Which Side Are You On?” is a song written in 1931 by activist Florence Reece, who was the wife of Sam Reece, a union organiser for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County, Kentucky.
In 1931, the miners and the mine owners in southeastern Kentucky were locked in a bitter and violent struggle called the Harlan County War. In an attempt to intimidate the family of union leader Sam Reece, Sheriff J. H. Blair and his men, hired by the mining company, illegally entered their home in search of Reece. Reece had been warned and escaped but his wife, Florence, and their children were terrorized. That night, after the men had gone, Florence wrote the lyrics to “Which Side Are You On?” on a calendar that hung in their kitchen. She took the melody from a traditional Baptist hymn, “Lay the Lily Low”, or the traditional ballad “Jack Munro”.
Reece supported a second wave of miner strikes circa 1973, as recounted in the documentary Harlan County USA. She and others performed “Which Side Are You On?” a number of times throughout. Reece recorded the song later in life, and it can be heard on the album Coal Mining Women.
Pete Seeger, collecting labour union songs, learned “Which Side Are You On” in 1940. The following year, it was recorded by the Almanac Singerss in a version that gained a wide audience. More recently, Billy Bragg, Deacon Blue, Dropkick Murphys, Ani DiFranco and several others, each recorded their own interpretations of the song.
The song is referred to by Bob Dylan in the song “Desolation Row”. It was also the inspiration for the title of Alessandro Portelli’s 2011 book on Harlan County’s coal mining community. Director Ken Loach used the title for his 1984 documentary on the music and poetry written about the miner’s strike in Britain of that year.
