Listen here, bub, Smilin Sid Hatfield did *not* get shot to death by company gun thugs on the steps of the Matawan courthouse just so your boot-lickin self could vote away the Social Security what that I pay good fuckin money into every fuckin week. Fuck your red hat and fuck your coal mine and fuck your flag and fuck your statues and most of all fuck you.
Well, I had my dates mixed up; Sidney Hatfield was actually murdered in McDowell County, not in Matewan.
So the Battle of Matewan was an incident that happened on May 19th, 1920 in Matewan, West Virginia, considered to mark the beginning of the West Virginia Coal War. The United Mine Workers of America had been trying to organize in West Virginia but faced considerable resistance from the mining companies, who hired a private security firm–the Baldwen-Felts Detective Agency–to harass and threaten union miners. The miners hated the Baldwen-Felts agents, whom they called “company gun thugs,” and the sympathetic mayor of Matewan appointed a union miner named Sidney Hatfield as chief of police in an effort to control them. Sidney was called “Smilin Sid” because he was also a blacksmith, and had repaired his own broken teeth with gold caps (!!!) which he was extremely proud of; the appointment came as a surprise to the more “respectable” citizens because, in addition to having literally no experience with law enforcement, Sid Hatfield also had a reputation for starting (and winning!) fights with anti-union miners. He looked like this:
So in the spring of 1920, the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation evicted all of the union miners from company housing, so the miners and their families moved into a shantytown on nearby abandoned land. In May, a gang of Baldwin-Felts enforcers armed with Thompson sub-machine guns came to drive the miners out of their tents as well, but were waylaid at the train station by Hatfield and a group of deputized miners. This led to an awkward situation where Sid Hatfield, as chief of police, served an arrest warrant on Albert Felts, and Albert Felts, who’d been deputized by the constable of Magnolia, served an arrest warrant on Hatfield. The two belligerent parties moved to the porch of the Chambers Hardware Store to await word from a judge, with the mayor acting as mediator. When the judge declared that Sid’s warrant was legal while Albert’s was bogus, Albert responded by drawing a gun and shooting the mayor, which led to a gunfight that tragically cost the lives of three miners and wonderfully cost the lives of thirteen gun thugs including Albert and Lee Felts themselves. This has gone down in history as the Battle of Matewan, the beginning of the West Virginia Coal War.
Sid and his friend Edward Chambers were charged with murder for the incident, but were acquitted on grounds of self-defense and defense of others on August 1st, 1921. As the two men, unarmed and accompanied by their wives, walked down the courthouse steps following their acquittal, a group of Baldwin-Felts gun thugs rushed out of the crowd and opened fire on them, killing them.
Sidney Hatfield and Edward Chambers were seen as martyrs for miners’ rights against corporate greed and tyranny, and their legend helped to greatly speed up the UMWA’s organizing push.
I did not know this. I knew unionizing was tough, but being bombed by your own government…
Oh man, the Coal War is just one story out of very, very many. The history of workers’ rights in this country is written in blood; it’s been the default position of the United States government and its autonomous wings to respond to labor organizing with violence, whether that’s strike-breaking, police brutality, outright murder, or, yes, bombs. So when you’re taking your lunch break or enjoying a weekend, don’t forget that people literally died for those things.
I was going to list some specific incidents, like the Ludlow Massacre, the Harlan County War, the Pullman strikes, the Brookside Strike, Joe Hill getting framed for murder and executed by the state of Utah … but it made me sad so here’s the Wikipedia article on on anti-union violence in North America
OH HEY LOOK MY FAVORITE HISTORY TOPIC
Incidentally, theres a little bit of misinformation on the Matewan Massacre, though the gist of it is overall right. No judge was involved in the review of the warrant; Mayor Testerman was the one who said “this warrant is bogus!” and prompted the gunfight. No one knows who actually started shooting first, and only 7 Baldwin-Felts were killed (13 was the number they started with). They had actually offered both Sid and Mayor Testerman like, really huge bribes to allow them to install machine guns on the roofs of buildings throughout the town. Shady as fuck. Sid and Testerman both refused, which is kinda why the Baldwin-Felts guys disliked them to start with.
Sid (plus 17 others) charged for murder, but all were acquitted. This trial was really in the national spotlight, and Sid was a bit of a celebrity because he posed for pictures and answered questions with a lot of people. but of course the Baldwin-Felts hated him and had a very personal vendetta.
