Matewan Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

‘I Think It Spoke To Him’: Why James Earl Jones Sought Role In ‘Matewan’

Curtis Tate spoke to David Wohl, who at the time was an acting teacher at West Virginia State and asked Jones to come speak to his students.

Renowned actor James Earl Jones died earlier this month at age 93. Jones was part of the cast of the 1987 John Sayles film “Matewan,” which was shot in Thurmond, West Virginia.

Curtis Tate spoke to David Wohl, who at the time was an acting teacher at West Virginia State and asked Jones to come speak to his students.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tate: Why did James Earl Jones come to West Virginia to be in Matewan?

Wohl: I think he chose the film because it was just an interesting acting choice for him. And I mean, Sayles was really lucky to get him at that point. But when you think about it, he had done the voice of (Darth) Vader in ‘Star Wars.’ He worked steadily, but he wasn’t a movie star.

His main work was in theater, in ensemble work especially. And he still continued to act on Broadway and in smaller plays. The first time I saw him was in a tiny play off Broadway. And then I saw him in ‘The Great White Hope,’ which was the show that won him the Tony Award for Best Actor when he was fairly young. This would have been the ’60s, I think, and so he’s not the star, like a Brad Pitt. He was in a lot of independent films, and he wasn’t a leading man at that point. He was an ensemble player, a character actor, and he knew that. So he chose projects that he thought were meaningful to him, and that’s one of the things I really respected about him, about his acting, and about the projects that he chose. So I think it spoke to him.

Tate: How did you get Jones to come speak to your students?

Wohl: So we had some faculty, we had students appear in the film. We’d been trying to get James Earl Jones as a speaker at State for years, and had no luck. Just on a whim, I knew the casting director [who] told me where they were staying, which is one of the motels in Beckley, the cast while they were down there, Econo Lodge, or one of the cheap motels that was out there.

Yeah, and I called a couple of times and just asked to speak to him, and sort of luckily, he actually answered the phone. Before he hung up, I said, ‘Hey, I’m a theater instructor at West Virginia State. It’s a historically black college. We’d love to have you come up for a day. I can give, I can give you probably, you know, 500 bucks or 1,000 bucks, and pick you up and bring you to campus.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know what the shooting schedule is going to be, but I’d love to do it.’ And I said, ‘Great.’ And so we traded phone calls back and forth, and when we scheduled one day and they had a shoot, he was called for that day. We couldn’t do it.

At the last minute, he said, ‘I’m free. Can someone come get me?’ I said, ‘I will send a student out and bring you to campus.’ Which I did. And I don’t even remember what month it was. I think it was winter, January, February. And I happened to be teaching my acting class that day at the fine arts building. He came in around 9 o’clock – I think my class was 9:30 – I introduced myself, and he sat down with the class for an hour and a half and talked about his experience and his career and acting tips. And he was just marvelous, just wonderful.

Tate: The film got many critical accolades, but few awards. Why?

Wohl: Because it’s not a studio film. They couldn’t publicize it. They couldn’t release it widely. It’s one of the difficulties that independent filmmakers have. Unless it’s a Marvel film, it’s tough, unless you’ve got backing. A lot of these films have gotten critically acclaimed, but they don’t make money, in terms of how much money you’re going to put up. They’ve got to do it on the cheap. Critically acclaimed doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful at the box office, you know? It’s not a feel-good film. It’s got a story. It’s slow in developing. The characters are really interesting, but it’s not an action film. It’s not a comedy, it’s not monsters, and so it’s always going to have a small audience, and that’s one of the difficulties in independent filmmaking.

Tate: One of the themes of the film that resonates today is that the union movement in the coalfields was a multiracial coalition. Whereas the coal companies tried to use racial differences as a wedge between workers to discourage them from forming the union.

Wohl: That’s one of the basic tenets of it. You got the Italians who settled in southern West Virginia who came over to work in the mines. You had the blacks, and then you had the poor whites. I think it was pretty accurate in terms of those sort of disparate communities and the union sort of bringing it together. I think that was one of the big messages that Sayles wanted to get across in the film by having these separate, identifiable communities, and then the whole idea of the union, then bringing it together in terms of commonalities.

