We be here when the morning comes is a book about people of courage and dignity striving to attain a measure of control over their lives and destinies. It is also a book about Appalachia and about the American labor movement. It describes, from the point of view of the striking mountaineers, the thirteen-month strike at the Brookside and Highsplint coal mines in Harlan County, Kentucky--a strike marked by sporadic violence, controversial court orders, arrests of miners' wives, the death of one striker, and the threat of open warfare between union supporters and "scabs." Labor troubles are nothing new to Harlan County. Clashes between coal companies and striking miners in the 1930s and 1940s, during the formative years of the United Mine Workers of America under John L. Lewis, had earned it the epithet "Bloody Harlan." Memories of those troubled years were still fresh for many of the miners who voted in 1973 to come under the UMWA national contract. Eastover Mining Company's refusal to sign and its determination to keep the mines running with non-UMWA labor set the stage for the lengthy confrontation that divided communities, even families. The "mainest" issue in the strike, as far as the miners were concerned, was safety in the mines. They insisted on their right to shut down a mine if unsafe conditions existed, a demand that the operators found particularly distasteful. Writer Bryan Woolley and photographer Fred Reid lived with a miner's family during the last weeks of the strike in August 1974--weeks that saw one miner shot and killed, the threat of further violence, the final capitulation of the company, and the reaction of the miners to signing of the contract. With tape recorder and camera they explored the feelings of the participants about their jobs, their community, and their lives.--Jacket flap.