Uploaded December 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
4) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
Donald Trump won the White House in 2016 in part because of his promise to bring the American coal industry back.
“We are going to put our coal miners back to work.”
Three years later, we are seeing coal companies shut down at a near record ___________.
Right now, we're in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, heading to a place called Harlan County. Harlan County is the heart of coal country up here. And it was largely a county that was built by coal mines in the 1920’s and the early 1900’s. And we're here because last July, Blackjewel Coal ___________ ______ 1,100 workers of this tiny populous. People who depended on coal for their livelihoods. And they were the last game in town.
“No pay, no coal”.
And the story of Harlan is really the story of coal country across America. And as this nation moves from ___________ __________ to renewable energy, we are here to find out what the next generation of would be coal miners are going to do now that that economic base and that financial future has been taken away from them.
I've come here to meet Joe Watts, a 24-year-old, who like the generations of men before him, was raised on the promises of coal.
Joe comes from a family of coal miners going back 4 generations, all of whom lived, worked and ________________ family in Harlan County. His 22-year-old brother, Jake, chose college over coal, and he's back visiting for the weekend.
There's a lot of people in the national conversation, right, but they oftentimes talk about coal towns as being antiquated, right, a ______________ of the past. Part of American history that doesn't really have a place in the future.
“People look at me differently when I say that I'm from southeastern Kentucky or that I say from I'm from rural Appalachia or that my dad's a coal miner. They see us as, like, subhuman”.
In 2019, the coal industry suffered the _________ decline ever recorded in American history.
And for the first time ever, renewable energy surpassed coal and domestic energy production. And the effects of coal's departure are most apparent in the six cities that make up Harlan County - Benham, Cumberland, Evarts, Harlan City, Loyall, and Lynch. Harlan County currently has the highest unemployment rate in the state of Kentucky. And according to the most recent data, more than half of the ______________ of Harlan residents comes from either Social Security, Medicare, or food stamps.
And all of this can be traced back to the decline and the departure of the coal industry.
Right now, we're in Cumberland, which is one of the smaller cities in Harlan County that also was heavily affected by the closure of the Blackjewel Mine.
Right now, we're going to go inside one of the local barber shops to just hear from some of the people who have been here for generations. How these mines closing has affected life here in Cumberland.
How have you guys seen this area change?
“People not having a choice anymore of where they can go to work now. And people are leaving houses behind and you know, everything because they have no other choice”.
4) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
Donald Trump won the White House in 2016 in part because of his promise to bring the American coal industry back.
“We are going to put our coal miners back to work.”
Three years later, we are seeing coal companies shut down at a near record ___________.
Right now, we're in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, heading to a place called Harlan County. Harlan County is the heart of coal country up here. And it was largely a county that was built by coal mines in the 1920’s and the early 1900’s. And we're here because last July, Blackjewel Coal ___________ ______ 1,100 workers of this tiny populous. People who depended on coal for their livelihoods. And they were the last game in town.
“No pay, no coal”.
And the story of Harlan is really the story of coal country across America. And as this nation moves from ___________ __________ to renewable energy, we are here to find out what the next generation of would be coal miners are going to do now that that economic base and that financial future has been taken away from them.
I've come here to meet Joe Watts, a 24-year-old, who like the generations of men before him, was raised on the promises of coal.
Joe comes from a family of coal miners going back 4 generations, all of whom lived, worked and ________________ family in Harlan County. His 22-year-old brother, Jake, chose college over coal, and he's back visiting for the weekend.
There's a lot of people in the national conversation, right, but they oftentimes talk about coal towns as being antiquated, right, a ______________ of the past. Part of American history that doesn't really have a place in the future.
“People look at me differently when I say that I'm from southeastern Kentucky or that I say from I'm from rural Appalachia or that my dad's a coal miner. They see us as, like, subhuman”.
In 2019, the coal industry suffered the _________ decline ever recorded in American history.
And for the first time ever, renewable energy surpassed coal and domestic energy production. And the effects of coal's departure are most apparent in the six cities that make up Harlan County - Benham, Cumberland, Evarts, Harlan City, Loyall, and Lynch. Harlan County currently has the highest unemployment rate in the state of Kentucky. And according to the most recent data, more than half of the ______________ of Harlan residents comes from either Social Security, Medicare, or food stamps.
And all of this can be traced back to the decline and the departure of the coal industry.
Right now, we're in Cumberland, which is one of the smaller cities in Harlan County that also was heavily affected by the closure of the Blackjewel Mine.
Right now, we're going to go inside one of the local barber shops to just hear from some of the people who have been here for generations. How these mines closing has affected life here in Cumberland.
How have you guys seen this area change?
“People not having a choice anymore of where they can go to work now. And people are leaving houses behind and you know, everything because they have no other choice”.
