Matewan Massacre: Landmark Struggle For Miner & Worker Rights 101 Years Ago, May 19, 1920
Last edited Wed Jun 2, 2021, 03:59 AM - Edit history (8)
Associated Press, By John Raby, May 18, 2021. - Ed.
- Union organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, the 'Miners Angel' said she witnessed multiple conflicts between “the industrial slaves and their masters” during visits to West Virginia. -
MATEWAN, W.Va. (AP) — The bullet holes in the brick wall of a former post office serve as a reminder of how Appalachian coal miners fought to improve the lives of workers a century ago. Ten people were killed in a gun battle between miners, who were led by a local police chief, and a group of private security guards hired to evict them for joining a union in Matewan, a small “company town” in Mingo County in southern West Virginia. *Local plans this year to commemorate what became known as the 'Matewan Massacre' by the WVa. Mine Wars Museum have been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic until September at least.
Historians consider the bloodshed on May 19, 1920, memorialized in John Sayles' 1987 movie “Matewan,” a landmark moment in the battles for workers’ rights that raged across the Appalachian coalfields in the early 20th century.
- Sid Hatfield, Police Chief of Matewan, West Virgina, union supporter.
"The company town system was extremely oppressive,” said Lou Martin, a history professor at Chatham Univ. in Pittsburgh and board member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan. “The company owned the houses, the only store in town, ran the church and controlled every aspect of the miners’ lives.” Company towns were particularly prevalent in remote areas like West Virginia, which had the nation’s largest concentration of nonunion miners in 1920. And when the United Mine Workers (UMW) came to town, coal companies retaliated.
In 1920, the Stone Mountain Coal Co. hired Baldwin-Felts Agency detectives to evict union families from company-owned homes. Executive Albert Felts brought agents to Matewan, including 2 men who had been involved in violent strike-breaking efforts 6 years earlier in Ludlow, Colorado.
The Baldwin-Felts private detectives removed the miner families and were headed out when they were confronted by a group led by pro-miner, Police Chief of Matewan, Sid Hatfield. Killed in the gunfire were Albert Felts, his brother, Lee, 5 other Baldwin-Felts men, Matewan Mayor Cabell Testerman and 2 bystanders.
15 months later, Sid Hatfield, 28, Matewan's Police Chief was gone, too, shot down by Baldwin-Felts agents on the McDowell Co. courthouse steps in Welch, WVa.
More determined than ever to organize, WVa. coal miners then marched by the thousands, leading to the 12-day 'Battle of Blair Mountain' in Logan County in Aug.- Sept. 1921. Sixteen men died before they surrendered to federal troops. The UMW’s campaign in southern WVa. stalled, along with labor setbacks in steel, meat packing and railroads after World War I. Appalachian coal operators felt they needed to remain nonunion in order to survive. But “miners would long remember the lengths that the companies went to to prevent them from having basic rights that would help them organize and get a standard of living" Martin said.
When workers were finally guaranteed the right to collectively bargain in 1933 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, WVa. coal miners joined the UMW in droves. The union helped push through major improvements to health, safety and pensions across the U.S. workforce. But over the next 50 years, mechanization, fierce industry opposition and the rise of competing fuel sources severely reduced coal jobs and union membership. Stone Mountain Coal Co. is long gone, but Matewan and its union hall still stand. The town has lost half of its population since 1980, but it has survived the shootings, dozens of floods from the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River, a 1992 fire that destroyed businesses, and the opioid crisis that has ravaged the state....
More, https://apnews.com/article/34af5e97aaa1241aa3dadf669d43686b
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- * The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, WVa.
https://wvminewars.org/
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- The Coal Mining Massacre America Forgot, Smithsonian Magazine, 2017,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/forgotten-matewan-massacre-was-epicenter-20th-century-mine-wars-180963026/
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- * PBS, American Experience, 'The Mine Wars' (2019)
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/theminewars/
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- Introduction to the West Virginia Mine Wars, National Park Service
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/introduction-to-the-west-virginia-mine-wars.htm
- Trailer, MATEWAN movie with an expert cast of actors; Chris Cooper as an outside union organizer 'agitator'; David Straitharn portrays hero Police Chief Sid Hatfield; James Earl Jones is miner 'Few Clothes' Johnson; and Mary McDonnell is the boardinghouse manager. Bob Gunton plays real life spy and infiltrator C.E. Lively who attends union meetings and reports to the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency.
*Director John Sayles has a cameo role as Hardshell Preacher, and noted West Virginia bluegrass musician Hazel Dickens appears in the film. (1987).
