Matewan

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…

Power Struggles Through the Lens In the film, Matewan, Marx’s view on capitalism foreshadows the disputes between the social classes; bourgeoisie and proletariat. It adequately displays the class antagonisms present, during this time period, within the feudal society. The bourgeoisie consisted of the upper-class, businessman in suits, and developers/owners of production. In the film, the bourgeois is the mining company of Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency hired seven armed men to end the union…

others from different cultures or within their own, may be their making or breaking point. In the book Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina and in the movie Matewan, it is clear to see how the miners have conflicts with the coal company, the scabs, and with themselves, and how the miners unite within themselves and with the others. Each of these interactions, both bad and good, impact the fight for the miner’s basic human rights against the company men. The first three-quarters of the book are…

In the midst of a war how people interact with others from different cultures or within their own, may be their making or breaking point. In the book Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina and in the movie Matewan, it is clear to see how the miners have conflict with the company, the scabs, and with themselves, and how the miners come together within their own group and with the scabs. Each of these interactions impact the fight for the miner’s basic human rights against the company men either for…

The control forced upon the miners wasn’t limited to scrip, either. Operators retained private security forces to preclude unionization, employed spies to discover unionizers, and even built their own courthouses to administer “justice”. No facet of the miner’s life was his own. The company dictated everything, and finally, the miners in Matewan, WV had reached the breaking point. May 19th, 1920. 13 Baldwin-Felts detectives arrived in Matewan, which is in Mingo County, WV along the KY-WV…

In the screening of Matawan the main character that seemed to stand out to me the most was Joe Kenehan played by Chris Cooper. Joe Kenehan is a new comer to the town of Matewan he is there to help get a union started he exist as fictional character to fuel the idea to get a union starts in a way other than fighting. Joe is a slender man normally wears a hat, is clean shaven and is quite but when he has something to say be says it and has the heart of a true leader. He takes pride in the being…

Calvin and Alifair, Randolph McCoys grown children, were killed. As for the children’s mother, Sarah, she was severely beaten to death. This outrage brought matters to a head, putting the Hatfields on the defensive for most of the conflict, hunted in their own West Virginia neighborhoods. Vance was soon killed by a group of people from Kentucky led by McCoy partisan Frank Phillips. The two sides fought at Grapevine Creek, near present Matewan, on January 19th. Eventually four Hatfield sons and…

under Martial Law or the other was to force them to work for the army. As Ben Butler of Virginia says the blacks were, “Property contraband of war.” Du Bois later goes on to write that it was hard for the union army to enforce these rules because the slaves would just say they were free men or that there master abandoned them. Creating an open gateway to the norther states. . After the dust settled from the civil wars destruction of the south. Many slaves were letf just plain out of work with no…