It’s interesting. It’s pretty topical now in terms of the political environment, where we’ve got people trying to divide us because of our differences. I think what Sayles was trying to do was saying, we got more in common than you think. We all have to buy from the company store. We’re all living in these horrible conditions. We’re not better than anyone else. And I think that that’s part of the arc, message, of that movie.

Alleged Murderer Of Trooper Pleads Not Guilty, Bond Denied

State Police said Kennedy ambushed Sgt. Cory Maynard and other troopers responding to a shots fired call last Friday in the Beech Creek area of Matewan.

Twenty-nine-year-old Timothy Kennedy, of Beech Creek, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a first-degree murder charge in front of Mingo County Circuit Court Judge Miki Thompson.

State Police said Kennedy ambushed Sgt. Cory Maynard and other troopers responding to a shots fired call last Friday in the Beech Creek area of Matewan.

The 37-year-old Maynard was shot in the incident and taken to Logan Regional Medical Center where he died from his injuries.

Police say Kennedy was captured after a nearly seven-hour manhunt late that night. They say he also stole a vehicle before he was arrested.

Police say the shots fired call came after Benjamin Baldwin, 39, from Matewan, was shot with a rifle. Baldwin remains hospitalized, last reported on Monday in serious but stable condition, still in intensive care.

More charges involving Baldwin and the stolen vehicle are expected to be filed against Kennedy.

Kennedy remains jailed without bail. His preliminary hearing is set for Thursday where probable cause will be decided.

Trooper Maynard’s memorial service will take place Wednesday at Mingo Central High School.

Restoration On Matewan’s Nenni Buildings Honors Connection to Italian Immigrants, Mine Wars History

Three buildings in Matewan are expected to be renovated over the next few years.

Using $1.7 million from the U.S. Economic Development Authority, Coalfield Development Corp. and the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum plan to transform the buildings into a job training center while preserving mine wars and unionization history.

The Nenni buildings have been in Matewan for more than 100 years.

These buildings have a history that’s also part of an Italian immigrant family.

In fact, when people hear the name Nenni in Matewan, they normally think of Nenni’s Department store and the late Eddie Nenni, the latest in this storied family to run the business.

But the entrepreneurship really started with John Nenni, the first of four generations to own the buildings in the heart of Mingo County. He ran a restaurant in town and spoke poor English. His great grandson, Todd Nenni, remembers hearing stories of John as sort of a marketing genius.

John Nenni (front/center) was the first of four generations to own a building and/or run a business in Matewan, W.Va. Left to right back row: Harry, Johnny, Rudy, Jean, Josephine Florence, Georgia and Anna Left to right front row: Attilio, John & Rosa Other siblings not pictured included Bill Nenni who had passed and Tony had not been born yet.

“My great grandfather (John Nenni), when he had a restaurant, before it turned into the store, he used to put a sign out every day for what his special in his restaurant was,” Todd Nenni said. “And everybody’s going down the street laughing at him making fun of him because he couldn’t spell well. My grandfather (Attillio Nenni) was like, ‘let me make the signs for you.’ And then after about a week, he walked by, and here’s the sign again, and the food spelled wrong and the special and he’s like, ‘Pop, why don’t you let me do this.’”

He said, “‘Let me tell you something. He said when you make the sign, they walk by and look at it and they don’t come in. When I make the sign they laugh and they come in and eat, so you’re not making the signs for me no more.’ So that’s an example of the barrier they had and how they used it to their advantage.”

The Nenni family pictured in front of of the Nenni buildings in 2002.

Overcoming barriers seems to be something all four generations of the Nenni family know something about. Each generation has met head-on the challenges of their time with hard work, sacrifice and resilience.

Atillio Nenni was the oldest of 13 children of John Nenni. Tillio, as he was called, quit school in the third grade to work in his father’s business, which served Matewan with a variety of services. Those included a restaurant, a clothing store, and even a bootlegging operation.

Attillio Nenni and Nell (Gentile) Nenni and their wedding party.

Atillio married a woman from a neighboring Italian family named Nell Gentile, and they took on the family business, running a shoe repair shop. After decades of hard work in the business, Atillio had what was then called a “nervous breakdown.”

“He had a nervous breakdown because he worked seven days a week, 13 hours a day in the store trying to make it go,” Todd Nenni said. “He’d been working there since he was in third grade. He had to quit school. That’s just a little bit too big of a workload for anybody. But he didn’t have any other choice.