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- Criterion Films Collection: 'Matewan' Intro.
https://www.criterion.com/films/29461-matewan
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- (5 mins.). Legendary independent filmmaker John Sayles discusses his film "Matewan," which chronicles efforts of Appalachian coal miners to organize a union in 1920 in a southern WVa. community in Mingo County. He also talks about the famous 12-day Battle of Blair Mountain, in nearby Logan Co., WVa., Aug.-Sept. 1921, a year after Matewan. At Blair Mountain, more than 10,000 determined coal miners confronted an army of police and strikebreakers, backed by the coal companies, who were attempting to disrupt efforts to unionize the West Virginia coal fields.
Sayles also commented on the more recent "2nd battle for Blair Mountain," the effort to stop mountaintop-removal coal mining from destroying the mountain range, the environs and the historical remnants of the 1921 miners conflict there. Sayles also covers ongoing actions by the GOP in the last 30-40 years to dismantle unions, the New Deal, and more. - Democracy Now! news program, host Amy Goodman, June 17, 2011.
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- Child coal miners with mules in Gary, West Virginia, 1908. Working conditions were brutal for coal miners, and unionization was violently suppressed. (Library of Congress).
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Last edited Sat May 22, 2021, 12:11 AM - Edit history (2)
- The Battle of Matewan: 100 Years Later (Episode 1), Oct 5, 2020, "Record West Virginia.' In the season and series premiere of Record West Virginia we travel to Mingo County to take a look at the Battle of Matewan. A deadly clash between disgruntled coal miners and the infamous Baldwin Felts Detective agency that turned the town's police chief, Sid Hatfield into a folk hero known as Smilin' Sid.
Local residents discuss early 20th c. conditions in the coal town of Matewan, WVa.: miners' struggles- native and immigrant, events surrounding the Matewan Massacre on May 19, 1920, and the later assassination of pro-union Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield at the Welch, WVa. McDowell County Courthhouse in Aug. 1921.
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- (Smithsonian)..But for Terry Steele, a former coal miner in West Virginia and member of the local UMWA, revolting was the only way to respond to abuse. He says local wisdom had it that, “If you got a mule killed in the mines and you were in charge, you could lose your job over it. If you got a man killed, he could be replaced.”
What made the situation worse, according to Wilma Steele, a founding member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, was the contempt outsiders had for miners in the region. Locals had a reputation for being violent and unreasonable. “It set the stereotype that they were used to feuding and they were people who don’t care about anything but a gun and a bottle of liquor,” says Steele. “That was the propaganda. But these people were being abused.”...
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- (Sept. 2020). WEST VIRGINIA MINE WARS MUSEUM has re-opened in a NEW building in Historic Matewan with expanded and new exhibits. Here's a peek of what our team of volunteers have been working on since late 2019. The new space contains familiar and unfamiliar items, including a tent replica that miners lived in during the 1912-1913 Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike; an area devoted to the resistance of women during the Mine Wars; a 100- plus year-old Jefferson County jail cell that once held union miners during the 1922 Treason Trials, and much more.
With the move we've more than doubled our capacity to showcase exhibits and artifacts in our building which is union-owned (UMWA Local 1440). There's also a gift shop; a seating area for guests; an archival room to safely store and categorize items, and a special new rotating exhibition space, Solidarity Gallery.
- West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, Matewan, Mingo County, WVa.
https://wvminewars.org/news/2020/11/4/weve-re-opened-in-a-new-building-in-historic-matewan
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- $1.00 scrip coin from Peerless Coal & Coke Company, Vivian, WVa. 'Scrip' was issued by companies to pay miners as a substititute for currency. It was used to purchase goods at the local company store owned by the employer. With a monopoly, employers could place large markups on items and make workers dependent on the company, thus enforcing employee 'loyalty.'
- (Wiki) COMPANY SCRIP is scrip (a substitute for government-issued legal tender or currency) issued by a company to pay its employees. It can only be exchanged in company stores owned by the employers. In the U.S., mining and logging camps were typically created, owned and operated by a single company. These locations, some quite remote, were often cash poor; even in ones that were not, workers paid in scrip had little choice but to purchase goods at a company store, as exchange into currency, if even available, would exhaust some of the value via the exchange fee.
While scrip was not exclusive to the coal industry, an estimated 75% of all scrip used was by coal companies in KY, VA, & WV. Because of this, many derived nicknames for the type of currency originated in the Appalachian mining communities, such as 'Flickers,' 'Clackers,' & 'Dugaloos.' Tokens were made out of a variety of metals, including brass, copper, zinc, & nickel. There were additionally "compressed fibre" coins produced during World War II in an effort to conserve metals for wartime production...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
