heard a branch snap in their forest.
I heard one of these spirits recently. I suppose it followed me home. Her name was Florence Reece, and she had a question for me: “Which side are you on?”
Legend says Reece first asked this query in 1912 when she was 12 years old. Her family was from Sharp’s Chapel, Tenn. Her father made a living the way many men did in the town. Employed by a ruler who demanded fealty. King Coal had no ears to hear the cries of dangerous working conditions, low wages and the constant diagnosis of black lung and silicosis.
Florence Reece (Screencap via YouTube)
Finally, the miners had had enough. They collected their shouts into one word: Union.
Reece watched her father strike, and she wrote a song.
She updated it 20 years later when her husband found himself in the same situation. She and he were living in Harlan County, Ky. Events turned violent there. King Coal used intimidation, fear tactics and all the tricks a legal system provides to those who have the money.
The miners fought back. At least 13 miners and five mine guards were killed. Not until 1935 and the Wager Act did they gain some footing.
Reece’s song, Which Side Are You On, became their anthem. Its powerful lyrics caught the attention of a young man from New York City named Pete Seeger.
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how the good ol’ union
Has come in here to dwell
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?
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?
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?
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?
Seeger recorded the track in 1941 with the Almanac Singers, gaining Reece national attention. The song since become a battle cry for involvement. To pick a side. To stand with neighbors, friends and those who are being exploited or to shack up with those in power.
Reece and the words she penned in the hollers of those old mountains came to me this week. They sat over me like a fog and couldn’t see my way out until I answered the question of which side I was on.
Miners quit as coal strike starts. This is the first actual photo showing miners quitting the mines a the big coal strike opens. The photo was made at one of the mines at Scranton, Pa. (Getty Images)
While King Coal is still at large, this challenge was geared at another would-be king. One who now sits in a white house and patrols the rooftops, surveying what he believes is his domain.
A king who has issued tariffs without approval.
Who has made it difficult for those seeking asylum to enter the country.
Who has stripped federal funding from humanitarian agencies.
Who removed any accountability from the hounds in a political police force known as ICE.
A king who now has a plan to clean up Washington, D.C.
On Sunday, Donald Trump announced a press conference. On Monday morning he informed the nation he was invoking the Home Rule Act. D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department now will answer to Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi. Eight hundred National Guard troops were being called in. More will be if needed.
The city’s homeless encampments will be emptied. No plan was given for where those living there would go.
Trump listed his reasoning: To crack down on the unacceptable amount of crime taking place in the capital. Perpetrators will face punishment to the full extent of the law.
“This is from the same man who pardoned 1,270 convicted rioters in the attempted January 6 coup.”
This is from the same man who pardoned 1,270 convicted rioters in the attempted January 6 coup. So much for law and order.
I don’t know what gets people off their asses anymore. I would think a test run for martial law would.
Like a dystopian novel, I’m waiting for the characters to reach a watershed moment — an action that causes them to say, “Enough! We will not stand for this!”
I’m waiting for a voice, a spirit, like Florence Reece’s to show up. To challenge the people to pick a side. For her, it was to unionize or have her community torn apart. She could have accepted her lot and just gone along with it.
She didn’t. And we shouldn’t either.
And so I’m tired of waiting.
I’m no songwriter. And yet, I know in times of distress, words come from the most unlikely of places.
Sometimes from the mind of a 12-year-old girl from Northeast Tennessee.
Other times, they come from a preacher who can’t even pick a guitar but can put together an updated homage to something we’ve had all along. Both would ask the same question of you: which side are you on?
Come all you believers,
The time has come to stand,
For democracies under fire
We’ve got us a tyrant in our land.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
He twists the truth for power,
He crushes the weak and poor,
But we can rise together —
Cause we can’t take it anymore.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Fascism wears a flag,
It wraps itself in lies,
But justice has no borders,
And our hope cannot die.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University and Wake Forest University School of Divinity and McAfee School of Theology, where he received his doctor of ministry. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.
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