Nenni’s Dept. Store was in business for more than 100 years in Matewan, W.Va. The building has fallen into disrepair.

“I think when they come over from Italy, I’m pretty sure dad said there was a couple of years where they lived on nothing but just mush.”

When Atillio first got sick, his wife Nell asked for help from their son, Eddie, Todd’s dad, who was in college at the time. Eddie talked about coming home in 1989 in a recording that was part of an oral history project.

“When he got sick, mother said ‘you’re going to have to come home and help me with the store. I can’t take care of him and take care of the store, too. I have to stay at the house with him because he’s been sick, the doctor said he needs quiet,’” said Eddie Nenni, who did just that.

“I came home and started working in the store and I kind of got interested in it,” he said. “I was taking business classes down there anyway at Marshall. I just stepped into what he was doing and was trying to add to it.”

The Matewan Oral History Project is housed at the West Virginia State Archives.

Eventually, Eddie Nenni purchased the buildings from his father, Attilio, and paid off his debts to run the family businesses. Then came the flood of 1977, which devastated Matewan after waters rose to record levels in the business district.

The flood of 1977 devastated Matewan and sent record flood waters into the business district, including Nenni’s Dept. Store.

After the waters receded, Eddie took on a loan from the federal government to remodel the first floor.

“He borrowed around $150,000 which in 1977 is a lot of money. It’s also even more money when you pay them back but I know he paid him back at least $300,000 or $400,000. So, he would laugh and say ‘yea, that’s the kind of government handouts we get.”

At that time, coal jobs and the population was declining in Mingo County, so business suffered. Todd Nenni remembers growing up in Matewan during those years, watching his father struggle to honor the family business.

Eric Todd Nenni and his father Eddie Nenni. Todd was about 6 years-old.

“He chose to be there to keep the place open for his mom and his dad,” Todd Nenni said. “He just chose to stay there for them and then after they were gone that was all he had done and all he knowed and he loved the town and he just refused to leave.”

After Eddie Nenni had a stroke in 2013, the business closed. Still, Todd Nenni said his father owed the government for the business loan for most his life. Edward Nenni died in 2016 and Todd inherited the rundown buildings that represented generations of hard work and sacrifice.

He thought about renovating but in 2019, he sold the century-old structures to Coalfield Development. The organization plans to work on historic preservation and future economic development.

“Any kind of investment in Matewan is a good investment but you want it to be the right investment,” Todd Nenni said. “You want it to be some things that are going to help the town in the long run and help draw some people in.”

Coalfield Development works to provide sustainable jobs in central Appalachia while trying to diversify the economy. Kenzie Walker is on the board.

“We’ve got an ailing coal industry, obviously, everyone knows that we’re, we’re in this transition period right now,” Walker said. “Coalfield has really provided a lot of leadership to that conversation, and a good model for what a transition would look like.”

The plan is to renovate the buildings to establish a job training center on the first floor. But that’s not all.

Coalfield Development hopes to attract visitors to the buildings by highlighting their connection to another bit of local history. Sid Hatfield, Matewan’s police chief during the labor uprising 100 years ago, once lived in them. That labor history now draws ATV riders to the area.

ATVs regularly line the street in Matewan by the Nenni buildings.

Walker says the project also has a personal connection for her. Her father was a coal miner, and like some miners today, found himself without a job and in need of a different career.

“It’s devastating to see these places shut down and to be able to, create on the job training, and create things for people to do. Not just for tourists, we also need things for our young people to do here for fun. And so it just, it means a lot to be able to work on this project and see it come to life over the next few years.”

Todd Nenni says he trusts Coalfield Development with the restoration project and hopes visitors know that the Nenni’s were more than an immigrant family, but people who could survive on their own.

“I would definitely like the story of an immigrant family,” Todd Nenni said. “I would call it the deck stacked against them, come over with no help from anybody. And in today’s world that’s something we all need to hear sometimes, because we all don’t get a fair shake. They definitely didn’t have a fair shake.”

A window on the railroad tracks side of the building still displays the Nenni name before renovations start.

The renovation project is expected to take several years. The next step is to gather community feedback on how to interpret one of the apartments where the Matewan police chief lived more than 100 years ago. It received grant funding of about $49,000 from the Institute Museum and Library Services via the Mine Wars Museum. When completed, the buildings will also house Coalfield Development’s Mingo County headquarters.

