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Today marks the 100 year anniversary of the Matewan Massacre, in which Sid Hatfield refused to let some coal company hired guns evict coal miners out of their homes for attempting to unionize. Almost NOBODY who doesn& #39;t study labor history or coal mining history knows about it
it essentially was the beginning of the largest armed revolt since the Civil War, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain, in which the US government dropped bombs from planes on its own citizens. Even fewer people have heard of this!
for example: my wife grew up maybe 20 minutes away from Matewan, and when I asked if she could take me there to see where it happened, she had no clue what I was talking about. They didn& #39;t teach it in schools and for the most part still don& #39;t, though it is somewhat better.
This is because the state of West Virginia actively sided with the coal companies since their entire economy was (and is) based on the industry. Its largely true of history in general: you don& #39;t hear the union& #39;s side of it unless you look for it.
To this day, if you search for Matewan Massacre, there& #39;s a link to the WV Department of Arts, Culture and History that is just a reprint of the Coal Operators Association recounting of the events. You can find more, but that& #39;s the one that comes up first
Basically, it was a big fucking deal, and its ridiculous that more people don& #39;t know about it. John Sayles did a dramatization of it in the movie Matewan, which sort of combines a lot of the unrest in WV into one bigger story and its pretty damn good so you should watch it
I really hate that most of the US and world knows nothing about what a huge thing this was. Just monumental for this area. And these guys are bad asses
This is actually a pretty solid write up for a short version: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/forgotten-matewan-massacre-was-epicenter-20th-century-mine-wars-180963026/
There& #39;s">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/f... also a Matewan oral history project done in the late 80s that has a lot of interviews with folks who lived there at the time and gives some insight from others
There& #39;s">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/f... also a Matewan oral history project done in the late 80s that has a lot of interviews with folks who lived there at the time and gives some insight from others