Edward Chambers wasn’t involved in the Matewan Massacre; he and Sid were going to stand trial for an unrelated incident involving them allegedly exploding a coal tipple in Welch, WV. They didn’t even make it inside the courthouse. They were shot to death on the steps. Sid was hit 3 or 4 times in his chest and died instantly, but his friend Ed was initially hit non-fatally. A Baldwin-Felts detective shot him in the head was his wife tried to defend him. And heres the real kicker: None of the Baldwin-Felts detectives was ever convicted of Hatfield’s assassination. They claimed they were acting in “self-defense”.
Also, if you’ve never heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain: 10,000-13,000 armed coal miners marched into Logan County, West Virginia, against 3,000 armed policemen, strikebreakers, and Baldwin-Felts detectives. The miners gathered for days beforehand, with a group from Northern West Virginia actually commandeering a freight train and renaming it the Blue Steel Special to get themselves to the group.
Here’s the EXTRA fucked up part, which occurred about 2 days after the fighting had started and which im gonna copypaste from the wiki: “
After a long meeting in the town of Madison, the seat of Boone County, agreements were made convincing the miners to return home. However, the struggle was far from over. After spending days to assemble his private army, Chafin was not going to be denied his battle to end union attempts at organizing Logan County coal mines. Within hours of the Madison decision, rumors abounded that Sheriff Chafin’s men had shot union sympathizers in the town of Sharples, West Virginia, just north of Blair Mountain—and that families had been caught in crossfire during the skirmishes. Infuriated, the miners turned back towards Blair Mountain, many traveling in other stolen and commandeered trains.
“
They were gonna quit. The miners were gonna say “okay, you win, don’t kill any more of us.” and they fuckin killed em. So they turned their asses around and said “Actually fuck you”.
And hey the army wasn’t the ones dropping the bombs, the miners surrendered and retreated when the federal troops got there because they realized that if they didn’t that their own gov would slaughter them. Nah it was private planes that were hired to drop a combo of leftover gas and explosive bombs from WW1 plus a bunch of homemade bombs on the miners. Did those guys ever get arrested? no.
This went on for 8 FUCKIN DAYS MY DUDES before the army came in this was the LARGEST ARMED UPRISING IN US HISTORY OUTSIDE OF THE GOD DAMN CIVIL WAR AND ITS NOT EVEN A SHITTING FOOTNOTE IN 95% OF US HISTORY TEXTBOOKS
10,000 FUCKING COAL MINERS FOUGHT AN 8-DAY BATTLE AGAINST A 3,000-STRONG PRIVATE ARMED FORCE SUPPORTED FINANCIALLY BY THE OWNERS OF THE COAL MINES AND NO HISTORY BOOK YOU’LL FIND IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL WILL DEVOTE MORE THAN A SENTENCE TO IT WHAT THE FUCK
Also here’s a list of some more fucked up shit from US Labor History that never gets taught to kids that i had saved
1914, The Ludlow Massacre, where the Colorado National Guard and the guards from the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company attacked a camp of 1,200 striking coal miners, resulting in “the violent deaths of between 19 and 26 people; reported death tolls vary but include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent,” and sparking the Colorado Coal Field War
1917, Frank Little, a labor leader and member of the executive board of the Industrial Workers of the World, was beaten and abducted from his boardinghouse, dragged behind a car, and then hanged from the Milwaukee Bridge. No one was ever prosecuted for his murder.
1917, Bisbee Deportation, where 1,300 striking miners and union sympathizers in Bisbee, AZ were arrested, loaded into cattle cars, and “deported” 200 miles away into New Mexico by a 2,000-member deputized posse. The town mining company had provided a list of all citizens who were to be arrested, and closed down any outside communications with the town for several days to keep the incident from being reported.
1919, Fannie Sellins, a union organizer, shot to death by deputies when she tried to stop their beating of a picketing miner, who was also killed. She was shot 4 times and her skull was fractured by a cudgel; her death was ruled a justifiable homicide, and she was blamed for starting the riot which led to her death.
the coal company disregarded their union agreement, so in retaliation, striking union miners shot and killed 19 strikebreakers and mine guards. 3 union miners weer also killed in the fight.
1929, Loray Mill Strike, 1,800 mill workers from the Loray Mill walked off their jobs to protest intolerable working conditions, and demanded a forty-hour work week, a minimum $20 weekly wage, and union recognition; in response, management evicted families from mill-owned homes. Later, nearly 100 masked men destroyed the National Textile Worker’s Union’s headquarters, and the NTWU started a tent city on the outskirts of the town protected by armed strikers.
ForLoveFromFear 