During the early 1900's miners in southern West Virginia were fighting, literally, for simple rights that every worker deserves. A 40-hour work week, decent pay that wasn't in scrip, and a sense of safety. On May 19 of 1920, members of the Baldwin-Felts detective agency arrived in the town of Matewan to evict union miners from houses owned by the Stone Mountain Coal Company. After catching wind of the detectives’ activities, Matewan Mayor Cabell Testerman and a pro-union sheriff named Sid Hatfield raised a small posse and confronted them near the local train station. A verbal argument quickly escalated into a gunfight, and when the smoke cleared, seven Baldwin-Felts agents had been killed along with Mayor Testerman and two local miners.
The “Matewan Massacre” galvanized support for the UMW, which collected new members and organized a strike in the summer of 1920. The coal companies responded by bringing in non-union replacement workers, and over the next several months, the two sides engaged in a fierce guerrilla war. “Murder by laying in wait and shooting from ambush has become common,” Mingo County’s sheriff wrote in May 1921.
The tipping point in the “Mine War” finally came on August 1, 1921, when Sheriff Sid Hatfield was shot dead by Baldwin-Felts agents as …show more content…
The state of West Virginia charged Keeney, Mooney and some 20 other union men with treason, and hundreds of others were indicted for murder. Nearly all were later acquitted, but the legal battles emptied the UMWA’s coffers and hindered its organizing efforts. By the end of the decade, only a few hundred miners in West Virginia were still members. The union wouldn’t reclaim the coalfields until the mid-1930s and the Great Depression, when workers’ rights to organize were enshrined in New Deal legislation such as the National Industrial Recovery
The “Matewan Massacre” galvanized support for the UMW, which collected new members and organized a strike in the summer of 1920. The coal companies responded by bringing in non-union replacement workers, and over the next several months, the two sides engaged in a fierce guerrilla war. “Murder by laying in wait and shooting from ambush has become common,” Mingo County’s sheriff wrote in May 1921.
The tipping point in the “Mine War” finally came on August 1, 1921, when Sheriff Sid Hatfield was shot dead by Baldwin-Felts agents as …show more content…
The state of West Virginia charged Keeney, Mooney and some 20 other union men with treason, and hundreds of others were indicted for murder. Nearly all were later acquitted, but the legal battles emptied the UMWA’s coffers and hindered its organizing efforts. By the end of the decade, only a few hundred miners in West Virginia were still members. The union wouldn’t reclaim the coalfields until the mid-1930s and the Great Depression, when workers’ rights to organize were enshrined in New Deal legislation such as the National Industrial Recovery