'Matewan': Labor's Fight To Unionize 100 Years Ago, May 19, 1920

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Mon May 18, 2020, 08:30 PM - Edit history (1)

'Matewan' (1987), written & directed by John Sayles. Chris Cooper portrays Joe Kenehan, an outside UMW organizer who comes to a small southern WV coalfield town, Matewan to help miners form a union for better conditions & wages. The film dramatizes the true events of the Battle of Matewan, the miners' strike there in 1920. James Earl Jones plays a local miner based on the character, 'Few Clothes.' Matewan was a key part of the WV history of mine wars, 1912-1921. Solidarity.

May 19, 1920, a shootout in Matewan, West Virginia, between agents of the Baldwin-Felts and local miners, who later joined the United Mine Workers of America, sparked what became known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest insurrection in the United States since the American Civil War...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matewan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars

- 'Matewan Massacre' a century ago embodied miners' struggles,' John Raby, AP, May 18, 2020. 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 West Virginia.

Plans to publicly commemorate what became known as the Matewan Massacre have been delayed by the CV pandemic until September at least. But historians consider the bloodshed on May 19, 1920, memorialized in the 1987 film “Matewan,” to be a landmark moment in the battles for workers’ rights that raged across the Appalachian coalfields in the early 20th c. “The company town system was extremely oppressive," said Lou Martin, a history professor at Chatham University in Pittsburgh and a 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.”...
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Matewan-Massacre-a-century-ago-embodied-miners-15277585.php
https://democraticunderground.com/1016255879

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. Great movie!

Really well done.

[appalachiablue]

2. Promo 'Matewan' (1987)

Film trailer.




- Sid Hatfield, Chief of Police, Matewan was pro-miner and had also worked as a miner. Hatfield was involved in the Matewan Massacre shootout between miners on strike and hired detectives that followed a series of evictions of miners carried out by Baldwin-Felts agents employed by the Coal Mountain Company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Hatfield

[druidity33]

3. A difficult to find movie...

Netflix didn't have it, nor did my regional library system. Couldn't find it on ebay. I talked to my librarian and she got it for me from a University collection in CA. I live in MA. This was a few years ago... so maybe it's in print again? Or it can be found on YouTube?

K&R...

[appalachiablue]

5. That's no good, these should have copies. It's likely on

YouTube, clips of the movie are there.

Good luck, and read up on the story a bit, it helps.

[aeromanKC]

6. Best I could find was buy (not rent) on Amazon $21

Odd no stream version.

[ancianita]

4. A great movie. John Sayles is known as the godfather of independent film.

I used to teach this movie in my film class.

[appalachiablue]

7. He's terrific, met him in Santa Fe at an opening. Glad you

taught 'Matewan' in class, that's super. I love films and wish I'd studied it in college but no depts. at my school, so it was history and art.

I was born just miles from Matewan like my ancestors. In 1921 my grandfather was in the Battle of Blair Mountain which followed the Matewan Massacre. He was not a person to be messed with. Lol.

[ancianita]

8. He is! So glad you got to meet him. I love his body of work.

My other three favorites of his are Lone Star (about immigration), Limbo (about drugs) and Sunshine State (about Fla real estate development). He was consistently the thought-provoking liberal and social issues oriented filmmaker before it was cool. His actor repertory put Chris Cooper and David Straithairn on the map, with most of his movies having black or Latino and women leads.

So cool you were born in the Matewan area. Wow, the Battle of Blair Mountain, biggest labor uprising in American history. That's deep! Yes, my experience is that appalachian men are straight talking, no bs people.

[appalachiablue]

9. Sayles 2011 on Matewan, Blair, the state of Unions, rollback.

He's an excellent director and activist in his own way and wise words about the return to worker conditions of a 100 years ago are right on. Of his films I enjoyed Sunshine State and Passion Fruit especially.

The environment in coal country WV can be very rough, esp. with the general deterioration there and the pronounced decline of industries and jobs in the last 50 years. Its toughened people are turning even harder from desperation as time goes by.

- Director John Sayles interviewed on Matewan, Blair Mt. and the current state of US labor. 2011, Democracy Now!

[ancianita]

10. Thanks. He's always been pro-labor in the spirit of Dorothy Day.