Museum Brings Visitors Off Trails And Into W.Va. Coalfield Town

On a warm September morning, ATV riders roll into Matewan, fresh off the Hatfield McCoy Trails. The dirt paths in the backwoods of Southern West Virginia brought Ryan Logue all the way from Kansas City, Missouri.

In Matewan, W.Va., it’s common to see ATVs and riders lining downtown during riding season.

“The fact that you can just ride your ATVs just right up to the front door here,” Logue said, “and nobody cares if you’re muddy, they just say come on in. And the trails, you really have to see for yourself.”

The Mine Wars was a time of tension and bloodshed in American history when coal miners demanded better working conditions and fair wages. Logue heard about the Mine Wars Museum on YouTube.

“This was kind of a sidestep that we wanted to take,” Logue explained, “just to kind of see this and the fact that we can just write up pretty much right to the front door is just incredible.”

The Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, W.Va. moved to a new location on the same street in 2020.

The Mine Wars Museum opened in 2015 in the heart of coal county in Matewan. Last year, the museum moved to a more spacious location just across the street. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) purchased the building for the museum.

Inside the two front double doors is a display of red bandanas to the left. To the right, is a mural of the museum’s logo, and straight ahead, a petite woman sitting at a desk. A movie poster for the motion picture “Matewan” hangs over her brown hair.

Kim McCoy sits a desk before greeting visitors at the Mine Wars Museum.

Shop manager and tour guide Kim McCoy was born and raised in Matewan.

“I’m the daughter of a coal miner and the granddaughter of a coal miner, both my grandfathers were coal miners,” McCoy says.

“I was born right up the railroad tracks here at the Stony Mountain coal camp. That’s where I spent my holidays with my grandparents was in an old coal camp house.

“So when my grandfather would talk about the mine wars, you could hear the passion in his story and I remember learning these stories from him growing up.”

Logue and his friends took off their ATV helmets as McCoy guided them through the museum.

Matewan native Kim McCoy (left) shows Ryan Logue (right) and his friends through the Mine Wars Museum.

“Here in the museum, what you learn about is the Paint Creek/Cabin Creek strike that happened between 1912 and and 1914,” McCoy said. “It was the first time that the coal miners rebelled against the coal company owners on Paint Creek.

“The coal company owners would go up to Ellis Island and would bring in immigrants off the boat. They would promise these immigrants the ‘American Dream,’ but what they got was as close to slavery as you can get without it being called slavery.”

McCoy used that description because everything was controlled by the coal companies. When the immigrants arrived in the southern coalfields, they were given a job doing back-breaking work underground. They were given a place to live – even places to go to church but the workers didn’t own any of it. The coal companies did.

Miners were paid in scrip that could only be used at coal company-owned stores. Often, children were expected to work in the mines.

The notion of working so young sticks with Logue throughout the tour.

“I can’t even imagine at eight years old being told, ‘this is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life and it’s going to be absolutely terrible and we basically own you,’” Logue said.

The museum has a collection of recordings where visitors simply push a button to hear stories from UMWA President Cecil Roberts, and other voices from the coalfields like Grace Jackson, who marched with Mother Jones on Cabin Creek when she was 12 years old.

Kim McCoy shows visitors tents like the ones give to striking miners by UMWA.

At the end of the room, a wooden post holds up a wide canvas tent. It’s like the one striking miners lived in after being evicted from coal company houses.

“The living conditions of these people and all they wanted was a chance to just live a fair life and they were just kind of owned by this company,” Logues said.

Along with ATV riders, the museum has hosted elementary and even college students. Bobby Starnes teaches Appalachian Studies at Berea College, where one of her classes is actually called the Mine Wars. Her father was a ‘union man,’ like Kim McCoy’s. To Starnes, the stories of the coalfields go much deeper than a tale of organizing.

“As a teacher of Appalachian Studies, it’s an amazing resource. As the daughter of a coal miner, it touches every corner of my heart,” Starnes said as she fights back tears. “It’s my father’s story. It’s my family’s story. It’s my people’s story. And they tell it with such grace and dignity and beauty.”

Companies identified miners and the amount they produced with a metal tag that hung close to the entry of a coal mine.

