On this day 101 years ago a gun battle happened in the West Virginia town of Matewan that led to another, bigger conflict a little over a year later at Blair Mountain.
Following World War I the increasing power of large companies that owned the coal mines in Appalachia led to conflicts between poorly paid miners who were organizing with the help of the UMWA. In 1920 the union had started a mass organizing effort, leading the mine owners to force miners to sign what are called yellow-dog contracts, binding them to never join a union. In Matewan the coal company hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to clear company owned homes of those fired for joining the union, along with their families, by force if necessary.
On May 19th Baldwin-Felts men arrived to do the companies’ dirty work and headed into town to leave. Before they did so they attempted to arrest Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield, a well-known union sympathizer. Almost immediately bullets began to fly as both the Baldwin-Felts men and Chief Hatfield and his men started a gun battle in which the town mayor, Cabell Testerman, was shot and killed, along with Albert and Lee Felts and Lee Cunningham, all Baldwin Felts men. In all six people died in the battle.
Hatfield was arrested and tried for murder, along with several other men, in January, 1921. All were found not guilty. T. L. Felts, the brother of Albert and Lee, then brought charges against Sid Hatfield alleging he was involved in dynamiting a coal tipple, leading to a second trial set for that summer. On the stairway of the courthouse in August, 1921, Sid Hatfield and his deputy, Ed Chambers, were shot and killed by Baldwin-Felts agents.
That killing sparked a spontaneous uprising of 10,000 miners, the largest in American history, who began a march to Logan and Mingo counties intent on establishing the UMWA. As they crossed Blair Mountain on their way there, they encountered the anti-union sheriff of Logan County, Don Chafin, and a force of private mercenaries numbering nearly 2000, assembled with the financial help of the Logan County Coal Operators Association. Also present were units of the West Virginia National Guard.
By August 29th Chafin’s men were using private planes to drop everything from bombs to poison gas left over from World War I on the miners. Army bombers were also present, although they were used for aerial surveillance.
On September 2 federal troops arrived and the situation quickly settled down.
(Photo of Matewan by FloNight (Sydney Poore) and Russell Poore – self, Russell and Sydney Poore, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4377857)
There was a 1987 movie about this conflict. Title was “Matewan” and it had several well-known actors in the cast. I was able to find a copy thru the local library.