Harlan County, Kentucky, may be one of labor’s most hallowed battlegrounds. Its soil has been soaked in the blood of union men and women time and time again since the early 20th century, when major labor disputes between miners and greedy mine operators roiled the area. Now, almost a century after the infamous Battle of Blair Mountain in neighboring West Virginia, one of the biggest and bloodiest class war uprisings in U.S. history, suffering Appalachian coal miners have taken matters into their own hands once again.

On July 29, about 50 coal miners in Cumberland, Kentucky, banded together to stop a moving train. They blocked the tracks, refusing to allow the train, carrying $1 million worth of coal, to pass, according to Newsweek. They did the same thing the next day, and the next — literally putting their bodies on the line. Their protest began because Blackjewel, the company where they had until recently been employed, filed for bankruptcy in early July without paying the approximately $5 million in back pay the company owes to 1,700 miners, an attorney for the group told CNN. The standoff has now stretched on for weeks. The miners are not only dealing with financial hardships, but are also in legal limbo, unable to access health care benefits or file for unemployment, Cumberland mayor Charles Raleigh told CNN. The community and local churches have pitched in to help, and a collective of local trans anarchist activists are on the ground providing mutual aid, but many miners are still struggling. The Blackjewel mine was reportedly not unionized, but its former workers have used the tried-and-true union tactic of collective action to fight for what they are owed.

In doing so they’ve become part of a long, proud tradition of Appalachian labor militancy. In 1921, 10,000 West Virginia coal miners seeking union recognition went to war with the mine operators who refused their right to organize. The dispute culminated in an armed five-day standoff in which strikebreakers and local, state, and federal authorities faced off with the miners (and some dropped bombs on their homes). This conflict became known as the Battle of Blair Mountain,, and the effect it had on the region’s strong culture of resistance continues to echo.

Less than a decade later, in the 1930s, the same region saw a series of violent clashes pitting coal miners and their union, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), against the mine operators blocking their unionizing efforts, and the bosses hired gun thugs. During that period, miners and union organizers in Kentucky were subject to extreme violence and intimidation from mine operators and law enforcement, and due to a rash of shootings and bombings the area earned the nickname “Bloody Harlan.” Forty years later, in 1973, miners at the Brookside Mine in Harlan County went on strike, and a young filmmaker named Barbara Kopple was on hand to capture the scene, which erupted into more bloodshed as the strike stretched to 13 months. The resulting documentary, Harlan County USA, is a classic of labor cinema, and an essential document in understanding Appalachia’s working-class history.

Bloody Harlan also gave rise to one of the most famous labor songs ever written, “Which Side Are You On?” Penned by Florence Reece at her kitchen table in 1931, the song perfectly captured the pride and desperation that gripped coal miners and their families during those turbulent times. Reece’s husband, Sam, was an organizer with the UMWA, and their family was regularly terrorized by the sheriff’s men; when Florence wrote her song, Sam was hiding out in the mountains, in fear for his life. Today her fierce message of solidarity can still be heard at protests and on picket lines, and the words she set down 88 years ago are as poignant now as they were then: “Don't scab for the bosses, don't listen to their lies, us poor folks haven't got a chance, unless we organize.”