Starnes and her students traveled about three hours from Berea, Kentucky, to Matewan, West Virginia to visit the museum. She says it’s been an important part of her curriculum.

“It just adds so much depth and understanding,” Starnes said. “When you can put your hand on a piece of scrip that some miner was paid with, and know that your hand is on top of the hand that earned that money by going into those mines. That means something. And we talked about the difference between looking at it in pictures and holding it in your hand.”

Starnes even volunteered over the summer to go through newspapers and sources to help with archiving. She couldn’t help but to read them all.

“After reading those stories, it becomes easy to demonize and marginalize people who are, quote, savage,” Starnes says.

“That’s a word that was used a lot in the documents. Part of it is that those stories were stories told by powerful people. I mean, who do you think owns the New York Times? Who do you think owned the major newspapers in the country, it was the same people who owned the railroads, and the coal mines. There is this image of us that is pervasive, and that we have to speak out against and clarify who we really are and what we really stand for.”

ATV riders from Kansas City, Missouri stopped into the Mine Wars Museum to learn more about the Mine Wars.

The Mine Wars Museum, Starnes says, does just that. It gives context and shares the stories of the coalfields to perhaps give meaning behind some of the behaviors of violence so many years ago.

The Mine Wars Museum is open Fridays and Saturdays 11am to 6pm

Events Across the State To Commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Mine Wars, Battle of Blair Mountain

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain. While the anniversary is still weeks away, organizations and communities in southern West Virginia are already commemorating the centennial.

The Battle of Blair Mountain is one of West Virginia’s largest moments in American history.

As part of the Mine Wars, coal miners marched near the Boone-Logan County line from late August to Sept. 3. The march was the largest labor uprising in U.S. history.

It happened in the early 1900’s after coal miners in West Virginia endured years of dangerous conditions underground and brutal political and cultural treatment above ground.

By 1921, the miners decided to fight for their fellow miners in the Mingo County town of Williamson, who were locked up without trial. They were charged with violating martial law, an act that gives absolute power to the federal military during times of “war, rebellion, or natural disaster.” The battle ended when martial law was declared again, and U.S. Army troops disarmed the miners.

The uprising has been largely underreported but organizations and communities are hoping the events this year will provide more opportunities for people to visit and learn about America’s labor history.

Dozens of events are taking place online and in communities that played an important part in the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Mine Wars. Some of those towns include Matewan and Williamson in Mingo County, Madison, in Boone County and Welch in McDowell County.

Some of the groups working to organize the events include the Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, the West Virginia Humanities Council, and the National Coal Heritage Area Authority.

The next event is a performance of the play “Terror of the Tug” in Summers County at Pipestem Resort State Park amphitheatre on Saturday, Aug. 7 at 8 p.m. The main events are happening Sept. 3 and Labor Day, the first Monday of the month, Sept. 6. Some of the events include outdoor plays, reenactments, tours, virtual roundtable discussions and retracing the march to Blair Mountain.

The anniversary is Sept. 3, so Labor Day Weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the centennial. You can find a list of events commemorating the 100th anniversary at this site.

Coalfields To Receive $7 Million For Job, Infrastructure Growth

Federal grants of about $10 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce were awarded to four West Virginia projects Monday to help with infrastructure maintenance and economic development in the state.

Two of those projects are in the southern coalfields where the need for a more diversified workforce remains crucial.

“These projects will support business growth in West Virginia, diversify the state’s economy, and create new jobs for West Virginia residents,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.

The largest award, $5.2 million, will go to the Huntington Stormwater Utility to repair the Huntington Floodwall, which officials said was structurally damaged in the 2015 and 2018 floods.

The goal for this project is to reroute sewer and storm drainage systems to protect downtown businesses, according to a press release. The project is expected to create and retain 750 jobs, the commerce department said.

The Coalfield Development Corp., a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing coalfield economies, will receive a federal grant for nearly $1.7 million. Three buildings in Matewan will be renovated to create a job-creation and training facility.

In 2019, West Virginia had the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the country. The new Matewan facility will specifically be geared toward unemployed coal miners – ideally creating 90 new jobs.

The Putnam County Public Service District and the Benedum Airport Authority also received federal grants for increasing water capacity to serve industrial needs and to renovate airport facilities, respectively.