August History Blog: 1921 Matewan Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain

Disclaimer: These words are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the Labor Guild’s opinion.

Two bloody incidences happened in West Virginia in 1921. The first was the Matewan Massacre which incited the second: the Battle of Blair Mountain, known as the largest armed rebellion since the Civil War.

Starting in 1920 with the purchase of the mining territory of Logan and Mingo Counties by a consortium of mine owners called the Stone Mountain Coal Company, which began consolidating mine operations. The United Mine Workers were endeavoring to unionize those same mines. The coal operators built an unincorporated town (Company Towns), like many of the Company Towns of its time, they paid their workers in script and leased them their tools to work with. Similarly, like Ludlow and other mining areas, the Union leased land nearby and set up tents or shabby structures for shelter.

Coal operators, in Logan County, anticipating conflict began firing union and union sympathizing miners, blacklisting them, and then used yellow dog miners to replace them.

In the Company mining towns, employees were immediately evicted off the property under the direction of anti-union Sheriff Don Chafin and a deputized army of Logan County.

Mingo County was different, in that it was sympathetic to union endeavors. Cabell Testerman, the mayor of the independent town of Matewan appointed a Sheriff named Sid Hatfield (a relative of the legendary Hatfield –McCoy feud and a former miner), both were sympathizers of the union.

The coal operators hired the guns of Baldwin-Felts, detective agency, to come to town and bribe Mayor Testerman with $500 to mount machine guns on the roofs of the buildings in town. You remember when I wrote about the Ludlow Massacre, Rockefeller paid for armed militia that dressed in Army garb to enforce his rule and opened fire on civilians. Well, those kind of ruthless murdering mercenaries were Baldwin-Felts hired thugs, paid for by the Stone Mountain Coal Company.

UMW set up tent camps along the Tug Fork River and managed to organize 3,000 out of the 4,000 miners in Mingo County. On May 19, 1920, two of the brothers of the founder Thomas Felt, Albert and Lee, came to Stone Mountain Coal Company with eleven other detectives to scatter the previously fired and evicted union workers.

As the story goes, the first tent they evicted was a woman and her children whose husband was not at home; forcing the family out at gunpoint as they threw their belonging on the road “during a light but steady rain”. Witnesses ran to town to alert authorities and as the hired guns attempted to leave town where they were confronted by Sheriff Hatfield who arrested them.

Albert Felts produced a warrant for Hatfield’s arrest to which Mayor Testerman quickly announced, “This is a bogus warrant”, which started a gun fight that left 10 dead, including Mayor Testerman and the two Felt brothers.

The Matewan Massacre was the deadliest gunfight in American history. Hatfield’s reputation began to soar as a folk hero after he had been acquitted of killing the Felt brothers. Days later thousands of union sympathizers gathered just outside of the Charleston state capital in the small town of Marmet. The mine workers were determined to march on the coal companies in Mingo County to free union miners that were imprisoned there. Many of the miners were veterans of WWI as they, along with their military weapons and shotguns gathered to enroll in the fight. Fellow miner and Baptist minister John Wilber stated. “It is time to lay down the bible and take up the rifle”. The coal companies responded by bringing in non-union replacement workers, and over the next several months, the two sides engaged in a fierce guerilla war.

“Murder by lying in wait and shooting from ambush has become common,” Mingo County’s Sheriff wrote in May 1921.

As the violence on the Little Coal and the Tug Rivers continued, skirmishes between miners and State Police led to a full assault on the non-union mines in May of 1921. This lasted three days and ended with a flag of truce and martial law. Martial law was first initiated against union miners, being hauled off to jail without rights of habeas corpus to which the miners retaliated with guerilla tactics.

In the middle of all this Sheriff Hatfield went on trial for a bogus plot of dynamiting a coal tipple on August 1, 1921. He arrived in McDowell County along with his friend Ed Chambers and their wives. As they walked, unarmed, up the steps of the County Court House, agents of Baldwin-Felts agency opened fire on the two while in the presence of their wives.

Sid Hatfield was killed immediately while Chambers bullet ridden body rolled down the Court House steps. Over the protesting cries of his wife one agent finished the job with a point-blank gunshot to the back of his head.

The anti-union Sheriff Don Chafin was ready for what was to come. He had fortified the high ground to protect the mine on Blair Mountain along with an armed force of 2,000 paid for by the Logan County Coal Operators Association. On August 25 through Sept 2, 1921, an army of 10,000 miners wearing red neckerchiefs (calling themselves red necks) to identify each other stole and commandeered trains to gain access to the battle. The waiting mine owners hired private planes to drop homemade bombs as well as surplus bombs from WWI,some accounts even accuse them of using gas. President Warren Harding approved the use of General Billy Mitchell’s MB-1 bombers to provide reconnaissance to coal operators. On September 7, Federal Troops arrived, and the miners began to go home. Fearing they would be arrested for carrying their guns, they hid them and are still being found today. One bomb that did not go off was saved for evidence in the court trial of the 985 prosecuted, in an attempt to acquit the men.

After five days of fighting Sheriff Chafin reported 30 nonunion deaths with 50 to 100 union members dead and 985 arrested. Of those arrested some were acquitted while others were imprisoned and later paroled by 1925

The conflict was a devastating loss to the Union. Mines reopened with non-union workers under “yellow dog” contracts. U.M.W. membership dropped from 50,000 down to 10,000 over the next several years and it wasn’t until 1935 (under the New Deal) that they fully organized the southern West Virginia coal mines.

This is how labor disputes were put down and dissolved.

Sheriff Don Chafin lived until 1954.

I hope by now you understand why workers did not trust the Industrialists or the Government. Not only did their opponents have the money, but they also had the full weight of the Federal government, including the military, to crush them. It is no wonder workers wanted to control the means of production in this country. And without this kind of unrest, there would not have been a labor movement. It would be owners controlling everything, workers included. Look around to see what is happening now. They may not be using troops and guns, however they are twisting the law through the courts and avoiding Congress to fulfill their corporate wishes…