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| THE BATTLE OF MATEWAN In the spring of 1920, newy elected United Mine Workers of America President John L. Lewis announced his plans for the UMWA to organize the coal miners in central Appalachia. Lewis knew that the coal operators would fight this with all of their resources, but he was determined to bring the Union to Southern West Virginia. Along the Tug Fork River miners were ripe for unionization, and many had already formed a local chapter of the Union. Coal operators retaliated by firing those miners who joined the Union. As most miners lived in company-owned houses at that time, getting fired meant the loss of one's house as well as a job. Evictions were carried out throughout West Virginia by the notorious Baldwin-Felts detectives. Despite these threats, nearly 3,000 miners in the Tug Valley joined the Union by May 1920. Union activity was strongest that spring in the town of Matewan. Matewan's young police chief, Sid Hatfield, a former miner himself, and Cable C. Testerman, Matewan's nattily dressed Mayor, openly supported the Union drive, and provided protection for the miners as they held organizational meetings at the Matewan Community Church. On the morning of May 19, 1920, thirteen detectives from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency arrived in Matewan on the number 29 train. Led by Albert Felts, younger brother of Baldwin-Felts' President Tom Felts, the detectives were hired by the Stone Mountain Coal Company to evict Union miners from their company houses just outside of town. Sid Hatfield and his deputy, Fed Burgraff, met the detectives as they stepped off the train. When Sid asked Albert Felts what he and his men were doing in Matewan, Albert replied that they had come to evict miners from the Stone Mountain Camp. They did just that, forcing six families from their homes and leaving their belongings in the street. When Felts and his hired guns returned to town, Sid was ready to make an arrest. Townspeople, with guns tucked under their jackets, gathered to watch the confrontation. As Sid and Mayor Testerman exchanged words with Albert and his brother, Lee Felts, a shot was fired, and the battle was on. Though it lasted just minutes hundreds of bullets peppered the air, striking gunmen, onlookers, and the building along the Railroad Alley. When the smoke cleared, Mayor Testerman lay fatally wounded. Locals Robert Mullins and young Tot Tunsley had also been killed. Bother Albert and Lee Felts were dead, along with five other detectives. The battle made Sid Hatfield a hero to miners throughout the Appalachia, as the first law officer to take on the hated Baldwin-Felts Detectives. When Sid and fourteen others were found not guilty in the deaths of Albert Felts, Matewan's minersrejoiced. But fifteen months after the battle on August 1, 1921, Thomas Felts avenged the deaths of his two younger brothers. On that day Baldwin-Felts agents gunned down Sid Hatfield and his deputy, Ed Chambers, as they climbed the steps of the McDowell County Court House in Welch, West Virginia. Both men were unarmed. Sid's murder was so brutal it sparked the armed rebellion of 10,000 West Virginia coal miners, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection in America since the Civil War. |
| Matewan Depot Replica and Museum PO Box 307 Matewan, WV 25678 (304) 426-5744 |
| Matewan, West Virginia.... rich in history, full of tradition. |
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